Buddhist Economics by Schumacher
I have been mesmerized by Fritz Schumacher's "Small is beautiful".
Here a particularly potent part about traditional economics (and its quest to
reduce work load), in what he calls Buddhist Economics:
In his own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Eo3k-jCHRo
"The most potent method [to get rid of work], short of automation,
is the so-called ‘division of labour’ and the classical example is the pin
factory eulogized in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nation. Here it is not a matter of
ordinary specialization, which mankind has practiced from time immemorial, but
of dividing up every complete process of production into minute parts, so that
the final product can be produces at great speed without anyone having had to
contribute more than a totally insignificant and, in most cases, unskilled
movement of his limbs.
The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold:
-
to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties;
-
to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a
common task;
-
and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.
Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To
organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring,
stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal;
it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack
of compassion and a souldestroying degree of attachment to the most primitive
side of this worldly existence"
In his own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Eo3k-jCHRo
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