Economics is everywhere. Physicist Richard Feynman, while working at Los Alamos laboratory, re-discovered Adam Smith’s division of labor after some computer troubles and apparently didn’t even know it (he never mentions Adam Smith or the division of labor in this story):
In this particular case, we worked out all the numerical steps that the machines were supposed to do–multiply this, and then do this, and subtract that. Then we worked out the program, but we didn’t have any machine to test it on. So we set up this room with girls in it. Each one has a Marchant [old-timey calculator]: one was the multiplier, another was the adder. This one cubed–all she did was cube a number on anindex card and send it to the next girl.
We went through our cycle this way until we got all the bugs out. It turned out that the speed at which we were able to do it was a hell of a lot faster than the other way, where every single person did all the steps. We got speed with this system that was the predicted speed for the IBM machine.
-Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, p. 126.
Inertia Wins! 