[OldEngineer]

If I cut and split my own wood for winter heat and live alone, I must also do all the other things necessary to keep myself alive.

If four other people share the house with me, my cutting and splitting will keep them warm too.

My labour has, therefore, been increased fivefold because it doesn't take any more wood to keep five people warm than it does one person.

This simple example shows how the division of labour can have a multiplier effect when groups of people share their work.

Equally effective is using an energy source to multiply labour.

However, there are some drawbacks. People have to co-operate: there must be a functioning "society". As the division becomes ever more fine - especially if it is abetted by cheap oil energy - everybody becomes a specialist and nobody knows how to do the whole job.

Cheap oil has produced the most specialized society in human history. The level specialization can only be achieved by including large numbers of people. Therefore, cheap oil has also produced a society with a very large minimum size required for its functioning.

After the peak the ability to co-ordinate large numbers of people will decline and the lack of generalists in Western society will quickly become a severe problem.

After the peak the Western world will simply not be able to function on the scale required to maintain its current level of goods and services. No amount of ingenuity or technology will overcome the fact that the complexity of goods and services is proportional to the size of the society producing them.

The Western world is very vulnerable to large scale decline because it is a tightly co-ordinated system created by the division of labour among hundreds of millions of people and sustained by cheap oil. As the cheap oil disappears the ability to co-ordinate will decline and that will produce systemic failures throughout Western society.

[MacG]

Pretty much sums it up.

[Specop_007]

This is why I feel very, very lucky to have the background and history that I have.

I'm kinda a jack of all trades, master of none.

I can do about anything, I just cant do anything well.