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Essay / Adam Smith's Philosophy of Work: A Biblical Perspective
However, from a Christian perspective, the most important of these is the idea of division of labor. The division of labor consists of distributing tasks among the people who will be best able to accomplish them. The division of labor dates back to biblical times, where special roles were assigned to certain people best suited to fulfill them. For example, some people were kings, priests, prophets, farmers, merchants, etc. The division of labor is also observed in large works such as the pyramids in Egypt, the Great Wall in China or the Brooklyn Bridge in the United States (Cafferky, 2012). The example used by Adam Smith in his book The Wealth of Nations is that of a pin factory. He explains that if one person in this factory tried to make one pin without division of labor, he could make twenty to one pins a day. However, if ten people worked together, each performing a different function in the manufacturing process, they would be able to make 48,000 pins per day (Adam Smith: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008). By dividing tasks among multiple parties, people gain the ability to produce in ways they could not produce on their own turf.