Category: Economy

Degrowth:Buddhist Economics

March 3, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

Buddhist economics, a term coined by Fritz Schumacher, is the systematic study of how to gain given ends with minimum means, or as we at The Incredible Shrinking Man like to ask; How can we shrink towards abundance? In the view of its proponents, buddhist economics…

Degrowth: Down to the Kohr

January 31, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

Leopold Kohr was an economist and political scientist known for his opposition to the “cult of bigness” in social organisation and the inspiration for Fritz Schumacher’s iconic publication Small is beautiful and the Degrowth movement. Here are two quotes from his 1951 book The Breakdown of Nations. On…

KancerCel: Dialogues On Malignant Growth

November 23, 2016 By arne hendriks 0

The Incredible Shrinking Man is interested in the relationship between cancer and our society’s obsession with growth. To connect the desire for less with the necessity to overcome our desire for more Arne Hendriks is developing KankerCel (CancerCell). KankerCel merges the languages of cancer research and…

Short Hearts

April 9, 2013 By arne hendriks Off

Despite what many of us think, tall stature is not synonymous with health. Although anthropometric historians like Robert Fogel and John Komlos stress that the reasons why we are so tall are the result of better health, this doesn’t mean that being tall itself is…

Abundance Fantasies: Corn Cult

July 27, 2012 By arne hendriks 1

Mexican protesters against the high tortilla prices in 2007 rallied around an oversized corn. Their public display of the desire for an abundant food supply ressembles cargo cults in which the visualisation of desired abundance, or the context in which the abundance is believed to exist, is…

Auxology Update

October 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Auxology is the highly multi-disciplinary science that studies all aspects of human physical growth. It includes such diverse fields as economics, medicine, nutrition, and anthropology. Auxologists could, and perhaps should, play a key role in inspiring the cultural shift needed in order to accomplish a smaller…

Baby Fruit

March 19, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The upper end of the restaurant market is flooded by baby fruit and vegetables. Baby coconuts, Baby pineapples Baby courgettes, Baby every-single-fruit and vegetable-you-can-imagine. In today’s market only the products that catch the attention of consumers have a chance of becoming economically succesful. Playing with…

Degrowth: Small is Happy

September 15, 2010 By arne hendriks 0

In the influential collection of essays “Small is beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered” first published in 1973, the economic thinker Fritz Schumacher proposes the idea of “smallness within bigness”. For a large organization to work it must behave like a related…

22 billion reasons to keep growing

May 17, 2010 By arne hendriks 0

In 2003, the US Federal Drug Administration approved the use of human growth hormone for healthy short children in an attempt to make them taller. There is nothing medically wrong with these children; they produce normal levels of growth hormone on their own. They are…