Transcript - Izzit.org

A Life Worth Living
MAN: You know, I’ve been thinking…
WOMAN: Oh, yes, and what have you been thinking
MAN: Well, I’ve been thinking… that it’s thinking that got us where we are today.
WOMAN: Hmm, I followed the first bit about your having been thinking again, but I got lost on the
second bit of thinking
MAN: Well, just look at our village today.
WOMAN: Yes, so I’m looking…
MAN: What can you see
WOMAN: Well, I can see a group of people who aren’t exactly living off the fat of the land- but who are
doing very nicely, thank you.
MAN: Right…and how did this happen when not all that long ago, we lived in a subsistence economy
WOMAN: Oh, I see what you mean – you mean which pieces of thinking- which ideas took us from one
level of prosperity to another
MAN: Right!
WOMAN: Right. Hmmm. It’s quite simple, really. Subsistence is the economy we started out withand
a surplus is what we’ve got now. And the way we got from one to the other was by specialization and
by mechanization, sometimes a bit of one, sometimes a bit of the other, and sometimes a bit of both.
MAN: Do you remember what it was like living in a subsistence economy
WOMAN: Oh, how could I ever forget
MAN: We used to spend all our time and energy just getting ourselves enough food to say alive. And
there was never anything left over. And then we discovered division of labor by product.
WOMAN: Oh, yes, what a day that was!
MAN: It certainly was! We divided labor by product which just meant that instead of every family doing
everything for itself: one family specialized in sheep, one in cattle…
WOMAN: …and another specialized in fish…
MAN: …another in tailoring and cloth-making…
WOMAN: …uh-huh…that was us.
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