A very well-thought out piece about the significance of scale. I agree entirely with everything you wrote about Schumacher. His is essentially an ode of praise to poverty, malnutrition, starvation and premature death. Neither he nor any of the other "degrowth" advocates have any real idea of the true horror of life lived without technology. Life in a state of nature was summarized quite accurately by Thomas Hobbes as "nasty, brutish and short."
All of the degrowth advocates would not much like if they were compelled to live in a world with no modern medicine, no food supply preserved by modern technology such as refrigeration, no modern transportation systems to ship food across large distances to where it is need. Even more, they would dislike a world with no effective electricity systems powering the machinery by which they dispense their opinions via computers, telephones or mass audio and video systems. As such then, the degrowth advocates are a pure form of nihilism, wishing themselves and human technology out of existence.
They are of course free to believe whatever they wish to believe. But they must not be free to inflict their wishes on others who do not share their delusions. In short, the Club of Rome should be forced to live in the world they strive towards. We would then see its advocates fleeing frantically in all directions.
Great work. This 'small is beautiful' ideology is definitely a product of the 1970s and a rejection of 50s and 60s science/engineering optimism. It goes hand in hand with Amory Lovins and his 'soft path' towards new energy systems (i.e, renewables). Renewables are now part of the 'distributed energy' crowd, who totally buy small is beautiful and often talk about the 'democratization' of energy. Its mostly BS. Big is actually beautiful, and economies of scale are REAL. Its interesting to note that large aircraft (think 747) used to have four engines, but when larger engines were developed, the same size of aircraft employed them and many large aircraft today only use two engines. Why? It turns out that the new engines have acceptable reliability and using two engines vs four is SIMPLER, cheaper and lighter in the long run. So the trend in aircraft propulsion has really been that Bigger is Better.
I'm a 20 year attendee at Burning Man. One of their "10 principles" is radical self reliance. I see that as a grave error. It's incredibly inefficient and expensive for everyone to be totally self sufficient and bring everything they need. Interdependence is far more efficient and leads to growth and better quality of life. And Interdependence naturally gives rise to specialization, which improves quality and speeds up advances in technology, which then improve quality of life further. And for any of this to work we have to have larger scale than one person or one family or one village, since each specialist has to serve a large number of people. So large scale is good.
The phrase "small is beautiful" comes from a principle developed by Leopold Kohr, a teacher of E.F. Schumacher. Kohr's principle promoted small technologies, policies, and polities as a better alternative to the mainstream idea of "bigger is better". The basic tenets of Kohr's "small is beautiful" meme align with future SMR deployments which are: people should come before economics; one's workplace and life should be meaningful and dignified; efficiency should come second; and nature is priceless.
A very well-thought out piece about the significance of scale. I agree entirely with everything you wrote about Schumacher. His is essentially an ode of praise to poverty, malnutrition, starvation and premature death. Neither he nor any of the other "degrowth" advocates have any real idea of the true horror of life lived without technology. Life in a state of nature was summarized quite accurately by Thomas Hobbes as "nasty, brutish and short."
All of the degrowth advocates would not much like if they were compelled to live in a world with no modern medicine, no food supply preserved by modern technology such as refrigeration, no modern transportation systems to ship food across large distances to where it is need. Even more, they would dislike a world with no effective electricity systems powering the machinery by which they dispense their opinions via computers, telephones or mass audio and video systems. As such then, the degrowth advocates are a pure form of nihilism, wishing themselves and human technology out of existence.
They are of course free to believe whatever they wish to believe. But they must not be free to inflict their wishes on others who do not share their delusions. In short, the Club of Rome should be forced to live in the world they strive towards. We would then see its advocates fleeing frantically in all directions.
Great work. This 'small is beautiful' ideology is definitely a product of the 1970s and a rejection of 50s and 60s science/engineering optimism. It goes hand in hand with Amory Lovins and his 'soft path' towards new energy systems (i.e, renewables). Renewables are now part of the 'distributed energy' crowd, who totally buy small is beautiful and often talk about the 'democratization' of energy. Its mostly BS. Big is actually beautiful, and economies of scale are REAL. Its interesting to note that large aircraft (think 747) used to have four engines, but when larger engines were developed, the same size of aircraft employed them and many large aircraft today only use two engines. Why? It turns out that the new engines have acceptable reliability and using two engines vs four is SIMPLER, cheaper and lighter in the long run. So the trend in aircraft propulsion has really been that Bigger is Better.
I'm a 20 year attendee at Burning Man. One of their "10 principles" is radical self reliance. I see that as a grave error. It's incredibly inefficient and expensive for everyone to be totally self sufficient and bring everything they need. Interdependence is far more efficient and leads to growth and better quality of life. And Interdependence naturally gives rise to specialization, which improves quality and speeds up advances in technology, which then improve quality of life further. And for any of this to work we have to have larger scale than one person or one family or one village, since each specialist has to serve a large number of people. So large scale is good.
The phrase "small is beautiful" comes from a principle developed by Leopold Kohr, a teacher of E.F. Schumacher. Kohr's principle promoted small technologies, policies, and polities as a better alternative to the mainstream idea of "bigger is better". The basic tenets of Kohr's "small is beautiful" meme align with future SMR deployments which are: people should come before economics; one's workplace and life should be meaningful and dignified; efficiency should come second; and nature is priceless.
Hi Zion Lights,
Would you please mention the Atomic Artistry contest to followers. Cash prizes! Deadline Feb. 1. www.eco-nuclearsolutions.org /art-contest
TYVM