Comparative advantage is a useful concept, but it doesn’t mean “everyone does the thing which they are best at in the world.” If this were true, there would be only one chef in the world (the person who is best at being a chef), only one baker, one software engineer, etc.
This is nonsensical for a different reason. There are billions of humans, but only ~thousands (hundreds?) of jobs at the granularity of “chef”, “baker”, “software engineer”. Not everyone will be the best in the world at one of these jobs.
This would seem more correct if it was “there would be only one person making croissants filled with grape jelly, only one person planting Fuji apple seeds, only one person installing Proprietary-Medical-Device, etc”.
I agree with your post overall, but:
This is nonsensical for a different reason. There are billions of humans, but only ~thousands (hundreds?) of jobs at the granularity of “chef”, “baker”, “software engineer”. Not everyone will be the best in the world at one of these jobs.
This would seem more correct if it was “there would be only one person making croissants filled with grape jelly, only one person planting Fuji apple seeds, only one person installing Proprietary-Medical-Device, etc”.
Yes, bwr makes a similar point here.
Oh huh, I somehow missed that on my first read.