Before I begin looking at E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, I thought I would share an example of what frustrates me about today's economic analysis applied to non-traditional fields.
A number of years ago I picked up a copy of the book, The Economics of Life, by Gary Becker and his wife Guity. For those not familiar with Professor Becker, he won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1992 and is known for his penchant for applying the theories of market behavior and economic incentives to traditionally non-economic daily life events.
All of this made me eager to pick up the book. One of the first essays in the book is about religion, where Prof. Becker provocatively argues that having many denominations and sects having to compete for members makes religious groups better. He writes: