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Division of Labor


Karl Peters

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Division of Labor

In order to answer the question of scarcity, we need to bring in a couple more basic ideas. The first of these shall be Division of Labor. Currently, Economic Historians are debating on whether or not Division of Labor came first or the usage of money. Both play a crucial role into how people answer scarcity and how the answers will be developed.

So what is Division of Labor? Division of Labor is the concentration of large numbers of workers within very large production units allowed the process of production to be broken down into a series of tasks. By breaking this down a major project into smaller tasks, one person can perfect their part of production and make the entire process more efficient. This process also starts to make more products, better products, and creates less waste. These benefits allow the owner/capitalist/lord to invest less time and money into the economy, but get a bigger return.

A crucial part that most economists and students fail to realize is that this process is very de-humanizing and causes dissatisfaction. At a certain point, workers will not be as productive or efficient. You must find a balancing point otherwise you are not getting the most out of your workforce. The workers themselves play a role. If you have workers who are not as productive or efficient as your neighbor, then slowly your neighbor will start to take over and force you out of business.

Bringing this into CN is both obvious and hidden. The most obvious part is the breakdown of all alliances. Every alliance has some sort of power hierarchy. A leader and co-leader is supported by Ministers/Secretaries of specific areas which are then supported by staff under them. The entire alliance is balanced around an obvious structure that lets people enter into an area in which they have or gain a specialty.

The hidden part comes from the power structure. Depending on the competency, activity, and knowledge of the structure, the alliance will be forced down a certain path. This path is not an FA path or ones that we are common with. It is a path of success and failure. If an alliance has leaders who are incompetent, inactive, lack of knowledge, or a combination, will cause that alliance to start to fail. This rate of failure is dependent on how many leaders within the alliance hold the above characteristics.

This idea is shown throughout the history of CN. As a community, we have always had alliances moving around, some faster than others. Sure this is due to a number of things, but the leaders of the alliance play the most crucial and important factor. Alliances who have leaders that are competent, active, knowledgeable, or a combination, tend to speed up the rankings. While alliances with the other type of leaders tend to fall fast. Now we can combine both setups and infer that alliances with more leaders with the favorable characteristics will tend to steadily increase in rank until the weakness is shown then resolved by said alliance.

Division of Labor is both an obvious and hidden characteristic of CN. The current power structure of alliances is the most obvious of the game and this idea. The hidden part comes from the leaders themselves. Alliances will succeed or fail due to the competency, activity, and knowledge of their leaders. Combining the obvious and hidden factors force alliances to act, react, and plan for their path.

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Interesting you decided to talk about division of labor within the alliance structure instead of the economics within the game itself (e.i. tech trading). Enjoying the blog so far, looking forward to more.

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