بلکه برای هر کس که نگران آینده است و دغدغه فقر و جامعه ای بهتر دارد واجب است غور در نوشتار استادمان چه اقتصاد خوانده باشد چه اقتصاص
زبان حال حکایت های آینده اقتصاد ایران - دکتر مسعود نیلی
پ.ن- اقتصاص به معنی قصه گویی و هم وزن اقتصاد است
in thinking more rational
Adam Smith (The father of modern economics) started his most important book, ‘The Wealth of Nations’, with a review on importance of labour division. “The greatest improvement in productive power of labour and greater part of skill, dexterity and judgment with which it is anywhere directed or applied seem to be the effects of division of labor.” He shows that the advantages of this division are due to three circumstances:
First, division improves dexterity which is possible when someone focuses on only one or two skills. Second, division saves time of starting and changing the jobs. And third, division of labor improves applications of machinery invented by workmen. Invention of a machine which does simple actions is easier than a multi-action one.
He is right about the advantages of labour division but, I want to show another advantage of it, which is the trade’s substance. Division of labour is exchanging the labour product even with money or commodity. Each labourer does his job and exchanges its product with another one’s. So let me explain the advantage of trade with an example.
Suppose I can even publish 5 posts in a day in my weblog or wash 20 dishes or a mixture of them. And my roommate can even publish 3 posts or wash 18 dishes in a day. And both of us like to read weblog posts (there is no difference between ours and no one else write in weblog) and use clean dishes. Someone may say that the cost of publishing a post for me is working 1/5 of a day and washing a dish costs working 1/20 of a day. And for my roommate it costs 1/3 of a day for each post and 1/18 day for each dish. So it is better for me to wash my dishes and write my posts and let my roommate do his owns because it costs me less in both washing and writing. But I want to say trading clean dishes and posts with my roommate may increase our both utilities.
If you look more careful you can find writing 5 posts for me costs not using 20 clean dishes, and washing 20 dishes costs not to read 5 posts. It means each post costs me 20/5 = 4 dirty dishes and each clean dish costs me not reading 5/20 = 1/4 post. But for my roommate each post costs him 18/3 = 6 dirty dishes and each clean dish costs 1/6 post. Economists call this way of cost measuring, “Opportunity Cost”. Opportunity cost is whatever must be given to obtain some item.
You can see my opportunity cost of dish washing is more than my roommate’s. And therefore his opportunity cost of post writing is more than mine. So I would post in my weblog all the day and will give some to my roommate. And he will wash the dishes and give some to me and we will live together more happy and with more weblog posts and clean dishes than before. Trade can benefit everyone because it allows people to specialize to activities which they have the “Comparative Advantages” or less opportunity costs.
Back to my topic, division of labor may decrease the total cost of a work if each labourer works in position which he has comparative advantage. I didn’t find this point in Adam Smith’s book but he was familiar with opportunity cost concept. I should stress that improvement in total utility in this case is not because of dexterity improvement.
If Smith didn’t die 230 years ago he might add this advantage in the “OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR” chapter. May God bless him…