It is time to change how humans work and manipulate economics. As human beings it is time to stop prioritizing goods before people. There is a big difference between moneyand wealth and it is time to recognize that difference. There are ways to create wealth for communities and entire nations rather than what we are doing now, brining in money for corporations and the government. There is a 1973 book on exactly this topic byBritish economist, statistician, and theorist, E.F. Schumacher, named Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. In this text, Schumacher groups together essay on ethics, economics, and the environment. His ideas seem related to those of Tolstoy and Gandhi and he delves into ancient wisdom to try to bring back some humanitarian order to the modern world. One of the best essays in the book is title, Buddhist Economics. Here he looks into the moral questions of wealth, writing, “Right Livelihood is one of the requirement of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. It is clear, therefore, that there must be such a thing as Buddhist economics…Spiritual health and material well-being are not enemies: they are natural allies.” We have a right to make money in a job that we feel compelled to do, which then creates wealth. If we keep ourselves in an economy where people don’t matter, just products and consumptions than it results in a lack of purpose or meaning for the people. This means that everyone will avoid work because it is something that they dread doing. On the other hand is the Buddhist idea of what work should be. Schumacher writes, “The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centeredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.”
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