>
> The question which technologies are you for or against is absurd.
> Technology is not political, its application is. The question of
> whether to use a pulley or a lever has no political consequences.
I tell other car nuts that, as far as I am concerned, my Miata is far better than a Ferrari, because all I can afford do with a Ferrari is look at it, whereas I can drive my Miata.
Schumacher's object is the development of pre-industrial counties into industrial ones. It does have political consequences, Schumacher says, where "levers" are so simple to manufacture that third-world countries can afford today to build factories to manufacture them domestically, while "pulleys," due to the far greater technical complexity of manufacture, require a first-world industrial base. For "pulleys" and levers" you can read "cars" vs. "bicycles" or "windmills" vs. "nuclear power plants" or "imported GM seeds" vs. "irrigation projects."
Schumacher argues that a third-world country which chooses bleeding-edge pulley tech, though they may be technically superior to levers, will _never_ develop domestic manufacture because it will be always cheaper, currency inequalities and all, to import pulleys from first-world suppliers, rather than to set up the broad industrial base to produce them domestically; also that country will always be vulnerable to political pressure from the governments of the first-world countries which supply it with its vital pulleys. Whereas it's at least possible that the third-world country which resigns itself to using the simple but less-thermally-efficient lever technology may eventually, gradually build up its own domestic industries. Third-world countries can either look at technological industrialization, or else they can drive it.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net