Dr. E. F. Schumacher: Author of the Book Small is Beautiful

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I believe this. I believe that we have been put in this world for a higher purpose and that, as tar as the goods of this world are concerned, we should strive to use them just so far as they help us attain that purpose. And that we should strive to withdraw from them just so far as they hinder us from that goal.

For this reason, I find the economist's preoccupation with gross national product to be meaningless. The mere fact that some evil-minded statisticians have added together everything we did last year and announced that our gross national product rose or fell should be of absolutely no concern to anyone with any sense whatsoever. That which is good and helpful ought to be growing and that which is bad and hindering ought to be diminishing. Whether the aggregation of these two processes yields a higher or a lower grand total is of no interest at all. We need to be concerned with the direction of our movement and not merely to measure its speed.

PLOWBOY: Ha! You've just reminded me of an old Andy Griffith line: "If speed was all that counted, rabbits would surely rule the earth." You've made your point. The quality of what we do is more important than its quantity. It's not enough to mindlessly demand "more". We must judge and evaluate and strive only for more of that which serves our higher purposes in life . . . and less of that which doesn't.

SCHUMACHER: Yes. PLOWBOY: But this is, perhaps, easier to think about in theory than it is to put into practice. What can we do specifically, right now, today to set ourselves and our whole society on this new and higher road?

SCHUMACHER: We must redirect our science and technology. Not abandon, but redirect them. As things now stand we have foolishly shaped a technology which drives us into giantism, infinite complexity, vast expensiveness, and violence. We must devise a new technology that will help us move in the opposite direction . . . towards smallness, simplicity, low cost, and non-violence.

PLOWBOY: Let's take these ideas one at a time. Why is small better than big?

SCHUMACHER: Ah, I do not say that small is always better than big. I say only that we have shaped a technology which always arid forever drives us into giantism. We tend too easily to admire the grandiose, to marvel at supertechnology, supermedicine, supersonic speeds, and superorganizations. "The bigger, the better," we say.

But small can be beautiful too . . . and each size in between. For every activity there is a certain appropriate scale, and I ask only that we recognize this fact. I ask only that we restore this balance to our lives.

PLOWBOY: But haven't we come to prefer larger and larger organizations and factories and so on because of the economies of scale? Isn't it more efficient to make things big, rather than small?

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