Specialization
Specialization
Specialization promotes efficiency. More of anything can be produced if a single person can do repetitive tasks. Assuming that all individuals are capable of all things such as hunting, felling trees, making nets, making pottery, chipping flint for knives and weapons etc we know is untrue. Even within the smallest unit, the family, the members specialize.
Consider the most primitive of family units. It would be impractical if the senior male member were to spend his time gathering wood instead of hunting if he had small children to do that work. The same applies to preparing and cooking food, tending a garden or weaving baskets. Each of these tasks is better accomplished by specialists, that is, those most suited to the task by physical strength, experience or age.
As a social group grows in numbers, specialization becomes even more specific until within a small band of families one person may become the flint chipper for the entire group. Because he is engaged in that task full-time, some other member, the hunter, must supply him with food in exchange for arrowheads.
As the group expands more elaborate shelter and protection of its assets much be established. This in turn requires sources of wood and stone that may not be available in the particularly good hunting or fishing area in which they are established. This creates the need for trade of food for raw materials from other areas.
At this point in the rudiments of civilization, agreements must be established regarding the value of the exchanged goods or services. The need arises for negotiators because an interdependence between the groups has evolved such that neither group can continue its standard of living without the other group. If one of the groups involved in this mutual dependence, either through greed or miscommunication, becomes hostile to another group, a breakdown of this harmonious trading relationship can lead to risk of survival to all groups.
The conditions leading to the failure of social groups is thoroughly explained in Jared Diamond’s excellent book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”
Countries all over the world are in similar peril at the present time. We have grown into such large groups of highly specialized individuals that the majority of us would starve in a very short time because we no longer have the tools nor the knowledge required for survival.
Locally available wood was our primary source of energy for cooking and staying warm. Most of the world’s population live in areas where this source is no longer available. We rely on food that we are no longer capable of producing on our own individual home sites but which must be grown and transported to us.
Today we are heading for a breakdown in trade as a result of antagonistic attitudes between different countries. In primitive societies stone, wood, food and furs were the required materials for survival. Today it is energy, primarily in the form of oil.
The modern world can not exist without, at the present time, oil. (I will deal with alternative energy options in later postings). Two major oil-producing countries, Venezuela and Iran, are teaming up to restrict the US oil supply because of politics. They can damage our economy through both restricting their oil output or by raising the price of oil. At the recent meeting of OPEC they have advocated not accepting US currency for oil.
This might be compared to two tribal trading partners when one says, ” I no longer accept your flint in exchange for our food.” Perhaps the one tribe can get along for a long time without new flint but how long can the other go without food?
When the US blockaded Japanese oil shipments that Japan needed for survival, Japan attempted to destroy the source of the trouble, the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Messing around with someone’s survival is a dangerous game.
