The Path of Lease Resistance

Adam Smith postulated that if a worker woke up one day and committed his entire working day to producing a pin from scratch, it is extremely unlikely he would even be able to produce one pin. What Adam Smith suggested instead was that one worker specialising, digging up the ore and other specialising, refining it and other specialised, machining it. And then even beyond that another worker specialising going out and actually selling these pins. To you and I, this sounds like the most obvious thing ever, but it was a pretty new idea for the ages. On a local level people tended to be a jack of all trade. Now because everybody else will be specialised in other roles,