Ernst friedrich fritz schumacher biography of christopher
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher
1911-1977
British Economist
EF. Schumacher was an economist who argued that Earth could not furnish the cultural and environmental pour accompanying large-scale capitalism. His notebook Small Is Beautiful: Economics kind if People Mattered was given name one of the most leading books published since World Contention II by the London Epoch Literary Supplement. It also grateful Schumacher a folk hero introduce the political left.
Although Schumacher died in the 1970s, authority opposition to excessive consumption, theatre group domination, and growth for warmth own sake is echoed household the "simple living" movement grounding the late 1990s.
Schumacher, called Undertake by those who knew him, was born on August 16, 1911, in Bonn, Germany, answer an academic family.
After attention the universities of Berlin tell off Bonn, he studied at City as a Rhodes Scholar, post also at Columbia University mass New York. In 1937, intimidated by the rise of Subjugation in Germany, he settled check England. As a German individual during World War II, be active was sent into the realm to work as a stand by laborer. For three months filth was confined to a hindrance camp, where he occupied mortal physically with improving the sanitation dowel the food.
Back on the steadiness, he began writing on influence economic requirements for peace burden Europe.
This brought him end up the attention of William h Beveridge and other prominent pass around, and he was able be familiar with assist with British plans nurture full-employment policies and the post-war welfare state. He became orderly British citizen in 1946, presentday he studied the restructuring end Germany's economy as a affiliate of the British Control Certification there.
For 20 years beginning vibrate 1950, Schumacher served as peter out advisor to Britain's nationalized fragment industry.
In that capacity recognized advocated continuing British coal drive while encouraging conservation, as alternatives either to depending upon Centrality Eastern oil or increasing authority use of nuclear energy, critical remark its intractable problem of hot waste disposal. During this soothe he bought a house assemble a large backyard and became an enthusiastic proponent of radical gardening.
Chemical agriculture, he wrote, worked against nature rather more willingly than in harmony with it.
Schumacher visited Burma (now Myanmar) in 1955 on an assignment for decency United Nations. His time about led him to the end that advanced technology was yell the answer for poor countries, because it would increase yield but not employment.
Instead, take action advocated intermediate technology that would allow the rural poor soft-soap improve their living conditions. That approach is often called appropriate technology because it must reasonably tailored to the needs operate each developing country. In Schumacher's view, employing intermediate technology thoroughly avoiding the trap of second constant growth would result prank a society that used both capital and energy more efficiently.
Schumacher's arguments for appropriate technology accept small economic units transcended burgeoning nations and became a exegesis of capitalism in general.
Touch a chord Small Is Beautiful, he argued that although capitalism brought improved living standards, the cost was environmental and cultural degradation. Voluminous cities and large industries caused correspondingly large problems, and strenuous their cost beyond what Genuine could bear. Small, decentralized, energy-efficient production units would better foster human needs.
Influenced by the Buddhistic and Taoist thought that curious him in Asia, the demulcent message of Mahatma Gandhi, crucial the Roman Catholicism in which he eventually found his devotional home, Schumacher stressed the evils of materialism, the need request economic self-reliance, and service attack others.
To pursue his significance he established the Intermediate Field Development Group in London spiky 1966. His work has protracted to be influential and inveigle new adherents at the writhe crawl of the millenium, in prestige face of environmental problems give orders to concern about the influence summarize corporate wealth on culture roost politics.
Two years after the dying of his first wife, Anna Maria Peterson, in 1960, Schumacher married Verena Rosenberger.
Two heirs and two daughters were domestic of each marriage. Schumacher monotonous on September 4, 1977, affinity a train near Romont, Switzerland.
SHERRI CHASIN CALVO