E. F. Schumacher and Sustainability
November 8, 2021
Although some
economic principles of maintaining a
farm were contained in the
Works and Days by
Hesiod (c. 700 BC), the first
book on
economics is the
Oeconomicus (Οικονομικός, "household management") by
Xenophon (c. 430-354 BC). It can be seen that our
word, "economics," is taken from the
title of this book. Xenophon's concept of economics as household management distinguishes it from the later works on
political economics by
Plato (c. 425- 347 BC) (
The Republic, c. 370 BC) and
Aristotle (384-322 BC) (
Politics, c. 350 BC).
A passage from Hesiod's Works and Days. "For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labor and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them." (Hesiod, Works and Days, ll. 176-178, via Project Perseus)
Before the later half of the
20th century, economics was more like
philosophy than
science. Economics, just like
anthropology, was more akin to telling a good
story than making
predictions. A good example of this is the 1899 book,
The Theory of the Leisure Class, by
economist,
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) (a.k.a., Torsten Veblen).[1] This book is known for the first use of the term,
conspicuous consumption, which is the purchase of
lavishly expensive, or
ephemeral and impractical,
goods and
services simply as a way of displaying
income or
wealth. I wrote about Veblen in an
earlier article (The Physics of Inequality, May 11, 2017).
My
undergraduate economics
textbook was
Economics, by
Paul Samuelson (1915-2009), the first recipient of the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1970. As I remember, this
mid-1960s edition of this book had a single
equation, possibly one relating
net national product with
gross national product. It was an
arithmetic equation easily understood by an
elementary school student.
Economics began to change in the mid-20th century with the advent of
electronic computers and the subsequent creation of the
Internet.[2] The availability of easily accessed
data sets, coupled with a computer's ability to
validate economic
models based on these
data, transformed economics from a field of philosophy to the highly
mathematical discipline it is today. One quick look at
recent economics papers posted to arXiv will offer a quick validation of this
computerization of economics.[2-4]
German-
British economist and
statistician,
E. F. (Fritz) Schumacher (1911-1977), was one of the last influential philosophical economists. As if applying
Ockham's razor to
production of goods, Schumacher decried his world's "bigger is better"
technological means of production and advocated a small is beautiful approach. His 1973 book,
Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered, is considered to be one of the most influential books published since
World War II.[5]
Publication of this book coincided with the
1973 oil crisis, which provided immediate evidence for the
thesis of this book.
E. F. (Fritz) Schumacher (1911-1977).
In a 1978 documentary, Schumacher was thinking like a true thermodynamicist when he said, "Why, then, start-off with a nuclear reaction which has a million degrees in order, finally, to get thirty degrees room temperature."[6]
(Screenshot from a National Film Board of Canada video.[6])
In his book, Schumacher declared that the modern economy is
unsustainable, since
natural resources, such as the
fossil fuels that fueled the subsequent 1973 oil crisis, are not
renewable, and
pollution would take its toll on the
Earth.[5] An effective
countermeasure is the way that things were done before our
industrial technology.[5] In a a 1977
documentary filmed shortly before his
death, Schumacher bemoans the many mindless tasks that abound in modern production.[6] Although my
scientific career was more
intellectually challenging than working on an
assembly line, I was still subjected to such mindless tasks as writing monthly
progress reports that were never read.
Some of Schumacher's arguments against runaway technology are distilled into the following two excerpts from the first part of his book.[5]
"We are estranged from reality and inclined to treat as valueless everything that we have not made ourselves... Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side."
It's become difficult to obtain the many natural resources required for today's products. It's common knowledge that
battery lithium and
magnetic rare earths presently top the
list of critical material facing shortage. In 2018, the
United States Department of the Interior published a list of 35
minerals considered to be critical.[7] These are
aluminum (
bauxite),
antimony,
arsenic,
barite,
beryllium,
bismuth,
cesium,
chromium,
cobalt,
fluorspar,
gallium,
germanium,
graphite (natural),
hafnium,
helium,
indium,
lithium,
magnesium,
manganese,
niobium,
platinum group metals,
potash, the
rare earth elements group,
rhenium,
rubidium,
scandium,
strontium,
tantalum,
tellurium,
tin,
titanium,
tungsten,
uranium,
vanadium, and
zirconium.[7]
There are peripheral economic issues that surround these critical materials.
Recycling is a sure way to ensure supply. Also, replacement of
rotating disk media, whose
actuators contain
rare earth magnets, with
solid state drives would reduce demand for rare earth metals.
Mining and
refining of metals requires
energy; and, as the principal mineral sources are depleted, secondary sources need more energy still for extraction and refining. Our quest for
renewable energy sources is impeded by the fact that
wind turbines and
solar panels need several
elements on the critical elements list.
An example of technology contributing to
waste that didn't exist in Schumacher's time is the present tendency for makers of
consumer electronic devices to drop
software support for their devices long before the
hardware wears out. As one small measure to reduce electronic waste, the
European Union has proposed that electronic devices, such as
cellphones and
tablet computers, all contain a common
USB-C charging port on their devices so
chargers and
cables can be shared and reused.[9]
Ned Ludd, "King of the Luddites."
Ludd supposedly broke two knitting machines in Leicester, England, in 1779 in a fit of rage.
The Luddites were workers who produced textile articles in small workshops and found that were being replaced by machines in large factories. In the period 1811-1816 their movement destroyed many such machines until it was suppressed by military force.
Schumacher is often categorized as a Neo-Luddite, but he is distinguished from a Luddite by proposing economic alternatives to the rampant replacement of workers by runaway technology and automation.
(Wikimedia Commons image dating from 1812.)
References:
- Thorstein Veblen, "The Theory of the Leisure Class," 1.4 MB PDF File, via Law in Contemporary Society Web Site, Columbia Law School.
- Call for Papers, The Computerization of Economics - Computers, Programming, and the Internet in the History of Economics, OEconomia – Histoire/Epistémologie/Philosophie, June, 2021.
- Beatrice Cherrier, "How the computer transformed economics. And didn't," Institute for New Economic Thinking, May 19, 2016.
- The computerization of economics: a chronology (in progress), Beatrice Cherrier's blog, February 7, 2016.
- E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful, PDF version of the book at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Website.
- Small Is Beautiful: Impressions of Fritz Schumacher, Donald Brittain, Barrie Howells, and Douglas Kiefer, Directors, National Film Board of Canada, 1978. Also available as Bigger isn't better - the renegade 'Buddhist economics' of E F Schumacher, Donald Brittain, Barrie Howells, and Douglas Kiefer, Directors, Aeon.co.
- Final List of Critical Minerals 2018, A Notice by the Interior Department on 05/18/2018, 83 FR 23295, pp. 23295-23296.
- Critical Minerals and Materials: U.S. Department of Energy’s Strategy to Support Domestic Critical Mineral and Material Supply Chains (FY 2021-FY 2031), US Department of Energy (PDF File).
- Pulling the plug on consumer frustration and e-waste: Commission proposes a common charger for electronic devices, European Commission of the European Union Press release, September 23, 2021.
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