Friday, June 03, 2016

QUICK BITS no. 10

Tony Fish posts (2 June) on Huffpost Tech HERE
“As far back as the 1800’s Political Economist Adam Smith was talking about the enormous boost the division of labour and specialisation would bring. The thinking lead to gains in efficiency and productivity and brought in a new model for structure, management and operational behaviour.”
Comment

Adam Smith “in the early 1800s” was not “talking about anything”. He died in 1790. Moreover, he always wrote historically and not about the future. The one exception in his Wealth of Nations was his prediction that in a 100 years, after 1776, the new independent American economy would be the richest in the world.

1 Comments:

Blogger Bill Greene said...

Adam Smith only reported what had already happened in the business world. Like most writers, he came after the fact, summarizing what ordinary people already knew.

Most all the basic economic concepts explaining the operation of free markets had been fully developed by actual merchants long before Smith took pen to paper. For example, the division of labor and the power of free trade were first seen in the Phoenician manufacture of purple cloth about 3,000 years ago in the pre-Greek world of Mediterranean commerce!

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