Self-sufficiency Equals Poverty

Pointing at a picture of early man’s tools, Matt Ridley in his TED talk said:
“Who made them and for whom? Early man made them for himself; it was called self-sufficiency. We call it poverty these days.”

Self-sufficiency equals poverty? But think for a minute. Do you know anyone who grows his own food? Or hunts for it? Know anyone who grows cotton, converts it into cloth, stitches it and then wears it? The guys who come closest to doing all that are farmers. And an overwhelming number of them are indeed poverty stricken.

Next, look at the set that is far better off economically than the farmer. Like journalists, teachers, engineers, doctors, businessmen, sports stars and movie stars. What’s common with that set? None of them is even remotely close to self-sufficiency. They all depend on others to provide different things for them!

Well, ok, but maybe that only holds for individuals? Are self-sufficient societies richer than the non-self-sufficient ones? Not at all. America is rich and it buys low cost Chinese goods. India is getting richer and buys telecom switches and network routers from the West. In fact, the richer societies of today are the ones that trade the most. Because no one society can ever be the most efficient at fulfilling all its needs. Besides, once you specialize at what you are good at, quite often, you can trade your goods to get the other stuff from others.

I guess that remark on self-sufficiency and poverty doesn’t sound as weird anymore.

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