For Jim Devine and others--
You may have seen this before, but just in case. Recall Adam Smith
begins the Wealth of Nations with a paen to the division of labor.
Many people don't get much further than this. But if we make it to
book v,"the expenses of the sovereign," part III "Of the Expense of Public
Works and Public Institutions," Article II "Of the Expense of the
Institutions for the Education of Youth," we find a very
different conclusion:
"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the
far greater part of those who live by labour, that is of the great
ody of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations,
frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part
of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The
whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which
the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same,
has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention
in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur.
He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally
becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for
a human creature to become."
Smith finds such a person unable to participate in rational conversation,
being generous, noble or tender, etc. etc.
Under the circumstances the best Smith can come up with is a bit of
public education, which can also be used to teach conservative values.
Joe Persky
