Essay on Marchese Di Beccaria's Lasting Impact on Contemporary Economics

Marchese Di Beccaria's element of the public economy might have been published posthumously in 1804, but it is still one of the primary sources of economic theory that are still relevant today. In the books, Beccaria argues that human beings are rational. As such, they apply their rational manner when making choices aimed at achieving their gratification. Th rational nature of man might have even a common theme in his criminalist books but it also impacted his postulation that in the future economy, division of labor, will be the defining future. He argued that in the production of food, population size will singingly affect food supply which means that unless food supply is improved, the population will suffer from hunger. He also notes that laborer and capital are significantly related. This paper seeks to explore the concept of division of labor in the modern-day economy.

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In an economy where production takes place, it is important to dived labor into small tasks and assigned specific tests to specific people. While Adam Smith also postulated this concept, Beccaria's argument was that to maximize production, all the small repetitive tasks should be assigned to specific people who would later develop expertise in the specific area. The division of labor was supported and criticized by other modem day management scientist such as Karl Marx who argued that even though the division of labor increased specialization, it would produce less-skilled workers.

While other theorists and philosophers such as Plato in Plato's Republic, Ibn Khaldun, David Hume were in support of the division of labor, Beccaria's proposal that labor should be aimed at maximizing production. Adam Smith noted that the division of labor would contribute to economic progress as the laborers would create more efficient means productions. With the division of labors, there are some consequences especially in the modern-day economy where machines are increasingly being integrated into the workplace. Machines have been and are still being invested not only to reduced monotony but also to help improve the efficiency of production, save time and labors, cut on production cost overall.

With workplace automation, the security of tenure is highly threatened for those who specialize in repetitive tasks. In the assembly line, robots are taking away jobs which makes the division of labor a noble idea but too risky for the human beings for which division of labor was created. Even though unnecessary motions are eliminated in the assembly line, there is evidence to prove that with the reduction in the production time. Most of the skilled people would be replaced by either unskilled workers or machines and this would both hurt the economy as the GDP is a function of domestic output from various economic activti4s and labor is part of this. As the focus on cheaper means of production increase, chances are high that the division of labors will eventually edge out human labor in the production and supply chain.

Conclusion

The concept of division of labors has remained stable for along time and has ever been challenged. However, with the contemporary development in the job market including the introduction of robots, it is likely to be reviewed. The concept may have been an important finding as at the time that the book was published, the concept has increasingly become irrelevant. Even though it was not possible to envisage a production system devoid of human labor, his idea of division of labors has fallen short eventually. Modern-day researcher and philosophers should coin a new concept to explain the impact of workplace automation on human labor.