<P> In The Use of Knowledge in Society, Friedrich A. Hayek states: </P> <P> The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use (though he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it) after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it . Through it not only a division of labour but also a coordinated utilization of resources based on an equally divided knowledge has become possible . The people who like to deride any suggestion that this may be so usually distort the argument by insinuating that it asserts that by some miracle just that sort of system has spontaneously grown up which is best suited to modern civilization . It is the other way round: man has been able to develop that division of labour on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible . Had he not done so, he might still have developed some other, altogether different, type of civilization, something like the "state" of the termite ants, or some other altogether unimaginable type . </P> <P> The issue reaches its broadest scope in the controversies about globalization, which is often interpreted as a euphemism for the expansion of world trade based on comparative advantage . This would mean that countries specialise in the work they can do at the lowest cost . Critics however allege that international specialisation cannot be explained sufficiently in terms of "the work nations do best", rather this specialisation is guided more by commercial criteria, which favour some countries over others . </P> <P> The OECD recently advised (28 June 2005) that: </P>

What was the effect of early civilizations developing a division of labor