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On the one hand, yes of course the economy is all about specialization and then exchanging the fruits of specialized production between people. This last can h
by bzbarsky 5y ago
On the one hand, yes of course the economy is all about specialization and then exchanging the fruits of specialized production between people. This last can happen via money, or barter, or a dictator (benevolent or not) confiscating everything and redistributing it, or some mix of the above, and maybe other methods.
One of the hard problems here is what to specialize in and to what extent. This is a hard problem to solve even in a static economy, and even harder if circumstances keep changing...
The "standoff" description seems to assume a static economy. If circumstances change, maybe we as a society need a grocer for only 4 hours a day but could use an extra half-shift truck driver. But how to discover that?
- quacked 5y agoI have absolutely no idea how or even if that could be discovered, which is why my original comment was more about expressing frustration than offering a solution. I do know that several things going on currently will make it more impossible to discover: increased financialization of commodities, outsourcing, destruction of culture via removal of differentiating markers, etc. If any society is going to discover the half-shift truck driver economy, they're going to be one that is almost entirely self-sustaining and committed to perpetuation of itself, not one that is leveraged up to the eyeballs, suffers from a total lack of manufacturing expertise within its component citizens, and relies on cheap foreign labor to make everything.