Saturday, November 24, 2012

Samuel Smiles

Finished reading the books by Samuel Smiles: "Character" and "Self-Help", currently half way through "Thrift".

Seems very little has changed in industrial society, we get good times and otherwise avoid tackling the under lying problems within society which make the bad times the worst of times: namely that individuals squander and waste their own resources and try to live beyond their means.

It seems that which was starting to emerge during the 1800's if not before, has simply grown and, magnified, with the emergence of ever increasing forms of credit. Plus we have some push away from savings, as saving ties money up and so potentially shuts business down.

Its a problem: how to keep the economy going, and consider each individual as contributing fairly to society, but with out driving unwarranted consumption of material resources?