Buddhist Economics

Schumacher claims that the overall desire to remain faithful to their heritage through living the "Right Livelihood" is characteristic of Buddhist Economics. The values found in Buddhist Economics are not applicable to the modern west nor will they be, short of a mental and ethical revolution. There is universal agreement between all economists that a fundamental source of wealth is human labor, however Buddhist Economics differ in its view and appreciation of labor. Buddhist Economics sees a fundamental source of human well-being in labor, as opposed to modern Western Economics that views labor as a necessary evil wherein an employee desires income without employment. In Modern Western Economics, to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort and every method to reduce the workload is a good thing. Much of the time this means automation, which reduces a persons labor to the mere unskilled movement of the limbs.

The function of work, according to Buddhist Economics, is to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for an attractive existence. To strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, that work and leisure are part of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure. In modern Western Economics people strive to use the workplace to bolster their egocentredness even at the expense of others. Buddhists see the reduction of labor to meaningless unskilled movements as a soul-destroying attachment to goods and a greater concern with goods than with people.

The statement that "if a man has no chance of obtaining work he is in a desperate position" seems at first to be a point of agreement between modern Western Economics and Buddhist Economics, but it is not. For Westerners it means that a man won't be able to pay his bills or have money for leisure, but in Buddhist Economics it means that the man's body, soul, physical, and mental faculties will not be nourished. Even the way we measure our standards of living and gender roles are different. In Buddhist Economics the standard of living is measured as obtaining maximum well-being through minimum consumption, whereas in Western Economics