Transcript - Izzit.org

WOMAN: When every family did everything itself everybody was working flat out from dawn to dusk
just to stay alive.
MAN: But now we’ve hit on division of labor.
WOMAN: We’ve all become specialists, and we’ve all become more skilled in our specialty and as a
result- we have a surplus.
MAN: And that surplus is the Mason and Carpenter families – or rather, the product of their labor.
WOMAN: They’ve opened up bigger, richer pastures for our cattle and sheep, and they’ve given us a
regular supply of water, and that means better crops of vegetables and grain…
MAN: …and all this is one of the most important things ever to have happened in the community. The
surplus created by dividing the labor is the first step on the path to prosperity and it’s a tremendous step.
WOMAN: Division of labor by product is at the heart of all progress and prosperity, and it’s not hard to
see why. Well just think about the sort of food we eat every day – cheese from a huge factory in Holland,
salads from specialist farms on the Channel Islands, and that ham is from one of the great Danish pig
farms.
MAN: More than one hundred-twenty thousand pigs a month leave Denmark as pork, and ham, and
bacon and sausages to shops of the world.
WOMAN: The bread comes to your table all the way from wheat fields on the Canadian prairie. The tea
comes from northern India, where the villagers make a living by exporting to the rest of the world.
MAN: By cultivating thousands of acres they produce tea at a price you can afford.
WOMAN: That’s another bonus of specialization: a bonus of division of labor by-product- goods that
come cheaper.
MAN: But, of course, it doesn’t just happen in agriculture. Everything on this table is mass produced by
specialists: plates, knives, forks, tablemats – the lot!
WOMAN: And that leads to another step in specialization.
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