Small really is beautiful

I finally finished E.F. Schumacher's book ( I've been reading it since late November) Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered. This book in conjunction with the Ecological Economics course that I attended last summer has broadened my view of the world. I had a humanities bias: if it didn't ask or address the big questions I wasn't interested. And in many ways, economics doesn't. That's because economists are only concerned about growth--constant, illusory growth. Schumacher says that this attitude only alienates people and greedily devours resources that are not unlimited. When economies, political powers, corporations become too big they become unconcerned with individuals unless they can deliver consumption or votes. This is not how humans are designed to relate to each other or the world.

The book is only two years younger than I am and still has much to say about economics of our current temporal position. There aren't many economic theories that can say that and also contain voluminous amounts of wisdom. Try reading this book, Mr. Bernake. You too!

Next up--Joseph Pearce's update--Small Is Still Beautiful: Economics As If Families Mattered.

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Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property. --Hilaire Belloc The Servile State

Good reads of 2009

I haven't made a list like this in a while, and I believe I discussed most of these on the blog as I finished them, but I thought I'd make a handy short-hand list for you and me. These are only in the order I read them and do not indicate any preference. The Open Door * Frederica Mathewes-Green The Children of Hurin * J.R.R. Tolkien The Omnivore's Dilemma * Michael Pollan Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict, and Hope * Eric T. Freyfogle Wonderful Fool * Shusaku Endo Up the Rouge: Paddling Detroit's Hidden River * Joel Thurtell and Patricia Beck Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation * Rodney Clapp (I started the following in December, but I haven't finished them--so far they are excellent: Love and Hate in Jamestown * David A. Price and The Picture of Dorian Gray * Oscar Wilde) Try one of these--let me know.

Independent Women?

During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust . The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI. The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said. The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character. He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture. He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing." This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point. I would counter with "How far we've fallen." To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has moved from producer to cons

I Am Not Hamlet

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