Size-Based Interpretation of Human History

Discussion

Leopold Kohr:

"The answer to all questions underlying our problems today is the size factor—not unemployment, not warfare, not juvenile delinquency, not business fluctuations, not Black Mondays, Black Fridays, or Black Tuesdays. What matters is the enormous scale of these maladies. It’s huge! The world today is faced with the consequences of nuclear power, but the problems can be solved only by tackling the scale of it and the huge nations that need it, not by demonstrating against it. These huge nations cannot exist, poor creatures, without nuclear power, which is so efficient—so efficient that only 5% of the population is needed to contribute to the economic upkeep; all the rest must be tied to the bureaucracy or the military or the educational institutions that teach people to spend their time with no purpose. The fundamental effect is a vast increase in our human numbers; if there is to be a way out, these numbers must be reduced, and the way to reduce them is by reducing the size of nations, which at a smaller scale no longer depend on nuclear power but instead on muscle power, small electric power, wind power, and so forth.

That is my size interpretation of history. The question I am always asked is, “It sounds nice, but does it make sense in this age of progress to go backward?” Well, as a friend of mine from Wales used to say, “When on the edge of an abyss, the only thing that makes sense is stepping back.” Someone else says. “It is too romantic.” I am always accused of being a romantic, of seeing the charm, the beauty, the perfection of small communities and small cities. Of course I am a romantic! For a rationalist, an economic life makes no sense whatsoever: We come from dust, we end in dust, and in-between we have a lot of expenditures; for a rationalist, life is a lost proposition. The point is that the concept of smallness is intensely scientific. It is a design of nature. It is not romantics who have concluded these things but rather hard-headed philosopher-scientists who were able to penetrate the meaning and design of nature and whom I associate with the principle of smallness." (https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/why-small-is-beautiful-the-size-interpretation-of-history/?(