“Our Rabbis taught: If one sees a crowd of Israelites, he says, Blessed is He who discerneth secrets, for the mind of each is different from that of the other, just as the face of each is different from that of the other.
Ben Zoma [a Talmudic sage] once saw a crowd on one of the steps of the Temple Mount. He said, Blessed is He that discerneth secrets, and blessed is He who has created all these to serve me. [For] he used to say: What labours Adam had to carry out before he obtained bread to eat! He ploughed, he sowed, he reaped, he bound [the sheaves], he threshed and winnowed and selected the ears, he ground [them], and sifted [the flour], he kneaded and baked, and then at last he ate; whereas I get up, and find all these things done for me.
And how many labours Adam had to carry out before he obtained a garment to wear! He had to shear, wash [the wool], comb it, spin it and weave it, and then at last he obtained a garment to wear; whereas I get up and find all these things done for me. All kinds of craftsmen come early to the door of my house, and I rise in the morning and find all these before me.”
Folio 58 of Maurice Simon, “Berakoth Translated into English”, Under the editorship of Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein, B.A., Ph.D., D. Lit.
http://www.come-and-hear.com/berakoth/index.html.
The words from the Talmud and the Bible convey an appreciation of the God-given spontaneous order of freedom and prosperity that emerges as a result of human action taken without regard to human design. Before us each day are the blessings of prosperity that we take for granted precisely because it is before us without the intentional design of any man.
This prosperity arises in large part out of the division of labor. The specialization of tasks and roles that comes out of cooperative labor in a market was celebrated in the past, as the Talmud attests, but the power of the division of labor to raise output and levels of living was not widely understood until Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. Smith explained to us how an increasingly complex division of labor was closely associated with economic growth, and that it required freedom of internal commerce and open and unrestrained trade among countries to impart its full benefit.
As Smith put it,
“Every individual...generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book IV Chapter II.)
That is, left to themselves and with their own interests in mind, the world is so designed -- Smith would say by the "Great Architect of the Universe” -- that people are “led by an invisible hand” to cooperate in a way that automatically brings about productivity gains and a wider basket of consumption to the larger society.
It is the price system of the market that is the secret the Babylonian rabbis sought to learn and it is Adam Smith who tells us how price signals arising spontaneously in a market communicate the dispersed knowledge of one person to another to yield high and rising incomes in an environment of political liberty.
A tip of the hat to Professor Don Boudreaux of Café Hayek for the pointer.
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