A Twilight Zone Episode Reveals the Unrelenting Genius of Free Trade
Perhaps the clearest and most vivid illustration of the value of the division of labor is found not in Adam Smith’s description in the economic classic “The Wealth of Nations” of the efficiency of a specialized pin factory, but in an episode of Rod Serling’s 1950s television classic “Twilight Zone.” The episode, entitled “Time Enough at Last,” demonstrates – perhaps unintentionally – that even under the most fortuitous of circumstances, self-sufficiency is no match for interdependence.
The episode, chosen in a reader poll conducted by Twilight Zone Magazine as by far the most memorable in the series’ history, has a straightforward enough plot line. Henry Bemis, played by Burgess Meredith, is a nearsighted bank teller whose love of reading the great classics is forever hampered by the time demands of his boss and his wife. One day, lunching as he always did in the bank vault in order to be able to read undisturbed, Bemis suddenly feels and hears an enormous explosion, presumably caused by an H-bomb. As the one person spared by by the nuclear holocaust, Bemis is at last free to spend all the time he wishes reading the great books from a nearby library, his need for nutrition met by a supply of canned foods that will easily last him a lifetime. All of his cultural and material wants are satisfied, without the need for anyone else who could eat into his time.
Bemis seemed to have in effect achieved autarky, the goal of economic self-sufficiency with no need for barter or trade with others. But the fact that none of us is an island, economically as well as emotionally, became apparent by the end of the episode. Bending down to pick up a book from the pile he had assembled, Bemis stumbled, his glasses falling off and shattering. Bemis had all the books he wanted to read and all of the time he needed to read them, without, he thought, any need for interaction with anyone else. But as he picks up the broken remains of the glasses he desperately needs to read even word one, he realizes that his dreams are as shattered as the lenses he cannot repair, leaving him nothing to do but scream in frustration: “That’s not fair. There was time now. That’s not fair at all.”
Serling may have intended this plot to illustrate simply the need to be careful what you wish for. Or he may have intended it as an illustration of the difference between solitude and loneliness, and the need for human interaction as a basis of fulfillment. But it also illustrates the need for economic interaction as the basis for creating economic fulfillment.
Bemis had all of the books he wanted, all of the time he needed, and all of the canned food his body required. What he lacked was simply a skilled optician. He lacked anyone with the professional competence to design and fit reading glasses. He also lacked an optometrist to prescribe corrective lenses. He lacked the people required to weave the glass, the people to dig out the needed sand and lime, and the people to heat these ingredients together into sheets. For that matter he also lacked the skilled people needed to make eyeglass frames, and the people who shape the metal or plastic they are made from. What’s more, he lacked the people to transport all of these materials, and to train everyone in the entire process of making reading glasses. He had neither the financial, physical nor human capital to make any of these things possible. In fact, while Bemis thought “there was time now,” in fact he had not gained time but lost it – by losing the productivity of everyone else in the global economy.
Like the pencil in Leonard E. Reed’s “I, Pencil”, no one person is able to make eyeglasses. We are able to produce them, as everything else, only through Smith’s invisible hand that metaphorically represents the division of labor, or specialization. We are able to obtain them only through barter, facilitated by the use of money. Production is a chain, and every person involved is a necessary link – tied together by enlightened self-interest, at least to some degree. We are able to produce every form of wealth we have – including Bemis’ glasses, books, and canned goods – not through a futile bid for self-sufficiency, but through the proven efficiency of marketplace interdependence.
