It seems that whenever people highlight a deficit in social services they always point to the fact that the country is awash with money and should use the money to pay for respite services, drug rehabilitation, social housing or whatever the particular shortfall that is needed.

It is a tragic phenomenon to have our exchequer figures breaking all records and to have children destined to grow up and spend life without speech because they did not have speech and language therapy when they needed it because of “lack of resources”.

Another “contradiction” about our country’s “success” that burdens the young is the uselessness of the abundant money in real terms. For a young person a bulging closet of clothes, holidays and all manner of high-tech equipment are relatively easy on the salaries available to them but a house is not. It is galling to be young and to know that, unlike thirty years ago, hard work, self denial and saving will no longer guarantee home ownership on their income. With two incomes it becomes more possible to own a house but servicing the mortgage precludes rearing the family that the young couple wanted the house for in the first place. It is heartbreaking for a young mother to separate from her four-month-old baby to place it in childcare so that she can pay for the house, instead of living in it, if she so wishes.

The anomalies are also global. We in the West have an amazing man-made environment but to achieve it, the much more amazing God-given natural one gets trashed. We now have individual people and many multinational companies who have more money and power than whole countries. The gap in the standard of living that the average income earner enjoys in Ireland, and the non-rich in Africa experience, is wider now than ever before, not just because ours has increased but because the situation of the vast majority of people in the third world continues to deteriorate.

Are these contrasts really anomalies of modern economics theory, or are they in fact an inevitable result of it? Are the inhuman poverty and the destruction of environment the flip side of the fabulous wealth modern economics generate? Is the lack of services within Ireland and the difficulty our young people have in getting a house and starting a home the flip side of our growth?

Economic orthodoxy will answer in the negative. They will say that it will come right in the end. Most economists tell us that a free global market will eventually sort all this out and that it will lead to a world where there is wealth for all. Their mantra is “Get rid of all restrictions and supports, “let the market decide.” In promoting this free market system, Charlie McCreevy said the market would lift the tide and that the tide would lift all boats. He forgot that when the tide is in one place it is out in another. Water in its various forms is finite in quantity it does not multiply - it moves.

Forty years ago, E. F. Schumacher in his book, “Small is Beautiful”, spelled out the logic of modern economic theory. He showed what it really means, what it does and will do and who benefits and who pays. We need to re-read that important and prophetic book - or better, get a copy of its update, “Small is Still Beautiful” by Joseph Pearce. Mr Pearce starts with Schumacher and discusses developments in the last forty years since his revolutionary book. The solutions in the both books are the same. Forty years ago they were offered as a method of prevention; today as an urgent necessity for economic, ecologic and social survival.

The world would be very different if Schumacher had been taken seriously and his call for responsible stewardship and human-sized social, economic and politic structures had been heeded. The author used his experience of working around the world in rich counties, poor countries and countries in transition to develop his theory. But the West in its comfort could not see what he was on about. Now it confronts us all and it is vital that we now understand that the problems, the “progress” and the profit all come from the same - and somehow we have to make our economic and political leaders understand. This will not be easy because generally they are in the group of people who financially, and in terms of power benefited enormously from modern economic thinking. Their experience of benefit tends to insulate them with a personal disconnect which enables them to continue business as usual while they see the fall-out as nothing to do with the way that business is conducted. In other areas we would call that denial.

No system or machinery, or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own two feet: it is invariably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man’s basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose. I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol-worship of material possessions, of consumption and the so-called Standard of Living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that, ‘what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us’.

Systems are never more nor less than incarnations of man’s most basic attitudes. General evidence of material progress would suggest that the modern private enterprise system is, or has been, the most perfect instrument for the pursuit of personal enrichment. The modern private enterprise system ingeniously employs the human urges of greed and envy as its motive power, but manages to overcome the most blatant deficiencies of laissez-faire by means of Keynesian economic management, a bit of re-distributive taxation, and the ‘countervailing power’ of the trade union.

Can such a system conceivably deal with the problems we are now having to face? The answer is self-evident: greed and envy demand continuous and limitless economic growth of a material kind, without proper regards for conservation, and this type of growth cannot possibly fit into a finite environment. We must therefore study the essential nature of the private enterprise system and the possibilities of evolving an alternative system which might fit the new situation.

References:
Small is Beautiful E. F. Schumacher
Small is Still Beautiful Joseph Pearce ISI Books 2006

Mini Bio: Kathy Sinnott, Independent MEP for Munster (Ireland South) (2004-2009). Kathy serves on a number of EU parliamentary committees and groups including: Committees on Environment; Public Health and Food Safety; Employment and Social Affairs; Climate Change; Human Rights, and she was recently elevated to Vice President of the Petitions Committee. She was the founder and is acting chair of the European Parliament’s Interest Group on Carers, as well as Intergroups on Disability, Aging and Bioethics.