Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973)

(one of 24 books found today at 2nd hand shop...24 for $10!)

Oof, tried to read this but found it dated and preachy. Some of Schumacher's fundamental ideas are wonderful and important, but I can't read books that make blanket statements about the iniquity and moral vacuity of modern society & how things were better before the 19th/20th/21st century.

Also, if you're writing for an audience of non-conformists in the seventies and you're NOT a feminist, shame on you. (Schumacher says that "most" women shouldn't have to work, yet claims that meaningful work is a human right. Um.) ( )

Read for class.

Several extremely interesting economic ideas, including pointing out some of the flaws with some economic statistical models, as well as offering some very interesting solutions. I admit some of these are too idealistic to be practical, but many of them are very interesting. The book also has a clearly religious disposition, which may turn off some freethinkers, but the ideas are still substantial enough to be considered and applied, as seen in the Bhutan.

A very interesting book. ( )

This is a serious book. Still relevant and well worth reading today, 40 years after its initial publication. I made the mistake of trying to read it both on my daily commute into work and as a bedtime book. Neither worked:- notice it took me a year to finish. You cannot read this book whilst hanging onto a pole in a crowded bus or train or when you are just about to go to sleep. You need a quiet but alert mind and a quiet place in order to be able to absord and reflect on what Schumacher writes. There is so much wisdom in this book. More than once he made me gasp and I had to lay the book aside to think about what I had just read.

I'd recommend this book for anyone who, like me, feels uneasy about things such as globalisation and the constant trend of larger businesses gobbling up or pushing out smaller ones. Or if you worry about growth in a world of finite resources. Schumacher cared about those things too and proposed plausible alternatives. His arguments are sound and logical and based on facts. He gives examples such as the Scott Bader company of how things really can be done differently.

I'd never heard of Schumacher until I came across across a reference to him in [b:Anton Rupert: A Biography|3908133|Anton Rupert A Biography|Ebbe Dommisse|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1332825276s/3908133.jpg|3953502] where it was said that Rupert was inspired by Schumacher's ideas when he got involved in development assistance to the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho. This was many years ago, following that country's independence from the United Kingdom.

By a co-incidence, just after I'd purchased the book, it transpired that last year (2011) the BBC was commemorating the centenary of Schumacher's birth and broadcast an inspiring lecture of his on Radio 4. I was just lucky that I was listening to the radio when it came on. Within a few minutes I'd stopped what I was doing and just listened. ( )

It's easy to see why this book has been an environmentalist classic for a long time, but it has certainly become a bit outdated since it was written in the early 1970s. The chapters are quite disjointed and the author's thoughts branch off this way and that without any sustained standpoint or general argument. Despite the subtitle this book really says very little either for or against the postulates of economic theory, which I found particularly disappointing. The chapters I liked most were about economic development in poor countries where the author's prescriptions seemed very sensible. All in all an easy read without any weighty arguments.