Vision and Values

Fritz Schumacher published Small is Beautiful – Economics as if People Mattered in 1973. According to The Times Literary Supplement, it is among the 100 most influential books published since World War II and rightfully so.

For the last 60 years or so our way of life has been based on the premise that so long as there is demand there will always be supply. Schumacher wisely challenges these assumptions when he writes that sustainability is an impossibility when we are, “assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is ‘better off’ than a man who consumes less”, in an environment with finite resources.

E. F. Schumacher is clear about what economics can do and what it can’t do. Mainstream economists divide humans into producers and consumers. As consumers, consuming more will always be in our self-interest. As producers, efficiency is to be desired above all else. This breaks down, Schumacher says, as soon as we realize that producers and consumers are the same people with the same desires.