E.F. Schumacher responds directly to this paper in Small is Beautiful (1972), here are some snippets from this chapter of his book. Note that some people hate t

E.F. Schumacher responds directly to this paper in Small is Beautiful (1972), here are some snippets from this chapter of his book. Note that some people hate this book; read the amazon 1-star reviews for some scathing commentary. TLDR: Western economics as Keynes suggests is an unbounded feedback loop; it generates income inequality which generates intolerable circumstances for poor people which leads to war. ---- This proposition can be divided into three parts: First, that universal prosperity is possible; Second, that its attainment is possible on the basis of the materialist philosophy of “enrich yourselves”; Third, that this is the road to peace Is there enough to go around? … What is “enough”? … Not the economist who pursues “economic growth” as the highest of all values, and therefore has no concept of “enough.” There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society which says: “Halt! We have enough”? There is none. Economic growth has no discernable limit, must necessarily run into decisive bottlenecks when viewed from the point of view of the environmental sciences. An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth--in short, materialism--does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited. … The developments of science and technology over the last hundred years have been such that the dangers have grown even faster than the opportunities. Economic progress, [Keynes] counseled, is obtainable only if we employ those powerful human drives of selfishness, which religion and traditional wisdom universally call upon us to resist. The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features but the very causes of its expansionist success. The question is whether such causes can be effective for long or whether they carry within themselves the seeds of destruction. … It may look true in the short run and turn out to be false in the longer run. I suggest the foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modern sense, because such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man. … Their wealth depends on making inordinately large demands on limited world resources and thus puts them on an unavoidable collision course--not primarily with the poor (who are weak and defenseless) but with other rich people. The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are ultimate causes of strife and war. Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations. It is doubly chimerical to build peace on economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict.