Message-ID: <v01530503ae74111c1703@[206.41.16.200]> Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 15:38:08 -0400 From: Santiago Hileret <mailto:styago@HOST1.TALKIN-DRUM.COM> Subject: Re: ideas of "appropriate technology" still respected? To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Hi, all:Some comments on the Appropriate Technology/Small is Beautiful debate.
Fritz Schumacher was himself an economist. His entire work is a rebuttal of the very same Neoclassical economics that Reinaldo so vigorously defends/proposes as all-but a panacea. In other words, none of what Reinaldo is contributing is particularly new or original. What he proposes, I guess, is that we forget/disregard every commonsense argument offered by Schumacher and others against _the market_ as the ultimate arbiter of all human affairs.
The market is efficient at setting prices, but _not_ costs, especially "ultimate" costs. One example that's close to home for you and me: in Ecuador, the government allows landless "campesinos" to clear-cut a patch of rainforest in order to grow food crops. Knowing that the campesino is not in the business of forestry for the long haul (he just wants to "get rid of this garbage sitting on his property") the mills pay about $5 (FIVE U.S. DOLLARS!) for a hardwood, old-growth tropical rainforest tree that has taken forty-or-more years to grow. Would you call that a "fair replacement cost"? Sound long-term economic management? This is glossed-over with euphemisms like "externalized costs". The "business-as-usual" mentality doesn't lose any sleep over them; on the contrary, it applies the "Winning is Everything" premise and actually _celebrates_ its unmatched ability to foist environmental and other costs onto society as a whole while keeping the profits for itself.
Fritz Schumacher's greatest contribution, as I see it, was to _insist_ on bringing economics (one again, _his own_ discipline) down from the _altar_ upon which neoclassicists demand that we place it, and having it submit to higher values, such as ethics and morality.
People can, of course, choose to ignore that call, but cannot claim not to have heard it. Certainly not with a straight face and even less by using the age-old gimmick of brushing aside a lifetime of work in one sentence, then going on to re-state the very same ideas that were meticulously refuted by that lifetime of work.
That's nothing more than the well-known strategy of Goebbels, wholeheartedly adopted by the "Corporate World Order": just keep repeating an unsubstantiated statement -or even a plain falsehood- and it'll eventually become "accepted" as the most "obvious" truth.
Reinaldo writes: >The creation of technologies
>however, is concentrating more and more, since developed countries
>have grown through our developing process higher barriers of entry to
>current leading technologies. We lost via "appropiateness" this wave of
>technological change on key technologies.
It's the economic/financial system that you defend, Reinaldo, that leads to the concentration of wealth (and decision-making power) in fewer and fewer hands. These 'old hands' thus become the only ones in a position to move forward into new technologies. Not content with that, however, they also _rig the game_ by removing the intermediate rungs from the technological ladder, arguing that such-and-such technology (which still enjoys healthy demand in smaller/weaker markets) is "uneconomical", and stopping to produce it.
(Note 1-Kerry can surely offer us a few examples from earlier posts of his relating to medical/surgical equipment and supplies. Note 2-If all else fails, there is also a "Secrecy Act" on the books (in the U.S.) that _prohibits_ people from diffusing _their own_ scientific discoveries if these are found to be a threat to national security.)
The "masters of the universe" _could_ choose (by mutual agreement within an industry) to keep those intermediate rungs in place (most probably by moving production of those goods to the very same "low purchasing power" markets where they're in demand). This, however, would be "wasteful" from the standpoint of individual companies' books: something requiring time and effort which will not translate into enhanced "results" by the end of the current quarter. Therefore, it's brushed aside as non cost-effective "idealism".
Which brings us round to Fritz Schumacher (and many others) who argue that _the problem_ IS this extremely short-term and narrow-minded approach to human affairs on the part of _the only_ people who control "free" capital and, with it, the power to _choose_ and _decide_ in what direction the whole of humanity will move next.
This state of affairs goes back about 200 years-or-so (a long time if compared to the average human lifespan, yet not_at _all a long time when compared to the Earth's history). At that time two _momentuous_ changes took place: the "Industrial Revolution" and the introduction of the "Limited Liability Company" (better known today as the Corporation or, more eloquently -in the Spanish denomination- the "Anonymous Society"). (Note3-The first _worldwide_, "multinational" corporation was The British East India Company, owned by -you guessed it!- the Queen and her cronies. Today we still have a certain "Royal Dutch Shell" company -which is actually Anglo-Dutch-and which has recently been in the news in re: Ken Saro Wiwa's "legalized" assassination in Nigeria and the company's plans -narrowly defeated by an outpouring of public outrage- to "dispose" of one of its offshore drilling platforms by sinking it into the North Sea)(it's cheaper, you see, and the customer doesn't want to pay a penny more for gasoline...)
Another of Fritz Schumacher's arguments is that technology gives humans the power to do MORE IRREPARABLE DAMAGE FASTER than ever before. (reelatively inexpensive power saws, in the Ecuadorean example above). THEREFORE it is VERY RISKY to trivialize the entire argument about _what_ technologies to apply _where_, _to what extent_ are they to be applied (on what _scale_), etc.
Reinaldo may argue that this is irrelevant till he's blue in the face. Those same "consumers" he professes to want to "serve" have repeatedly used what little power they have to affirm the opposite. Want to serve them? Start by listening to what they have to say...
>Ever since developing countries are starting to take
>neoliberal approaches and IMF Recipes, the countries are doing far better
>that in the past.
You mean like the many countries in Africa which cannot -despite their best efforts- manage to repay their foreign debt, so they're pretty much forced by the "International Financial Institutions" to divert what little Development "Aid" they get to paying the interest? Did you know that John Reed, the president of Citibank, made the cover of Fortune in June, 1987, by _writing off_ Three Billion Dollars' worth of Latin-American debt? Can you see the connection? Can you think of a reason why this "logic" doesn't apply to Africa? (hint: three major geo-economic blocks in the "post cold war" world. Africa, unlike Latin America, isn't in any of them).
>Increasing taxation, eliminating silly and expensive
>subsidies, only used to feed corruption. Less government intervention
>telling us all citizen what was right to eat and look and dress favoring
>their protected business monopolies.
The entire world is now the unobstructed playground of a few hundred monopolies/oligopolies. Ranked by its annual turnover, General Motors would qualify as the 7th largest _country_ in the world. Its bosses respond to no-one but "the market", yet they affect the daily lives of millions of people throghout the world. There are 500 hundred _entities_ like this just in the "celebrated" Fortune magazine list (not coincidentally put out by one of them). Put together, they have many times more decision-making power than the presidents of all the countries in the world (who, more often than not, come from their same circles, anyway). They even enjoy privileges once reserved for individuals _precisely to protect them from such concentrated forms of power_ like the right of "free speech". But it doesn't stop there. They can deduct as "legitimate business expenses" all the money they choose to spend manipulating public opinion (as in the campaign waged by U.S. Insurance companies against Clinton's proposed Health Care plan) or fighting an endless legal battle against government charges of monopoly under the anti-trust laws. (Note 4-IBM did just that for as long as it took to get Reagan into office and have his appointee drop the lawsuit as "not cost-effective"). If all of this -coming from the supposed worldwide mecca of democracy- doesn't qualify as "corruption" (of the democratic process, at the very least), "let God come down and see it", as the Spanish saying goes.
Please take the time to read some of the following: Celso Furtado "Desarrollo y Subdesarrollo en America Latina" (Development and Underdevelopment in Latin America), Sir James Goldsmith "The Trap", Douglas Dowd "U.S. Capitalist Development since 1776: Of, By and for Which People?", Noam Chomsky "Deterring Democracy", Vance Packard "The Hidden Persuaders", Eduardo Galeano "Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina" (The Open Veins of Latin America), Ken Saro-Wiwa "A Month and a Day: a Detention Diary", Lewis Mumford "The Myth of the Machine", Ariel Dorfman "Para Leer al Pato Donald" (In Order to Read Donald Duck)...
Peace
Santiago
--------------------------------------------------------- Santiago G. Hileret | Voice/Fax: (718) 858-1324 11 St. Felix St., #3F | Internet: mailto:styago@talkin-drum.com Brooklyn, NY 11217-1205 | U. S. A. | 3rd World 1st!