Reviews for Starting a small business in Nova Scotia

The average rating for Starting a small business in Nova Scotia based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-07-29 00:00:00 Lori Simms Small is Beautiful: A Study As If People Mattered is an interesting collection of essays where economist and author E.F. Schumacher asserts that the modern day economies are propelled by the greed of corporate houses rather than the model of need based society. The book argues that the inconsiderate need of the corporate houses to make more profits is fed into the economies by making societies inculcate the habit of excessive consumption of material resources. The resultant consumerism leads to exploitation of natural resources which overbears their utilization and becomes exploitative in nature leading to unsustainable balance not only in nature but also in societal set up like increased unemployment and poverty. The book opens with the epilogue emphasizing on the philosophy of materialism not to be superseded by the ideals of justice, harmony, beauty and health. In line with the above underlined assertion the book is bifurcated into four parts - The Modern World, Resources, The Third World, and Organization and Ownership. The book under The Modern World explains how the western economies have increasing become consumerist with sole aim of profit making and the shift of personal values to increased materialism, both of which mark the modern economy as unsustainable. Under Resources the book goes on to state the nature of natural resources by explaining that natural resources are neither infinite nor renewable and therefore their depletion is eventual. It asserts that due to its exhaustible nature the natural resources should be treated as capital in economic terms rather than expendable income as opposed to the present scenario which is leading to natural resources unmindful and unsustainable exploitation. Under the Third World the book states that as natural resources as exhaustible so is nature's resistance to pollutants of limited capacity. Stating that the western economies race to increase its Gross Domestic Product will increase the unemployment and poverty across the globe and most hit by this phenomenon will be the Third World i.e. countries whose economies are still developing. The book asserts that the western economies efforts towards sustainable development like technology transfer to Third World economies is only a small step and such initiative is not capable of solving the issue of unsustainability at large in the economies. It argues that technologies transferred to Third World countries is capital incentive and as it replaces the labor incentive technology it increases unemployment and poverty in the Third World economies. The book reflects author Schumacher's philosophy of enoughness under Organization and Ownership which advocates the acknowledging the need of society to exploit natural resources and as well as limitations of use proper technology. The philosophy of enoughness emerged from the study of village based economies undertaken by Schumacher later termed as Buddhist economics. Schumacher's philosophy is influenced by the Buddhist and Gandhian ideologies about community, Roman concept of scale and Catholic understanding of distribution. The book disagrees with the aim of making profit as the basic principle of any organization and lays emphasis on employees being given more freedom and shares in the organization. Author Schumacher was one of the first economists to propound that GDP is not the appropriate measure of human well-being emphasizing that "the aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well being with the minimum amount of consumption". The book intrigues and challenges the conventional modern day notion of growth is good and bigger is better. The book also challenges the appropriateness of mass production by Third World economies which Schumacher argues should be promoting production by masses which would be more appropriate for its economy addressing the underlined two issues of developing economies that is unemployment and poverty. Small is Beautiful is a classic book which even after so many years of publication (1973) still holds to be aptly fitting the economic, social and environmental aspects of managing corporate houses. Review written jointly by Manisha Badoni Ayushman Kheterpal and Abhilasha Bharti From TERI University

Review # 2 was written on 2014-08-04 00:00:00 Nathan Hess Fair critique of large scale corporatism and giant industry, but it appears the author could fair well by reading some Bastiat about things "unseen" in the economy.