3 bits

My Bro gave me the book - Small Is Beautiful - by Franz Schumacher when he was visiting in June. He had read it when researching his architecture thesis, about which I’d debated with him a good deal, and when I demanded that he bring me books during his visit this was one he chose. I think he chose this particular book because many of the arguments I made about his project were rooted in free-market economic principles and this book is largely a critique of modern (as of 1973) economics. so… A couple gems from the book :

GNM Tyrell has put forward the terms “divergent” and “convergent” to distinguish problems which cannot be solved by logical reasoning from those that can. Life is being kept going by divergent problems which have to be “lived” … Convergent problems on the other hand are our most useful invention; they do not exist in reality, but are created by abstraction

So… this reminds me of the book Finite and Infinite Games, which i really liked; but also… the halting problem from computer science, gödel incompleteness, and the philosophical school of pragmatism. Each of which I’m a big fan of, in a hugely nerdy way.

Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again.

i think that’s the heart of design. make it as simple as possible and no simpler. didn’t someone famous say that?

In every branch of modern thought, the concept of “evolution” plays a central role. Not so in development economics…we tend to treat [development] just as we treat material things - things that can be planned and scheduled and purchased according to some all-comprehensive development plan. In other words, we tend to think of development, not in terms of evolution, but in terms of creation.

I think that’s spot on and gets to the heart of many failures of modern political economics and third-world development plans. we can’t just make the image of success. success is contextual and necessarily contingent. it’s also a process, not a product. A couple complaints : Schumacher is clearly frustrated with economics (particularly political economics) as practiced in his lifetime and he makes some spirited and well-founded criticisms of that structure. However, he seems to completely deny the possibility that current approaches could work, if only with some tweaking. He stresses the static nature of economic forecasting and it’s deleterious effects on policy - his complaints could be seen as foreshadowing current dynamic models, however, until the introduction of computers to the problems of economics those models where prohibitively complex and intractable. So… on the one hand, i can feel a good deal of sympathy with his frustrations and on the other, like us all, he was a child of his times. The gem I’ll definitely take from the book : We value what we can see more than what underlies the visible. I think that’s an obvious feature of human psychology and can serve as a reminder across a broad spectrum of disciplines. couple key innovations that address some of Schumacher’s concerns : * equilibrium systems theory (directed at Schumacher’s fear of unchecked growth) * valuation of previously abstract resources; ie carbon-emission markets (directed at fear that economic models don’t value environmental impact) * small scale production & economics ; ie personal fabrication, micro-finance (directed at the sprawling size of industry/economics) anywho… thought-provoking.