Small Is Beautiful Main Text
Hi, this is AJ again. Welcome to the next lesson. This lesson is called "Small is
Beautiful." Small is Beautiful is the name of a book by E.F. Schumacher. It's a very
interesting book. It's a little bit difficult to read. The level of English is actually fairly
difficult, but I do recommend it. If you have an advanced level of English, go ahead, try
to read Small is Beautiful. It's an excellent book. E.F. Schumacher was an economist,
still is an economist. And he wrote Small is Beautiful to talk about the economic
problems we have in the world. Now this book was published back in the late 70s, I
believe, and it has been updated more recently. But the basic idea of Small is Beautiful
is that our economies in the world are big, big businesses, have become too big. And
they are not sustainable anymore.
Too big, in other words, we're destroying the planet Earth because we are consuming
too much. Our economies are too big; our population, too big; our companies, too big.
Everything has grown too large and his solution, as you might guess, is that we need
smaller economies, more local economies, more green economies. So he was writing
about this long before Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth and a lot of other things which
are quite common right now. But he was writing about these things way back in the
'70s.
He realized that we're going to have to make some changes. Our planet is being
destroyed, we have to do something. And we need to start at the economic level. We
have to change our economic system so that it is more human, so that it serves human
beings not just super large companies. And, of course, he talks about these economies
and his solutions in a lot of detail. Like I said, he was an economist, he is an economist.
So he has a lot of very detailed economic arguments and he analyzes things from an
economic viewpoint. It's very interesting.
Today I want to read to you just a short passage from his book and this book and this
passage really talk about the key, central core problem in his opinion. What is the most
basic problem? What is causing all these economic problems we see in the world, all
the environmental destruction, the wars we see constantly, what's the root cause? And
let me read from the book right now.
"Economically our wrong living consists primarily in systematically
cultivating greed and envy and thus building up a vast array of
totally unnecessary wants. It is the sin of greed that has delivered
us over into the power of the machine. If greed were not the
master of modern man how could it be that the frenzy of
consumerism does not abate at higher standards of living and that
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Small Is Beautiful Main Text
Hi, this is AJ again. Welcome to the next lesson. This lesson is called "Small is
Beautiful." Small is Beautiful is the name of a book by E.F. Schumacher. It's a very
interesting book. It's a little bit difficult to read. The level of English is actually fairly
difficult, but I do recommend it. If you have an advanced level of English, go ahead, try
to read Small is Beautiful. It's an excellent book. E.F. Schumacher was an economist,
still is an economist. And he wrote Small is Beautiful to talk about the economic
problems we have in the world. Now this book was published back in the late 70s, I
believe, and it has been updated more recently. But the basic idea of Small is Beautiful
is that our economies in the world are big, big businesses, have become too big. And
they are not sustainable anymore.
Too big, in other words, we're destroying the planet Earth because we are consuming
too much. Our economies are too big; our population, too big; our companies, too big.
Everything has grown too large and his solution, as you might guess, is that we need
smaller economies, more local economies, more green economies. So he was writing
about this long before Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth and a lot of other things which
are quite common right now. But he was writing about these things way back in the
'70s.
He realized that we're going to have to make some changes. Our planet is being
destroyed, we have to do something. And we need to start at the economic level. We
have to change our economic system so that it is more human, so that it serves human
beings not just super large companies. And, of course, he talks about these economies
and his solutions in a lot of detail. Like I said, he was an economist, he is an economist.
So he has a lot of very detailed economic arguments and he analyzes things from an
economic viewpoint. It's very interesting.
Today I want to read to you just a short passage from his book and this book and this
passage really talk about the key, central core problem in his opinion. What is the most
basic problem? What is causing all these economic problems we see in the world, all
the environmental destruction, the wars we see constantly, what's the root cause? And
let me read from the book right now.
"Economically our wrong living consists primarily in systematically
cultivating greed and envy and thus building up a vast array of
totally unnecessary wants. It is the sin of greed that has delivered
us over into the power of the machine. If greed were not the
master of modern man how could it be that the frenzy of
consumerism does not abate at higher standards of living and that
www.EffortlessEnglishClub.com
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