Make a Sandwich

Settled communities are communities of specialized laborers. To understand the power of the division of labor, consider the case of the humble sandwich. In 2015, a man inspired by the canonical libertarian essay by Leonard E. Read, "I, Pencil," set out to make a sandwich from scratch - i.e., with no products he didn't make himself. He grew his own vegetables, distilled salt from seawater, milked a cow, and used the milk to cultivate cheese. He pickled a cucumber in a jar, grew his own wheat, and ground it into flour for bread. He collected his own honey, and killed a chicken himself for the meat. The whole process took him six months and cost him $1,500. At the end of the project, he issued his verdict on his sandwich: "It's not bad. That's about it. It's not bad." Even here, he took shortcuts. He didn't buy the cow or scour the countryside for the seeds, etc.

- From Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg