Specialization as a time and energy conservation strategy in Sporky-times

The Bayou Renaissance Man recently wrote a thought-provoking post titled The "little things" in emergency preparedness - and the value of time and energy 

This is probably a good time to play a riff on that theme with an emphasis on how "fixed costs" of enterprises incentivize specialization.

Consider making bread

A considerable amount of time is invested in kneading the bread dough, the time and conditions needed to allow the yeast to procreate and for the bread to rise. A significant expenditure in fuel is required to bring the oven up-to-heat.

Farm wives used to bake once a week. Baking bread was an all-day endeavor and if they were going to heat up their kitchen they were going to make as much bread as they could keep without spoiling.

The economics in small towns and villages were different. Since bread and beer are Siamese twins, the two businesses were often side-by-side and were often run by brothers. Both businesses use grain, yeast and heat. The waste from the bottom of the brewer's barrel was seed for the baker's sponge.

The baker could turn out breads and rolls six days a week as long as his family was supplied with flour or grain, wood, water, and the coin-of-the-realm to purchase items they did not have time to produce for themselves.

Uzbek bread-oven. An ancient design updated for gas heating.

Once brought up-to-heat, the oven can crank-out batch-after-batch with perhaps a slight rest between batches to bring the walls back up to the optimum temperature.

This specialization was a natural outgrowth of the sunk-cost of time and fuel.

Laundry

Laundry is another enterprise that has significant sunk-costs. Water is heavy which is invisible as long as there is electricity to run pumps. It takes a lot of Joules or BTUs to heat water...again, invisible as long as the grid is up to the task and/or natural gas is available.

But if things got shaky, then it makes sense to have one person wash for multiple households. The cleanest items get washed first. And then the slightly dirtier get washed in that same water and get rinsed with fresh water. Lather, rinse, repeat. Literally.

When the wash water gets too dirty to presoak the dirtiest clothing, it can go on somebody's garden. But, by graduating from cleanest to dirtiest, the water can get an tremendous amount of use before that has to happen. That saves water. It saves soap. It saves fuel to heat the water.

As Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man wrote..."What do these factors imply for an emergency situation?  Basically, they mean we're going to spend a lot more time, and require a lot more strength and energy, to accomplish tasks that right now are performed by labor-saving devices, and/or by buying goods and services we need rather than making and/or doing them ourselves."

Specialization is not just a good idea under these circumstances, it is almost a necessity.