Specialization and Trade: Crash Course Economics #2

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1. Materialism has its limits. For what we spent in Vietnam we could have bought Bolivia.
2. THANK YOU! I feel great understanding all of it :)
3. Self sufficiency is inefficiency? All of this is based on the assumption that consumption and infinite economic growth is good. Is this Crash Course Economics or Crash Course Neo-Classical Economics?
4. I love You ''!!!!
5. tanks for the lesson dawg
6. Physics is so scared!
7. But Asian shoes' quality sucks....
8. Trade it definitely NOT always beneficial for both parties.
   
   The 'zero-sum' vs. 'positive-sum' debate..
9. Did you quote Adam Smith without the part where he says about division of labor "The man whose whole life is spent in
   performing a few simple operations ... generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
   become."
   
   He was not just blanketly advocating for division of labor. He clearly warned against it's dangers. What is wrong with you people? Are you being ignorant or deceptive?
10. not the truth! just see what IMF released in its reports about structural adjustment and poverty and inequality as its result.
11. I guess what I'm mainly confused about is this: does the statement about international trade not hurting the number of domestic jobs still apply in situations where American manufacturers relocate their facilities to other countries where they know they can drastically reduce the cost of labor? Does that even still count as international trade if it's simply an American product being produced outside of America? Or does that not count in the argument being made? I'm not trying to be facetious I'm just honestly unclear.
12. i know this question might never be replied to, but here it is: Are you sure specialization is truly more efficient? is there some externalities that might have been missed. The last two days, I have been building my own forklift from scratch using scrap. As I work, I realized that I am learning many new skills that not only I can apply to make my life better and help me do other things more efficiently, the fact that I am learning new skills means I also become better at learning and become smarter! Apply to this video's example, if you have to make a pizza from scratch, you would learn the skills you need to survive in a zombie apocalypse as well as improving you ability to learn and become smarter. If this is true, I fear that over specialization means people rely on others for specialized skills, and have to learn less and less skills. Eventually, this mental decline would result in people being so dumb that they couldn't make pasta ( just like in 2oolander ) and being conned by some fast talking salesman into electing a buffoon for President .... OH WAIT
13. take that physics, we are coming for ya
    LOLLLL
14. Itd be great if they talked slower though.
15. shoes r made in china not usa
16. wth is up with the audio? God help the sound engineer.
17. Hey guys, doubt here. So, countries should specialize in producing things in which they have a comparative advantage. If a country has a comparative advantage to produce commodities, then, according to this course of knowledge, it should remain specialized only in producing commodities? In a long term, wouldn't it be economically harmed?
18. @ donald trump
19. Mongol pizza??? I sense a Green...
20. I'm curious and hoping you all can clear something up for me. I've watched this episode and the later episode on trade. Both talk about some countries having a comparative advantage over others in certain products. I can understand this in two circumstances: 1) where one country has greater access to certain natural resources than the other or 2) where new or different technology is used in the manufacturing that is not available in one of the countries. However, this episode uses the example of shoes being made in China as having a comparative advantage over shoes made in the U.S.A. I can't see any natural reasons for this advantage. The only reason I can hypothesize for the comparative advantage is the labor market. Therefore, the comparative advantage must be coming from poorer working conditions or wage, lower standards of living, or less legal restriction on manufacturing. So, it is seeming to me that the comparative advantage mentioned here or the cheaper goods mentioned in episode #15 are actually just the result of exploitation of the lives of individuals living in the country with the advantage, unless you are actually suggesting that China has more natural shoe resources or has developed technology not available in the U.S. for the manufacture of shoes. And, if the benefit of such trade comes down to the the exploitation of workers in other countries, doesn't it raise ethical implications about that benefit of trade? I'm not saying trade it bad, I'm just looking for some clarification.