An economist talks about goods

 E.F. Schumacher, the economist, spoke of two kinds of goods: ephemeral and eternal.

Food is vital, but it doesn’t last. On the other hand, nobody worries about depreciation on the Taj Mahal.

Schumacher held that we humans are terrible at analyzing our ephemeral needs. Our needs are modest. But we are prone to confuse wants with needs. We fritter away our time, resources and energy on ephemeral goods.

If we were frugal on the ephemeral side, we would convert some of our resources to the creative work of producing eternal goods.

Schumacher said it was obvious that industrial societies had emphasized the production of ephemeral goods at the expense of eternal goods. Earlier societies had done the opposite. Most of humanity’s cultural heritage predated the industrial revolution, in Schumacher’s view.

In 1975, Schumacher said this:

 

Frugal living in terms of ephemeral goods means a dogged adherence to simplicity, a conscious avoidance of any unnecessary elaborations, and a magnanimous rejection of luxury — puritanism, if you like — on the ephemeral side.

 

Fifty years ago, that was a coherent argument about what people should be doing. You could have based a political platform on that idea.

Today, it seems politics is all about the economy, meaning it’s all about ephemeral consumer goods.

• Source: E.F. Schumacher’s untitled essay is in Voices for Life: Reflections on the Human Condition, edited by Dom Moraes; New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975, pp. 133-40. The quotation is on p. 139. The editor asked 25 thinkers the same question: “What do you see as the quality of life, and what do you think it will become in the future?”