Transcript - Izzit.org

Mechanization
MAN: Why am I sitting here
WOMAN: Why I don’t know, to keep warm, I suppose.
MAN: No-o.
WOMAN: Mmm. So you could daydream and carve on a piece of wood
MAN: No, no, no, I mean, how am I sitting here
WOMAN: How You’re squatting on a stone. You have been ever since you came back from collecting
the firewood.
MAN: No, no, no, no. You’re really not trying to understand me. I mean, how come I’ve got time to
spare to sit here at all It wasn’t so long ago that we had to work from dawn to dusk just to keep
ourselves alive. In those days there was never any question of idling the odd half-hour away in front of
the fire…
WOMAN: … like now. Ah, you’ve been thinking again.
MAN: That’s right, I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking that once upon a time we lived in a
subsistence economy. Then we could never have spared the time to do nothing in particular. Now we can
spare a bit of time. Why
WOMAN: Well, that’s not difficult. Just think back for a few minutes.
MAN: Right. I’m thinking.
WOMAN: Well, we got out of the subsistence trap by creating a surplus.
MAN: That’s right and we got that surplus by inventing division of labor.
WOMAN: Right. First we divided the labor by product. We changed from each family doing a bit of
everything, to one family specializing in only one thing – say sheep, or fishing and so on.
MAN: Then we invented another kind of division of labor. Instead of one person making a shawl for
themselves we divided the process between the families – shearing and spinning, dying and weaving. We
all made twice as many shawls as we were able to before.
WOMAN: Yes, we made a surplus.
MAN: And we traded our surplus for somebody else’s surplus.
WOMAN: Now we’re all better-fed.
MAN: The children are healthier.
16