"From the
point of view of Buddhist economics, therefore, production from local
resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while
dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for
export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and justifiable
only in exceptional cases and on a small scale."
Part of his theory of “economics as if people matter” dealt with the
differential between the highest and lowest-paid workers in any company. Schumacher proposed that the ratio should be no greater than 7:1. If the
lowest paid janitor received $10 per hour, the CEO would receive $100 per
hour. Not bad pay for the CEO, some might consider.
In fact 7:1 was the
ratio used by the founders of Ben and Jerry’s famous ice cream stores.
However, when they sold their chain to mega-corporation Unilever, the
ratio rose to 20:1, a giant leap forward for the new management with no
comparable improvement for the janitor (and, curiously, it made Ben and
Jerry’s stock more risky). But in light of current practices, 20:1 is
still laughably low, with some executives, as we now know, making up to
500 times as much as the cleaning lady. That’s right – while the cleaning
lady can count on a gross pay of $400 per week, the guy whose office she
dusts and mops will be taking in a whopping $200,000 a week.
I’m pretty
sure Schumacher would have reacted with the same disgust and righteous
indignation that we all do when we learn about these kinds of numbers.
Especially when one remembers that many of the CEOs so compensated are
failures, running near-bankrupt businesses.
Schumacher believed that no one should be paid too much, that being
overpaid would create a sense of moral discomfort (as it did for me).
Lamentably, the CEOs of large industries in America and in the financial
sector seem to be able to deal with this dissonance better than I did.
Their consumption of goods and services can be no greater than average –
how much food can one person eat, how many times a day can he or she take
a taxi or use the internet or turn on the shower? So what reason can
anyone have for earning such vast sums, money that benefits only a handful
of other people? This is not “good work” and we all sense that even
if we do not have the words to decry it. Schumacher would have
decried it. He pointed out in “Buddhist Economics” that it is not material wealth that is wrong, but the
craving for it:
"It
is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to
wealth; not the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and
non-violence. From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the
Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern -amazingly
small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results."
This fact is not original to me, but bears repeating in case it isn’t
blaringly obvious to my readers:
Japan, offering an apparently successful business model for automobile
manufacture as compared with the American model that is in disarray and
disgrace at present, is a Shinto/Buddhist society.
In
his last lecture Schumacher pointed out that even a huge ship carries
lifeboats, and suggested that it is now time that the world begins to
build lifeboats to save itself.
Schumacher wanted people trapped in poverty to have buildable, useable
technologies that could be operated at a rational speed to perform needed
tasks to produce income or food for families and communities. He
envisioned land sharing as a salvation for rural areas where without some
intervention, land would be lost to agriculture forever.
So
there you have it: a brilliant man who could have had a princely salary,
could have managed an international financial institution, who chose
instead to encourage people to care about their own lives enough to do
good work, to divest in complex things and enjoy simple ones, to produce
and consume locally – and to build planetary lifeboats, in cooperation
with others. Meditating on the mega-crisis we are facing at this time, I
long for the steady confident voice of Fritz Schumacher.
