Small Is Possible

By George McRobie

Book Overview

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060906944
• ISBN13: 9780060906948
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Identifies people working towards Schumacher's goals

Through his book "Small is Beautiful" Fritz Schumacher lead the world into a new paradigm away from bigness and into technologies of human scale. Yet today the world around us is full of massive corporations, the overwhelming power of multinational corporations and global businesses that make the new paradigm seem ever more at the mercy of smoke filled board rooms thousands of miles away. More than ever we need the small is beautiful worldview. How refreshing therefore to find that this book catalogues businesses and organizations around the world which are promoting this concept and trying their best to turn it into reality. They encourage us to create lifestyles and use technologies that are low in capital cost, sparing in their use of resources, non-violent towards nature and - most important of all - sustainable. With the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development sponsored by the United Nations starting in 2005, the lessons and work of these organizations is invaluable and should form part of the new curriculum. This book is what we need to convert fine thoughts into action. With this book we can locate like-minded people and firms to discuss problems and seek out solutions. This book will help the person of modest means wrest back some of the power lost to big corporations. Hazel Henderson tells us that "George McRobie gives us a down-to-earth, flesh-and-blood account of Schumacher's unique philosophy in action and the fruits of their long-term collaboration." Alternative technology is important not only as a counter to bigness. These words written about 1981 seem to be even more true today: "Unemployment is rising again in highly industrialized countries, partly because of economic recession but also as a result of the success of technology in reducing the number of people needed to supply the demands of shrinking markets. Alternative technology practiced in small groups can make a major contribution to the solution of the appalling social problems caused when human beings are denied the essential dignity of worthwhile work." One day before he died, Schumacher spoke at an international conference on the theme "that the highly industrialized, not only the developing, countries of the world must start to devise technologies that are more in harmony with people, and with the environment, and less dependant on non-renewable resources. Isn't it time, he asked, that we started to put some real effort into building lifeboats in the form of technologies that are small, simple and non-violent?" That is what this book is all about - organizations throughout the world that are that working to turn this ideal into reality. In his 1962 report to the Indian Planning Commission, Schumacher laid out the basic concept - that India was "long" on labor and "short" on capital and needed a capital investment per workplace very much lower than in western countries. Engineers needed to be given a specific sum per workplace - Rs 1000 excluding the building w