We Are Not Pencils

n December 1958, early American libertarian Leonard Read published a blockbuster essay in the Freeman, which had a few years prior been acquired as a for-profit project by his Foundation for Economic Education. In “I, Pencil,” Read outlines the staggering complexity of the globe-spanning market network by which an object so seemingly simple as a common pencil is brought into being.

Countless laborers have been involved even in the production of the wood component by the time it reaches the pencil factory, all the way back to the lumberjack who chopped down a tree a few hundred miles away; and of course we must consider the factory workers who assembled the truck the lumberjack drove to the forest that day, the craftsman who forged the axe he swung to fell the tree, the South American peasants who picked the beans he ground and brewed for a cup of joe before heading in to work that morning.

Read Full Article »