The pros and cons of specialisation

(Introduction to Economics, Lesson 9)

The concept of specialisation is essentially a very simple one.

Imagine a primitive society where each individual is self-sufficient and provides for their own individual needs entirely by themselves. They each go hunting by themselves, they fish in the river, they collect nuts and berries from the woods, they each start their own fires and they do their own individual cooking. They build and maintain their own shelters and make their own clothes.

This might not sound like a bad lifestyle, but it isn’t a very efficient one. Each individual will be good at some tasks, but not very good at others and each individual will be wasting a lot of time moving from one task to another.

Imagine, instead, that we organise this society so that each person concentrates on one or two tasks that they happen to be particularly good at. They get the other things they need by trading with other people in the village.

Some people, for example, might become full-time fishermen. They concentrate on this particular task and become rather good at it. They develop special tools to help them work more efficiently. At the end of each day’s fishing, they have far more fish than they need for themselves, so they trade their surplus of fish for other things. Some people…