Economics is everywhere and has been discussed by great thinkers in nearly every time period. One ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, discusses the economic principle of specialization in his great work the Republic. Through the words of Socrates, Plato makes the argument that in order to have a “just society,” the people within the society need to focus on what they are good at producing. By reading the Republic, one can learn many valuable economics lesson.
In a discussion about creating a perfect city-state Plato proposes many ideas, both outlandish and very practical. One of the concepts that Plato mentions is “…we must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things” (Plato, 2004, p.54). This idea of specialization is one that many modern economists recommend for a functioning economy.
It is fascinating to examine ancient literature and see all of the different foundational ideas that assisted and inspired the contemporary world. Despite Plato not knowing even a sliver of what the world would produce thousands of years later, he was still able to write wisdom that is useful for the present day. Contemporary economists, politicians, and other thinkers need to stay vigilant and remember to listen to the advice and lessons from the world’s past.
Reference
Plato, Scharffenberger, E. W., & Jowett, B. (2005). Republic. Barnes & Noble.
I'd love to be proven wrong here but it is very hard for me to see what is valuable about Plato. Many people take his words and project greater meaning. He was a deep thinker and his cave analogy was a great basic model to help some understand the idea of God being the light that people were missing. The good is something beyond our experience and understanding. Understanding that we cannot understand everything as we cannot see the true form of God and must have faith is valuable. But a chapter later he claims with debate we can comprehend the true form despite not being able to see it and he throws the building blocks to good philosophy away. Similarly in economics he seems to have a good foundation in which he describes specialization but he claims you can see the content of ones skills at birth and completely disregard competition. If someone is supposed to do a task they should be assigned it at birth and nobody else should cover that task. The video about planned economies we watched in class shows very clearly how Plato knew nothing about economics. A centralized government allocating tasks and resources will ultimately fail because it cannot comprehend the desires of each individual. Entrepreneurs can understand which goods people desire and attempt to get the resources necessary to produce those goods. Industries that provide resources to those who want them will succeed and industries that fail to do so will fail. When unregulated by the government, resources will naturally go to who need them most.