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Reading Note to Small Is Beautiful-E.F.Schumacher

In: Social Issues

Submitted By mluo
Words 1441
Pages 6
Zoe Luo-Reading Notes-1/13/2016 I have read Schumacher’s book in last year Spring term for a seminar preparing for Peace Corp. To be really honest, before I learned Professor Steve Cohn’s paradigm theory, if I heard about his ideas in China (any Chinese universities in class), I would think this is the trick which Westerners think of to play us! After my macro economics class and deeper experience with “Paradigm theory”, I know Schumacher’s paradigm is not a trick or nonsense. It is just different from the paradigm I have before, neoclassical (if I really have one before). Even so, I still think his paradigm is not going to work in China according my experience and my understating. However, during the winter break, I spent 6 weeks in Germany. I mainly stayed in North, Flensburg, Hamburg, but also traveled to Munich in Bavarian area. This 6 weeks completely changed the way I see Schumacher’s ideas. After I come back, this time I read the book again and connect with my 6 weeks’ experience in Germany and my daily observations, I believe I see something new from Schumacher which I have never think about before. I understood Schumacher’s holy trinity of “health, beauty, and permanence”, “The great majority of economists are still pursuing the absurd idea of making their ‘science’ as a scientific and precise as physics, as if there were no qualitative difference between mindless atoms and men made in image of God. Economics has only become scientific by becoming statistical.” I certainly think in the same way. The reason why Economics is a charming subject to me is this subject doesn’t only involved with Mathematica (mainly statistics), but also with human being. However, I don’t completely agree with him about ways of production and problems of production in industrial society now. I prefer to think in a neoclassical way more. There are many problems in the way of

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