Commentary
Years ago, one of my high school teachers showed us the great essay by Leonard Read called “I, Pencil.” We used pencils in those pre-internet days, and my “young mind full of mush” (hat tip to Rush Limbaugh) was inspired by the essay’s message: the common pencil, in its components, is extraordinarily complex and the result of the free cooperation of unquantifiable interested parties.
No one person makes a pencil. A pencil is made by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, and yet it is sold for pennies. The government did not commission the pencil. No legislation of Congress authorized it. The pencil is a marvel of free market capitalism….