Schumacher Center for a New Economics

Guide to Small is Beautiful - Chapter 13 Having raised the insufficiency of 'high tech' solutionism for the world’s poor and rural villages, and then describing the promise of intermediate technology, in Chapter 13 Schumacher highlights a fundamental error in the prevailing Western conception of economics. The development truly desired “is something much wider and deeper than economics, certaintly than econometrics.” In Schumacher’s own words: “Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organization… and a national consciousness of self-reliance.” https://lnkd.in/e-YFc8kW

"To Be Thy Adam:" Agency, Activism & Collective Intelligence in the Ruins of the Human Our September public panel, featuring Bayo Akomolafe Alex Forrester Catherine Keller and Dougald Hine, is now available online. https://lnkd.in/ed8-7Az7

"One of the great callings of the future is the healing of the Earth..." — Thomas Berry, Philosopher & Theologian “The Earth must become the primary concern of every human institution, profession, program, and activity, including economics… Only if the Earth economy is functioning in some integral manner can the human economy be in any way effective. The Earth economy can survive the loss of its human component, but there is no way for the human economy to survive or prosper apart from the Earth economy. The grandeur of the possibilities ahead of us must in some manner be experienced in anticipation. Otherwise we will not have the psychic energy to endure the pain… Clear as to where we are headed and… the urgency and the adventure… we can get on with our historic task. We can accept, even ignore the difficulties... and the pain to be endured, for we are involved in a great work.” “The successful emergence of the Ecozoic Era can presently be considered the great creative task of the universe itself...” Read The Ecozoic Era in full at: https://lnkd.in/eDu3TwQY

Timeline of New Economic Thought #19 - 1926 | The Distributist League G. K. Chesterton was a founder of the Distributist League. Based on the principles of Catholic social teaching, it defended property ownership as a fundamental right for all. Explore the full timeline: https://lnkd.in/gbbSrCXD

Our #CommunityLandTrust Toolkit contains organizational and legal documents, providing information for starting a Community Land Trust in your own area. As a pioneer in the movement for community land tenure, the Schumacher Center makes freely accessible background materials, by-laws, articles of incorporation, lease agreements, and associated documents from our region's Berkshire Community Land Trust. https://lnkd.in/ei32dt8a

In Chapter 12 of Small is Beautiful, Schumacher set the following propositions: “That workplaces have to be created in the areas where the people are living now, and not primarily in metropolitan areas into which they tend to migrate.” “That these workplaces must be, on average, cheap enough so that they can be created in large numbers without this calling for an unattainable level of capital formation and imports.” “That the production methods employed must be relatively simple, so that the demands for high skills are minimized, not only in the production process itself but also in matters of organization, raw material supply, financing, marketing, and so forth.” “That production should be mainly from local materials and mainly for local use.” https://lnkd.in/gGkf68pv

The Decentralism File # 112 Van Dresser, Peter The Technics of Decentralization (1938) Peter Van Dresser (1908-1983) was born in the Bronx, NY and attended but did not graduate from Cornell, majoring in engineering and architecture. In the 1930s he was active in the American Rocketry Association and edited their journal. In 1949 he moved to Abiquiu, a small village in the mountains of northern New Mexico. There he opened a little restaurant, designed and built solar-and wind-powered houses and began working in earnest for the development of decentralized, self-sufficient communities which “make use of sophisticated technology to produce a high standard of living, yet exist harmoniously with the natural world around them”. Van Dresser was prolific author in magazines of his day, including Free America, from which the essay below is taken. "Germany, Italy and Japan, classifying themselves as “have-not” countries, are leading the march toward the totalitarian form of government, and... extremes of regimented economy... deliberately and strenuously organizing their people, their resources, and their industries" Read the full excerpt, and more, at https://lnkd.in/gdXT3Pk3

We continue our chapter-by-chapter reading of our study guide, “Small is Beautiful Revisited…50 Years On,” examining Schumacher’s 1973 text in light of our time. Chapter 11 deals with what Schumacher called “the central problem of development.” https://lnkd.in/eAb22gsU

"What do we want? - satisfying work, fair earnings and secured prosperity! This is what all working people strive for economically, and what they could and should all have ..." The WIR economic cooperative was founded 1934 in Zurich, motivated mainly by the bad economic situation of the time.  It included the commercial middle class, farmers, civil servants and white-collar workers who became participants. It was mainly the interest free WIR-credit for extra buying power that served to stimulate the turnover of goods. The clearing credits were kept interest-free, thus stifling any tendency to hoard WIR credits, and the WIR organization grew at an amazing rate. Read "60 Years of the WIR Economic Circle Cooperative" (1994) by Heidi Defila, former Vice President of WIR, translated by Thomas Greco https://lnkd.in/eg-hxwTf

History of New Economic Thought Pt. 4: Agrarian Justice 1797 - Thomas Paine's "Agrarian Justice” proposed that, as land is the inheritance of all humanity, ownership of title should be taxed & revenue redistributed — inspiring modern universal basic income proposals. #UBI #LandReform #LandAccess https://lnkd.in/gbbSrCXD