Is less more?

English Living Philosophy Economy Psychology

I'm in Leyte Island, Philippines now, working with cooperatives.


I sometimes have chance to talk to farmers.



I ask how they think they can improve their productivity and generate income.


Their answer is always all the time "Capital. We need capital."


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This is consistent with what traditional economics teaches us.

By increasing input, you can increase the productivity, taking advantage of economies of scale.

Agents are maximizing their productivity under their given condition and without changing the amount of input, you cannot increase the amount of output.


"There is no free lunch."

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This idea; you need to increase the amount of input to change the output, can be observed in many cases.





"How do you think you can be happier?"

"I need more more money. I need to increase income."






"How do you think you can achieve high profitability?"

"We need to hire talented people more."

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Going back to the story of farmers, I always ask further questions to know what it is that really has improved their productivity.



Then, they sometimes realize that they have experience in improving their productivity not by increasing the amount of input but by slightly changing their daily agricultural practice, habit or way of thinking.


Sometimes, increase in productivity is brought about by decreasing the input.

For example, using too much fertilizer decreases the productivity.


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It is somehow tempting for many of us to think that we can enhance our living standard or well-being by increasing the amount of input.


I don't know why. I need further psychological research concerning that theme.










But there should be other elements that contribute to the betterment of our productivity, living standard of well-being.








It might be that "less is more."