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entries for 2002/10/03
buddhist economics
I read a quote by E.F. Schumacher, and went hunting for him on the net. I found one of his essays, Buddhist Economics. It's not descriptive of economics in Buddhist countries, but rather a discussion of what sort of economic system might arise from Buddhist principles.
The very start of Buddhist economic planning would be a planning
for full employment, and the primary purpose of this would in
fact be employment for everyone who needs an "outside" job:
it would not be the maximization of employment nor the maximization
of production. Women, on the whole, do not need an "outside" job,
and the large-scale employment of women in offices or factories
would be considered a sign of serious economic failure. In
particular, to let mothers of young children work in factories
while the children run wild would be as uneconomic in the eyes
of a Buddhist economist as the employment of a skilled worker
as a soldier in the eyes of a modern economist.
I found that particular quote to be kind of sexist, but the
concept of working as a way of finding meaning/fufillment really
appeals to me. I'm running my business not to accumulate massive
amounts of wealth, but to allow me to work on things I find
meaningful. I also liked part on automation:
From the Buddhist point of view, there are therefore two types of
mechanization which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a
man's skill and power and one that turns the work of man over to a
mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave.
How to tell the one from the other? "The craftsman himself," says Ananda
Coomaraswamy, a man equally competent to talk about the modern West as the
ancient East, "can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction
between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance
for holding warp threads at a stretch for the pile to be woven round them
by the craftmen's fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its
significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the
essentially human part of the work. "[4] It is clear, therefore, that
Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern
materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilization not in a
multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character.
Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man's work. And work,
properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses
those who do it and equally their products