Summary Of Ef Schumacher's 'Small Is Beautiful'

Great Essays
Register to read the introduction… EF Schumacher was born on the August 16th 1911 in Bonn, Germany and died on September 4th 1977. He was and still is one of the most influential economists in Britain. He studied in Bonn, Berlin, Oxford and Columbia University on New York City to obtain his diploma in economics .Schumacher moved to England where he helped the government financially during the Second World War. He also taught in Oxford, a position found by his friend John Maynard Keynes. After the War he was appointed Chief Economic Advisor to the National Coal Board and it is here where he developed the idea that the world sees non-renewable resources as income not capital. In 1955 Schumacher went to Burma as an economic consultant where he developed the idea of Buddhist Economics. He was deeply influenced by his friend and fellow people’s economist Mahatma Gandhi. He was also interested in religion especially Catholicism as he uses many quotes from the bible in his book. In 1973 Small is Beautiful was published a collection of his …show more content…
In part 1 The Modern World, one key aspect Schumacher talks about is our failure to differentiate income and capital. In his essay Problem of Production he uses fossil fuels to explain this. From the beginning of time we have always treated natural resources for example oil and gas as income when they really should be treated as capital since they can never be used again. There is no or very little effort in conserving it and as a result there is a huge impact we are destroying Earth. “Fossil fuels are merely a part of the 'natural capital' which we steadfastly insist on treating as expendable, as if it were income, and by no means the most' important part. If we squander our fossil fuels, we threaten civilization; but if we squander the capital represented by living nature around us, we threaten life itself.”(Pg5line29-35). Similarly Ireland is highly dependent on oil for everyday use for example transport and heating. Although people are looking at alternatives for oil it is a very slow and long process. The supply of oil is decreasing every day and the demand of oil is increasing therefore increasing the price. In Ireland it has risen over the last number of year’s .now in Ireland on average its 1.40 euro for diesel for a litre of diesel and 1.50 euro for petrol. The graph below from …show more content…
Schumacher believes that man s wisdoms and sense of control goes out the window when he is overcome by greed.” A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become failures”.(pg18 line 25-25)This quote from Schumacher literally sums up the cause of the current recession in Ireland. People were overcome by the emotion greed and envy during the Celtic Tiger. For the first time in Irish history, people had money to spend. People were obsessed with getting rich and once they got a taste of it they wanted more and more whatever the results. Everyone wanted a part in the property bubble. The prices of houses doubled or trebled as a result of this high demand. They were overvalued. But as the housing prices increased, so did the dangerous lending. Banks gave out more loans than they should have to people who had no way of paying them back .People were surviving on borrowed money and as a result the banks collapsed as they did not get it

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