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| Click pencil and scroll down for I, Pencil |
I’d heard of this famous essay from 1946, a parable really, about how many people it takes to make a pencil. Forget “it takes a village”, as Hillary said. It takes a world to make a pencil. And it’s made without a single person in that world chain thinking that they’re making a pencil or having any aim to make a pencil.
I arrived in China in 1976 when the communist party still believed that they could plan how to make a pencil. Result: no pencils. In winter, courtesy of central planning, there was only one vegetable available: Pak Choi (白菜). Now, since they decided to let the market decide from 1980, they have every food imaginable. And every consumer good imaginable. That’s the magic of the market. That’s the mire of central planning.
A conservative site criticised the essay “I, Pencil” recently. Too libertarian for them. And Dominic Pino defends it. As I would, a left-libertarian as I’ve found myself to be.
