The more we work for each other, the better off we are. The more we rely on our own efforts,

the poorer we are. That's why we call it subsistence. "Self-sufficiency" is indeed another word

for "poverty." The story of human prosperity is that through

the magic of exchange, we get more and more specialized as producers, more and more narrow

in our work so that we can become more and more diversified in our consumption.

On my desk at home sit two objects, which are exactly the same size and shape. One is

a Acheulean hand axe from half a million years ago of the kind used by homo erectus. The

other is a computer mouse from a half-decade ago. They are identical in size and shape

because they are both designed to fit the human hand.

But one was homemade, the axe. The other was made for me. And that's, in a sense, the secret

of human progress. Because compared with homo erectus, I am well

off because I have thousands -- nay, millions of servants. They club together to make me

that mouse. There was a coffee grower in Brazil whose coffee was being drunk oil rig hand

in Mexico whose oil was being turned into plastic in America whose plastic was molded

into a mouse in Korea which was marketed here in Britain. They were all part of my support

team, my staff, my backup crew. And yet do you know what? Not only did none

of them know they were working for me. Not one of them knows how to make a computer mouse.

Because there's nobody on the planet who knows how to make a computer mouse. Quite literally.

The knowledge is not in any individual's head, because the man who knows how to drill the

oil well doesn't know how to refine it into plastic. And the man who runs the computer

mouse company, all he knows is how to run a company. He doesn't know how to make a computer

mouse, and so on. That's the incredible, peculiar, almost irrational

thing about the modern world. It achieves things that nobody actually knows how to do.