{"id":270,"date":"2010-12-12T00:28:15","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T04:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/?p=270"},"modified":"2010-12-12T00:28:15","modified_gmt":"2010-12-12T04:28:15","slug":"adam-smith-on-multiplication-and-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/?p=270","title":{"rendered":"Adam Smith on Multiplication and Division"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction
\n<\/strong>Adam Smith lived from 1723 to 1790 and is widely regarded as the father of economics.\u00a0 He was a Scottish moral philosopher and taught at the University of Glasgow.\u00a0 His masterpiece, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776.\u00a0 This book is considered a seminal work in the field of Economics.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Multiplication through Division
\n<\/strong>One of the most important concepts introduced by Smith is that of the Division of Labor.\u00a0 This term means that greater productivity can be attained by dividing and specializing labor among a variety of trades.\u00a0 Smith observes that various forms of animal breeds (mastiff, greyhound, and spaniel) vary largely in their innate abilities.\u00a0 In contrast, different kinds of laborers (common laborer, truck driver, or engineer) differ substantially in the activities they do.\u00a0 The differences in people are due primarily to opportunity, habit, and education.\u00a0 Smith theorizes that this difference in men contributes to the wealth of a nation.\u00a0 The great benefit of this differentiation lies in the fact that each person can employ the specialties of another to get more stuff done.\u00a0 Animals cannot employ one another’s specialties, despite Walt Disney’s claims to the contrary.\u00a0 Each animal must support itself.\u00a0 In contrast, human society is enriched by the variety of contributions of its members.\u00a0 As Smith says,<\/p>\n

\u00a0Among men, on the contrary, the most dissimilar geniuses are of use to one another: the different produces of their respective talents, by the general disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, being brought, as it were, into a common stock, where every man may purchase whatever part of the produce of other men’s talents he has occasion for.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before coming to work in Toledo, I worked in a manufacturing plant in New Haven, IN.\u00a0 Our work was highly seasonal, so our labor force had a large temporary component.\u00a0 One summer, our HR manager told me we had over 20 different nationalities working in the production area.\u00a0 Of course there were Hispanic workers from several Latin American countries, but we also had employees from India, Pakistan, and several Southeast Asian nations.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t uncommon to have engineers and professional people among the production workers, simply because they were eager to get work of any kind.\u00a0 This made for a very vibrant workforce.<\/p>\n

I did most of my reading in The Wealth of Nations using a free audio book<\/a> from LearnOutLoud.com.\u00a0 The free audio edition by Michael Edwards is very well done and made the book much more approachable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction Adam Smith lived from 1723 to 1790 and is widely regarded as the father of economics.\u00a0 He was a Scottish moral philosopher and taught at the University of Glasgow.\u00a0 His masterpiece, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatlandrescue.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}