comparative-advantagelisted

# Comparative Advantage ## Overview Mutually beneficial specialization depends on *relative* productivity, not absolute. Even if you are better than everyone else at every task, you gain by focusing on tasks where your opportunity-cost ratio is lowest and delegating the rest. The right question is not "am I better at X than them?" but "am I better at X *relative to Y* compared to how they are?" Proved by David Ricardo (1817); called "the only proposition in economics that is both true and non-obvious" by Paul Samuelson (1969). Composes with [`opportunity-cost`](../opportunity-cost/SKILL.md), [`pareto-principle`](../pareto-principle/SKILL.md), [`circle-of-competence`](../circle-of-competence/SKILL.md), [`theory-of-constraints`](../theory-of-constraints/SKILL.md). ## When to Use - Founder time allocation across activities; team division of labor - Build vs. buy / in-house vs. outsource decisions - M&A decisions; international operations / supply chain design (e.g. AI-chip re-shoring, chip export controls, semiconductor vertical integration) - Personal career or skill specialization decisions **Not when:** situation is genuinely single-task (no B to trade off); transaction costs swamp any gains; alternative producer's capacity is fully constrained. ## Coaching Novices (Adaptive Front Door) - **Engine mode:** user has a concrete allocation decision → run The Process directly. - **Coach mode:** user is unfamiliar or has no concrete case → guide step by step. In Coach mod