Size matters: small is beautiful?

To paraphrase Dick Cheney, Hummer is in its last throes :)  I suppose this is better than how Government General Motors told Saturn another of Cheney's statements--*&%$ yourself!

In the context of Hummer's inevitable death, Tunku Varadarajan writes:

Americans aren’t shy or subtle, and bigness gets the point of one’s prosperity across to one’s neighbors without artifice or nuance. Big McMansions and cars telegraph “I’m rich and successful” to those not schooled in the snobberies and subtleties of class, to those who lack hypocrisy. Big American breasts are a perfect (if occasionally gaudy) metaphor for the country’s bounty. 

I wish he had clarified whether those breasts were of women or men :)
Anyway, Varadarajan has a neat observation:

the demise of the Hummer looks like more than the end of an automotive brand. It looks like the start of an age when we need to measure ourselves afresh—and maybe start to resize America.

I am not sure whether a downsizing will really appeal to mainstream America.  I wrote about this at Planetizen--though, it was before this Great Recession.

I am, therefore, all the more reminded of Schumacher's Small is Beautiful.  Yes, it takes me back to my first year of grad school, which was when I read that book.  It had enormous appeal, but not only was it a tad touchy-feely, it was pretty much a retelling of Buddhist philosophy in political economic language.  But, I have always had a soft spot for the small is beautiful approach to life--again, in a way I wrote about this at Planetizen.