Crime Against Humanity: Pensée Unique in Economics, 14

In short: the return to scale is the return on increasing in scale, that is, in size, and answers the question, Is it worth getting bigger? The more it is increasing the more the answer is ‘yes’, the more it is decreasing the more the answer is ‘no’, and if it is constant the answer is ‘doesn’t make any difference’.
Returns to scale are close relatives to economies of scale, and the economy of scale is the decrease of the production cost per unit of product one has by increasing in scale, in size, and therefore increasing the number of units produced. Both show the effects of an increase of scale; economy of scale shows the effect on cost of production per unit of product, return to scale that on the ratio between input and output quantities.
It has been said that constant returns to scale implies that all producers (whatever their scale of production) can produce goods at the same unit costs: and this makes self−production a feasible alternative to market production. And therefore that if labour is the only factor of production, self−production becomes the only option: and the market economy ceases to exist.
Once again Wil Coyote closes the book, and a thought balloon appears above his head: “Hmm… let’s see: suppose there are two people, A and B, each of them produces two different products, X and Y, and each of them produces one unit of X and one unit of Y a day, for a total of two X and two Y a day. Now suppose they apply division of labour, and A specialises in producing only X, and B specialises in producing only Y. Then suppose that after a while A produces two units of X a day and B produces two units of Y a day, for still the same total as above of two X and two Y a day. Shortly after both A and B would reverse division of labour and return to produce both products autonomously, if only for sparing the repetitiveness, the burden of the exchange and for the principle of risk−sharing, just in case one of them would ever get sick. That is, if there were no increasing returns to scale and scale economy, there would be no reason for division of labour, specialisation and exchange. Therefore, the fact that division of labour, specialisation and exchange do exist in turn demonstrates that their very reason exists, too: increasing returns to scale. Besides, it has been pointed out how in the case of a building, for instance, while its surface, and its related costs as factors of production, increase by the square, its volume, and its related production potential, increase by the cube… at the very least, if you compare a one−storied building to a skyscraper! And, still on the subject, learning, education, training are quite another such case: the more you invest in them, the more production simply booms!”