The Division of Labor

The Division of Labor:

This here’s a very interesting concept. The division of labor is not necessarily in regards to those who can do a job the best but in interest of time. For example, your boss might be better at your job than you, and have a much more intimate insight in the company, yet out of the interest of time he hires out positions to other people in order so that he can handle all that needs to be done on the business end, such as management and similar matters. A person can only do so much.

This becomes quite interesting when looking into the possibility of total self-reliance. We all know throughout history that societies which tried to do this ended up with significantly less wealth and prosperity than societies that chose otherwise. Although in theory a society could potentially be controlled in such a manner as to make this plausible, the reality plays out quite differently. The bureaucratic division of labor, I feel, is incapable of meeting the demands of the fluctuations of the market and there’s no way for people to seek their comparative advantage and contribute most to the general good if they aren’t free to follow their own path.

The reading made a good case, where the United States government chose not to bail out Chrysler in the face of competition with Ford and yet they did with Honda. The continued assistance, interference, of the government allowed the company to become somewhat complacent and simply weren’t able to become competitive. It was a division of labor in a sense. Nobody was forcing employees of Chrysler to be forcibly kept around to manufacture cars but on a cooperate level the government said that it was Chrysler’s business to make cars and thus, in a way, chose their comparative advantage for them. Their sub-par products were to be favored in point of fact because it was “good policy” to have Chrysler running according to the example.