Small is Beautiful notes - Part I, Chapter 1

I just read Small is Beautiful and believe many more people should read it.  It was first published 40 years ago, but still mostly reads as if it could have been written in the present.  Its content, ideas, and warnings are remarkably relevant today.  If you can't spend the time to read the whole book, hopefully this mini book report will give you enough insight to perhaps change your perspective a bit.

Here's the book on Amazon!  And Wikipedia!

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Part I : The Modern World

Chapter 1 : The Problem of Production

Synopsis: Mankind erroneously believes we have solved the mystery of producing enough of everything for everyone in an ongoing manner, but in fact our current production system depends on finite resources at an unsustainable pace and therefore is not unsustainable.

There is a lot of content in these first 10 pages, so it's difficult to distill.  Here are a few select quotes:

They may disagree on many things but they all agree that the problem of production has been solved; that mankind has at last come of age.  For the rich countries, they say, the most important task now is "education or leisure" and, for the poor countries, the "transfer of technology."

The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production.  The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where the distinction matters most... namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing. ... [i.e. this illusion is] mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which is has been erected.

...we are estranged from reality and inclined to treat as valueless everything that we have not made ourselves.

If we treated [fossil fuels] as capital items [instead of income], we should be concerned with conservation; we should do everything in our power to try and minimize their current rate of use...

All these questions and answers are seen to be absurd the moment we realize that we are dealing with capital and not income: fossil fuels are not made by men; they cannot be recycled.  Once they are gone they are gone forever.
If we squander our fossil fuels, we threaten civilization; but if we squander the capital represented by living nature around us, we threaten life itself.

...our most important task is to get off our present collision course.  And who is there to tackle such a task?  I think every one of us, whether old or young, powerful or powerless, rich or poor, influential or uninfluential.  To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now.

We often hear it said that we are entering the era of "the Learning Society."  Let us hope this is true. We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature and, above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made us; for, assuredly, we have not come about by accident and certainly have not made ourselves.

This is merely the introduction to the book and to Part I of it, but already the book's format is revealed; a methodical case being made with a ready supply of evidence, with some harsh reality, optimism, and a bit of Schumacher's Christian worldview sprinkled in for good measure.