Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

by Ernst F. Schumacher

The strength of the idea of private enterprise lies in its terrifying simplicity. It suggests that the totality of life can be reduced to one aspect profits. The businessman, as a private individual, may still be interested in other aspects of life - perhaps even in goodness, truth and beauty - but as a businessman he concerns himself only with profits. In this respect, the idea of private enterprise fits exactly into the idea of The Market, which, in an earlier chapter, I called 'the institutionalisation of individualism and nonresponsibility'. Equally, it fits perfectly into the modern trend towards total quantification at the expense of the appreciation of qualitative differences; for private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only with what it gains from production.