Comparative Advantage

I just wanted to paste a little blip in here from a slashdot discussion. Barry and I had struggled a little with exactly what (definitionally) constitutes comparative advantage with regards to the Roberts - Schumer discussion. This snippet is a very concise and meaningful way to put it (well, it helped me a lot anyhow):

it's basically just a rehash of david ricardo's "comparative advantage" argument. it goes like this: there is a surgeon and a typist. the surgeon types 60 wpm, the typist only 40. however, despite the fact that the surgeon is faster on the keyboard, it is better overall for the typist to do the typing and leave the surgeon to surgery. Posted by Frymaster.