Schumacher's Razor

If Occam's razor posits one way of cutting through complication, can a similar tool be forged from the idea that Small is Beautiful?

Small is Beautiful; A Study of Economics as if People Mattered is E. F. Schumacher’s best known and most influential work. It was rated as one of the most influential texts written since 1945 and in some ways helped kick start some of the big moves and questions about globalisation that we’re still struggling with.

Another well known book which also approaches the question of size is Kirkpatrick Sale’s “Human Scale” which takes a similar approach but across a wide range of spheres from organisations to architecture. He argues that there’s a certain size which it’s not advisable to grow beyond, and doing so causes inertia and creates problems and ugliness.

Both arguments dovetail neatly with the concept of subsidiarity. It’s the idea that problems are best solved or managed at the lowest level possible, and that top-down management systems are less able to promote human freedom, dignity and development. This idea tends to form the central plank of most distributist politics, something we’re starting to see coming back into vogue again. Britain has a nascent National Distributist party who are making progress, appropriately at a local level.

Distributism and subsidiarity are ideas that date from the Papal encyclical Quadregisimo Anno which outlined Catholicism’s stance as being in favour of family and community rather than the twin materialist approaches of capitalism and socialism. I’d appreciate another pontiff who re-iterated this point, but our current Peronist has other priorities.

I am certain that this idea, of dealing with issues at the smallest and most local level possible, has a great many benefits. It reduces bureaucracy and drag, allows creativity and copying the good work of others and pushes communities to be responsible for themselves.

As Occam’s razor states that the most plausible answer is that which makes fewest assumptions (often paraphrased as the simplest) might we have Schumacher’s razor, by stating that the smallest answer is the best?