6) Lastly, it is worth thinking about all the things we might not have if we isolated ourselves from the rest of the world. That is, we give up time for invention and innovation when we don’t work together…

5) Thus the term comparative in “comparative advantage” is not merely suggesting comparisons across countries or people. It is about comparing the costs of producing all the things I want to consume. Going it alone is costly.

4++) The solution is rather obvious then. If I didn’t have to do the dishes, then I’d be better off. Indeed, I have entered a trade agreement with my dishwasher!

4+) The most important facet of comparative advantage is more personal than is commonly emphasized. That is, I give up something that I would rather be doing when I have to do many things. “We” is nowhere in the previous sentence.

4) Autarky forces us to think about a world where we are all on our own. We are tasked with producing all goods. It is not hard to imagine the deep frustration we would soon feel in such a world. When I do the dishes, I am thinking about how I would rather be doing this or that.

3) In the background of these examples is the far removed world of “autarky” (less and less far removed as of late) in which a country must try and produce everything on its own. But this is really where the non-triviality of comparative advantage comes from.

2) Most of us are introduced to comparative advantage in an introductory economics course. We are given a glimpse at the surprising result that Ricardo famously wrote up; two goods, one country has absolute advantage in both, but comparative advantage incentivizes trade.

1) That it took a Nobel laureate several years to think about the appropriate response (purportedly) makes it incumbent on the rest of us to really think about the concept of comparative advantage.

And to think the notion of autarky was once so far fetched…