[Division of Labor] a combination of specialization and the partition of a complex production task into several, or many, sub-tasks to produce more output
[Divison of labor's] importance in economics lies in the fact that a given number of workers can produce far more output using division of labor compared to the same number of workers each working alone. Interestingly, this is true even if those working alone are expert artisans.
[...]
Division of labor is a hopeful doctrine. Nearly any nation, regardless of its endowment of natural resources, can prosper simply by developing a specialization. That specialization might be determined by comparative advantage, lying in climate or other factors, of course. But division of labor alone is sufficient to create trading opportunities and the beginnings of prosperity. By contrast, nations that refuse the opportunity to specialize, clinging to mercantilist notions of independence and economic self-sufficiency, doom themselves and their populations to needless poverty.
Example
Interpretation
Comment
article ?
![[Conspicuous consumption] For individuals seeking superior distinction, wealth has to be displayed](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/bluesofy/__sized__/pic/topics/d4de0b64a4a14b8abdada1c6c331e31d-fit_width_resize_q20-30x0-95.jpg)
![[Conspicuous consumption] For individuals seeking superior distinction, wealth has to be displayed](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/bluesofy/__sized__/pic/topics/d4de0b64a4a14b8abdada1c6c331e31d-fit_width_resize_q75-780x0-95.jpg)
In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence. And not only does the evidence of wealth serve to impress one's importance on others and to keep their sense of importance alive and alert but it is scarcely less use in building up and preserving one's self-complacency.… Abstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing; and this insistence on the meritoriousness of wealth leads to a more strenuous insistence on leisure.[...] According to well-established laws of human nature, prescription presently seizes upon this conventional evidence of wealth and fixes it in men's habits of thoughts as something that is itself substantially meritorious and ennobling.
An economy is simply the sum of the transactions that make it up and a transaction is a very simple ...


It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.
Coronavirus is a planetary event of a magnitude we have trouble wrapping our minds around, not only because of its ...
I've been thinking a lot lately about a piece I read in Stuart Brand's, CoEvolution Quarterly back in 1975. It's ...