Some Thoughts for Craft Food Makers and Lovers

Yesterday NYTimes.com featured an article that offered some economical insight into the world artisanal food products…

The gist: Specialized craft business might just be the wave of the future — a way for America to continue to compete in the global economy…

Some highlights:

It’s tempting to look at craft businesses as simply a rejection of modern industrial capitalism. But the craft approach is actually something new — a happy refinement of the excesses of our industrial era plus a return to the vision laid out by capitalism’s godfather, Adam Smith. One of his central insights in “The Wealth of Nations” is the importance of specialization. When everyone does everything — sews their own clothes, harvests their own crops, bakes their own bread — each act becomes inefficient, because generalists are rarely as quick or able as specialists…

…Instead of rolling our eyes at self-conscious Brooklyn hipsters pickling everything in sight, we might look to them as guides to the future of the American economy. Just don’t tell them that. It would break their hearts to be called model 21st-century capitalists…

Read it here... Leave your thoughts...

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