I have a friend who used to be pretty cool in high school, but he went out of town for college to study computers.
He's been gone for a few years. He drops out and returns.
I ask if he'd like to hang out.
>Sure.
I go to his place.
He lets me inside his, then he sits down on the couch and gets glued to his kindle. I ask what he's reading.
>"Fields, Factories and Workshops".
never heard of it before, so i ask what it's about.
>Economics -- mostly proofs for why Adam Smith's theories on specialization were wrong.
Specialization?
>Where you become a specialist in one trade, and spend your life doing that. In the 1800's, the industrial powers of Europe believed from Adam Smith's economic theories that their nations could specialize in manufacturing, and have nations like Russia, India, and China specialize in agriculture, but all those nations began industrializing and competing with Western Europe's imports, lowering Western Europe's profit margins, ushering the collapse of specialization. The once industrial powers of the world now have to a certain extent recapitulated back to manufacture and agriculture, and the agricultural economies continue to industrial. These economies are naturally reverting back to producing goods mostly for their home markets.
>Turns out, most people would rather learn more than one trade and work to satisfy their own needs.
That book sounds pretty tedious and boring.
>It is. But it's a companion piece for the "Conquest of Bread", and knowledge of economics models and their criticisms is important these days.
>Next will be "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution".
I ask if he had any games.
>There's a Switch, but it hardly sees any use.
>Taking a shower. See you in a bit.
Play Switch for a bit. There are very few games. Breath of the Wild, Cave Story, Splatoon. That's all. I decide to put on Breath of the Wild.
A few minutes later, my friend comes back from his shower.
His outfit is more formfitting this time.
His torso is pear-shaped.
>Excuse me?