The thing about comparitive advantage is...what if your wrong? I say this becasue no one is ever told to pursue their coparitive advantage...We are all told tht we can do anything we want if we just try hard enough...This is not so becasue in the mean time you have other people who have figured out the truth and who are pursuing their comparitive advantage and nudging you out o the way and messing with systems you have been working on for months...
You know what is semiunfortunate? You don't even ever relly get to pursue your comparitive advantage until...college. High schools mandate students take certain classes a certain number of years and I see this as a good thing because there are some things you should just know, in order to be a part of society, but maybe you don't consider math a comparitive advantage becasue you HAVE to do it so by the time you are done with high school and begining college ou just want to do anyhting beides math so you study art but you suck at art, but damned if your going to admit it.
My point is...well it got kind of lost and basically all I am really trying to say is that while comparitive advantage is a comple and easily applied concept, it isn't widely taught or considered and this is why we should appreciate the open entry and exit in our economic system...
I think this is where competition comes in. Since, we live in a very competitive environment if we chose to pursue the "wrong" comparative advantage. Than the market place will show us that we should perhaps pursue another one.
ReplyDeleteI think what is complicated in school though is we confuse are passions with Comparative Advantage. If I as a Freshmen decided to pursue to follow my Comparative Advantage and try to study something that would have been the cheapness use of my time I would have probably would have majored in Communications (but that's boring) so I chose Economics even though that probably wasn't my Comparative Advantage at that time.