national income, the technologies used should be those 

 that are most efficient, given relative factor costs 

 within the nation. If, on the other hand, national 

 goals stress creating jobs over maximizing national 

 income, more labor-intensive technologies might be 

 chosen. Indeed, for many nations this would imply 

 technologies that are capital saving and/or labor- 

 intensive compared to corresponding technologies used 

 by industrialized nations. It would also imply 

 technologies that are relatively easily learned by 

 workers with no prior industrial training or 

 experience, and technologies to produce goods that are 

 less specialized, simpler to use, and more versatile 

 than similar products made in the industrialized 

 nations. The manufacturing processes implied by these 

 "appropriate technologies" do not necessarily have to 

 be small in scale; hence "appropriate technology," as 

 used here, should not be considered synonymous with 

 cottage industries or with the E. F. Schumacher 

 concept, "small is beautiful." 



It is not at all clear that highly labor-intensive 

 technologies are appropriate for all industrial sectors 

 even in developing countries. For example, it is hard 

 to imagine a simplified, labor-intensive process to 

 manufacture petrochemicals. In the textile industry, 

 where numerous variations on basic spinning and weaving 

 technology exist, it has been shown that the most 

 efficient technology for even the least developed 

 nations is one that is capital-intensive relative to 

 many known techniques, but labor-intensive relative to 

 the spinning and weaving techniques that would be 

 optimally employed in a highly industrialized nation. 

 Moreover, in some basic industries capital-intensive 

 investments may be the most effective way to promote 

 more rapid growth of small and medium-sized industry 

 and establish the conditions for maximum overall 

 employment in the economy. 



There is a tendency to blame unemployment on the 

 use of "inappropriate" technologies, in the sense that 

 they use too little labor and too much capital for any 

 particular level of output. The argument is that 

 technologies are available or could be found that would 

 employ more labor and produce the same levels of output 

 at the same or lower cost. Undoubtedly, there are 

 examples of mistaken choices of technology in 

 developing (and developed) countries. However, 

 technology assessment is a very inexact art, and 

 circumstances change. Prior analysis would probably 

 not prevent some mistaken choices, even if development 

 goals and the criteria for selecting technologies are 

 clearly established. In any case, there is little, if 

 any, evidence indicating that the employment problems 



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