To get a handle on how our complex society works, let's study a simpler earlier model. Let's go back to a time when few options were available to individuals. In the early Middle Ages, you were either:
a farmer (you worked for the land owner)
a fighter (you owned the land and fought for it)
or a monk/cleric (you prayed for the fighter and/or told of his bravery in written records).
You might also be:
a craftsman (you made stuff and traded it).
The Roman Empire had collapsed. It was all a region could do to defend itself against other tribes. The Church supplied written records and scribes. No one else had time to learn to read. Intellectuals didn't have much opportunity to marry, being too lazy for physical work and too sensitive or cowardly to fight, so they became monks or clerics. "If a man will not fight, let him stay in the church, and pray the livelong day for all our sins." (Song of Roland, late middle ages)
Specialization came later. Gradually as stability developed, farmers negotiated with the nobles for hunting rights and ownership of at least some of their own land. They traveled to nearby cities to sell food. Merchants developed these trading areas, and some farmers benefited from these, purchasing larger lands for themselves.
Fighters became noblemen or kings, who became interested in exploration and trade and tax bueracracy as means of enhancing their power. They also became supporters of the arts by which their bravery, just rule, and piety were glorified. They hired clerics from the church to share in government beuracratic tasks.
Clerics and monks, as thinkers, were not always cowards who upheld the bullying of the fighting class. Sometimes they questioned what the nobles were doing. Gentle monks like St. Francis of Assisi questioned the crusades and lusts of the fighting class and also questioned the greed of the rising merchant class.
Some celibate men preserved the ancient sacred and philosophical writings. They began to ponder more deeply about various subjects. Some became inventors and scientists and teachers of such. Monestaries grew into universities. Universities grew, full of students who begged for money from wealthy merchants.
Craftsman had become wealthy merchants who traded further distances. Mass production became possible though the textile mill and other inventions. Some merchants became part-time intellectuals, supplanting the church's role with a more secular emphasis of learning. They developed intellectual curiousity as they traded long distances.
Some of their sons went into more specialized jobs in the newer more complex society. Some became judges, as cities developed legal rather than chivalric codes; some became specialists in manufacturing. Some had the wander lust- they went to far off lands to fight the Turks. Gradually, trained professional armies supplanted the fighting role that had belonged to noblemen, who had become rulers and governers who did little fighting themselves.
The printing press was newly invented at the time of the Reformation, a most prodigious stroke of Providence that encouraged Biblical literacy.
Of course, the printing press encouraged secular interests as well as spiritual. Markets for diverse products and information expanded as travel and communication became more efficient as more people were learning to read and becoming curious about different places.
But remember, before all that, it was just four roles:
farmers
fighters
cleric/monks
craftsmen/trader
That was it- the most basic level of specialization of an agricultural society. Now, ask yourself, "How is my work related to the these roles?"
Suppose you're a modern farmer. Unlike the old serf farmer, you own your own land. In that respect you are more like the fighter of old, who owned large estates, but then, you are more like the trader of old, who sold his goods. Like the fighter/land owner, you have some "serfs" (Mexicans) working your land. Like the old farmer, you pay taxes to "fighters", that is, the government, to have the land defended.
Or suppose you are a businessman doing a profitable internet business. You are like the trader, but only because "nerdy" intellectuals (cleric/monks) are doing computer programing for you as various governments (fighters) are in delicate balance to provide you with growing markets worldwide.
You might be a professional teacher, but you're still basically a cleric/monk; a certain amount of lower economic status typifies you, like the "vow of poverty" of old.
You might be a free lance intellectual, like the roving poverty stricken monk of old- you write books, or produce artistic products, but only if you're lucky do you escape the essential "monkishness" of intellectual culture, perhaps meeting the right people, and having the good fortune to get published and marketed by the merchants.
You might be a worker in an industrial plant. Like the early craftsmen, you are "making stuff". But in another way, you are like the early serf farmers- you don't own the means of production; you just work it.
These four jobs describe the most basic amount of role diversity in an agricultural society. The greater diversity developed by industrial society is ultimately related to these four functions. By considering different levels of diversity, we can judge how much diversity we need; at least some of our children don't have to remain soley dependent on the high diversity high tech model that bottles people up in highly populated high cost areas and limits economic growth to large corporations. Smaller farms, businesses and services can thrive by cooperation with others relocating together for mutual trade to areas where real estate is less expensive.
Many areas currently depopulated by agribusiness would welcome small farms and businesses to relieve the difficulties of depopulation. We hear of troubles in the midwest where they are having to close local schools because of depopulation. A small town in Iowa was offering money to couples with children who would come there to live.
Corporate population congestion is codependent with agribusiness depopulation. Rather than aggravating the problem by pushing cities into the country through suburban development, we ought to relieve the extreme specialization of both the midwest and the coastal areas by sprinkling the midwest with repopulated small towns.
Much modern business requires less geographic proximity today. The low level of diversity or job specialization of the old small town would not be typical of a small town organized by diverse small businesses today. It would not be "backward" culturally or economically. Indeed, it would be a cultural and economic improvement for many.
Still, too high a level of diversity and too great a dependence on long distance trade makes for a fragile economic structure; it is dangerous for the world and unhealthy for the community. People ought to have the local community's own resources to fall back on if there is a collapse in world trade.
