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Economy

The
Humane Village
Journal 1

 

 

 

 

Economy: A Balance Between Losses and
Gains


E.F. Schumacher •

The changes of the last twenty-five years, both in the quantity and in the quality of man's industrial processes, have produced an entirely new situation - a situation resulting, not from our failures , but from what we thought were our greatest successes.

Lewis Mumford •

If the aim of the inventor was to make machines take the place of men, by analysing, simplifying, reproducing and magnifying the motions of the human frame, the aim of despotism was to make men fit more subserviently into the pattern of a larger machine: the state or the factory or the office. By diminishing the intensity of human responses, by narrowing the range of human actions, by reducing human sensibilities, by exterminating every tendency of autonomous action, the despot sought to make men responsive to simple words of command.

E.F. Schumacher •

Is it not evident that our current methods of production are already eating into the very substance of industrial man? The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product. Statistics never prove anything.

Lewis Mumford •

Up to the emergence of capitalism, economic life had a strong moral foundation. It was rooted in the notion that every act of life was under the judgment of God. Hence the conception of the just price: a price determined by the intrinsic value of the commodity and its actual cost of production, divorced from the accidents of individual preference and material scarcity.

 

J.K.Galbraith •

Why should men struggle to maximize income when the price is many dull and dark hours of labor? Why especially should they do so as goods become more plentiful and less urgent? Why should they not seek instead to maximize the rewards of all the hours of their days? And since this is the plain and obvious aspiration of a great and growing number of the most perceptive people, why should it not be the central goal of the society? And now to complete the case, we have a design for progress. It is education or, more broadly, investment in human as distinct from material capital.

But in the more sophisticated levels of the conventional wisdom any such goal will seem exceedingly undesirable. The production of material goods, urgent or otherwise, is the accepted measure of our progress. Investment in material capital is our basic engine of such progress. Both this product and the means for increasing it are measurable and tangible. What is measurable is better. To talk of transferring increasing numbers of people from lives spent mostly in classical toil to lives which, for the most part are spent pleasantly has less quantitative precision. Since investment in individuals, unlike investment in a blast furnace, provides a product that can be neither seen nor valued, it is inferior.

And here the conventional wisdom unleashes its epithet of last resort. Since these achievements are not easily measured as a goal, they are 'fuzzy.'' What economics finds inconvenient, it invariably so attacks and it is widely deemed to be a fatal condemnation. The precise, to be sure, is usually the old and familiar. Because it is old and familiar, it has been defined and measured. Thus does insistence on precision become another of the tautological devices by which the conventional wisdom protects itself. Nor should one doubt its power.

 

Dieter Rams •

In the material culture of affluent societies, people pay for the possession of products, not for their use; it follows that for the manufacturer it is more important that his products are bought and much less that they are actually used. Obsolescence is built into commodities because the industry that produces them depends on surplus, on people buying more than they need. This leads to designs intended to make older products look unattractive and the creation of visual obsolescence. At the extreme, as soon as we purchase a product, we begin to fantasise about its successor.

 

E.F. Schumacher •

It is quite clear that a way of life that bases itself on materialism, i.e. on permanent, limitless expansionism in a finite environment, cannot last long, and that its life expectation is the shorter the more successfully it pursues its expansionist objectives.

J.K.Galbraith •

The day will not soon come when the problems of either the world or our own polity are solved. Since we do not know the shape of the problems, we do not know the requirements for solution. But one thing is tolerably certain. Whether the problem be that of a burgeoning population and of space in which to live with peace and grace, or whether it be the depletion of the materials which nature has stocked in the earth's crust and which have been drawn upon more heavily in this century than in all previous time together, or whether it be that of occupying minds no longer committed to the stockpiling of consumer goods, the basic demand will be on our resources of ability, intelligence and education. The test will be less the effectiveness of our material investment than the effectiveness of our investment in men.

 

E.F. Schumacher •

The modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which it has been erected. It lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income. Such capital is fossil fuels, the tolerance margins of nature, and the human substance.

 

J.K.Galbraith •

In our society , the increased production of goods is a basic measure of social achievement. This is partly the result of the great continuity of ideas which links the present with a world in which production indeed meant life. Partly, it is a matter of vested interest. Partly, it is a product of the elaborate obscurantism of the modern theory of consumer need. And partly, we have seen, the preoccupation with production is forced quite genuinely upon us by the tight nexus between production and economic security.

However, it is a reasonable assumption that most people pressed to explain our concern for production, would be content to suggest that it serves the happiness of most men and women. That is sufficient.

 

J.K.Galbraith •

Our preoccupation with production may be a preoccupation with a problem of rather low urgency. We are content with what we get, which comes close to saying that we are deeply concerned with production only so far as the problem solves itself. We set great store by doing what, in a manner of speaking, comes naturally.

None of this would be possible if the goods we produced were of great and urgent importance. Then we would be searching vigorously for ways of increasing the supply instead, as at present, of regarding with approval the increases we obtain.

All this becomes intelligible, and in degree even obvious, when we contemplate the elaborate myth with which we surround the demand for goods. This has enabled us to become persuaded of the dire importance of the goods we have without our being in the slightest degree concerned about those we do not have. We do not manufacture wants for goods we do not produce.

Scott Burns •

The market economy is not a creature suited to an environment where materials and energy are increasingly scarce. The market is geared to'more and more', not to more from less. Yet, the reality of our limited natural resources requires precisely that : more from less.

 

J.K.Galbraith •

The final problem of the productive society is what it produces. This manifests itself in an implacable tendency to provide an opulent supply of some things and a niggardly yield of others. This disparity carries to the point where it is a cause of social discomfort and social unhealth.

 

To have argued simply that our present preoccupation with production of goods does not best aid the pursuit of happiness would have got nowhere. The question of happiness and what adds to it has been evaded; instead, the present argument has been directed to seeing how extensively our present preoccupations, most of all that with the production of goods, are compelled by tradition and by myth. Released from these compulsions, we become free for the first time to survey our other opportunities. These at least have a plausible relation to happiness.

 

Neil Postman •

We must free ourselves from the belief in the magical powers of numbers, and stop regarding calculation as an adequate substitute for judgment, or precision as a synonym for truth; we must, at least, be suspicious of the idea of progress, and not confuse information with understanding.

 

Ivan Illich • 

Withdrawal from growth mania will be painful, but mostly for members of the generation which has to experience the transition and above all for those most disabled by consumption. If their plight could be vividly remembered, it might help the next generation avoid what they know would enslave them.

 

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© 199 4 The Humane Village Centre for Compassionate Design and the Authors

The Humane Village Centre for Compassionate Design is a not for profit organization.
Its objectives are:
• to promote the philosophy of design known as the "Humane Village" among designers, manufacturers and consumers through the publication of
material and the holding of seminars and conferences.
• to develop methods and advise corporations and consumers on issues related to socially responsible design;
• to promote and establish a network of interested parties and organizations.
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