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Pencils Are Unsustainable
What goes into the making of a single pencil? In 1958, Leonard E. Read asked himself that very question — and wrote an elegant explication:
I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, have a profound lesson to teach…. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because — well, because I am seemingly so simple.
In his piece we’re taken step-by-step through the entire process of how a single pencil is produced.
First, there are the many materials required to make a single pencil, among them: wood, rubber, paint, lacquer, graphite, metal, zinc, wax, and many other things.
We are then shown how these materials are really only the beginning of the process, for a whole industry is in turn required to produce each of those materials.
There is, for example, the lumber industry needed to produce the wood; the mining industry to mine and mill and smelt the zinc and lead and metal; the rubber industry, of course, and the paint and graphite, and so on.
Then, within each of these industries, there are numerous sub-divisions, such as chemical industries, which make up the groundwork for paint and lacquer, and the engineering companies to supply all the tools, and the shipping and transportation companies, and even the lighthouse workers to guide the ships safely into port.
Of course there is also the singular fact that our solitary pencil could neither be manufactured nor produced without all the various other forms of transportation required to get the products from place to place, and of course this transportation requires its own set of industries (not just oil), and on and on, all of which industries — and please take a moment to process this — are, in turn, no less involved than the manufacturing of the wood or graphite or rubber.
So that when everything is said and done, the making of one pencil requires thousands and thousands of people, most of whom have specialized knowledge and specialized jobs, in thousands of different industries. Furthermore, these people come from all over the world. No centralized planning committee imaginable, even with an army of super-geniuses, could organize the countless factors that go into the making of that one small pencil.
And yet in this country, as in all developed countries, pencils are so cheap and abundant that nobody thinks twice about them. How is this so?
The answer is devilishly simple: private property and the freedom to trade that property.
The freedom to produce and trade and then reap the subsequent rewards are what bring these thousands and thousands of people, from these thousands of different industries the world over, into peaceful and mutually beneficial cooperation with one another.
Think about that.
Think long and hard about it, I beseech you.
In fact, I insist you do.
Your entire understanding of human existence — whether you’re a billionaire, a bartender, or an artist, and whether you live in a cult, condo, commune, compound, or penthouse — depends upon it.
Your life depends upon it, I submit.
Think about some of the things you use in your day-to-day existence. Think about your private path of least resistance.
Think of your eyeglasses, which Galileo and Spinoza would have given their eyeteeth for.
Think of the exercise mat upon your floor. Think of the ab-roller for your core.
Think about the utensils you use to cook and clean your food, the cups you use to drink your potable water, and the faucets you use to turn that water off and on.
Think of the hoses and the sprinklers for your lawn.
Think of sponges and your soap.
Think of rope.
Think of chocolate truffles and think of the package that they come in.
Think of packaging again and again (and again).
Think of your clothing, no matter how fine or how shabby it may or may not be. Think of your underwear, down to the tag we do not see.
Think critically.
Think about your toothbrush and your toothpaste, and its tube. And the cap that goes on that tube.
Think of your lube.
Think about your medicine: aspirin, ibuprofin, Pepto, Lipator, antihistamines for the cough and wheeze.
Think of braces for your elbows and your knees.
Think of condoms, diaphragms, the pill.
Yes, think of those, if you will.
Think of your transportation — bicycle, train, plane, bus, boat, automobile, jumbo jet, or even your walking shoes — and think of the sheer number of discrete parts that each of these things contain, and which you use.
Think of other technological breakthroughs.
Can you?
How about your jacket and its worn buttons, the lovely denim of faded blue, the toothpicks and the gum you chew?
Your nylon tent, your bedding and your hygiene and your make-up.
Think of the alarm clock that every morning helps you wake up.
Think of your books and your paints and paintbrushes. Your chisel and hammer.
Your megahertz of memory if you’re a computer programmer.
Think of your keyboard and your mouse, your voice-recognition software.
Think of filters for your water and air.
Think — for chrissake — think of your pets:
Their food, their collars, their tags and shots. Think of their vets.
Think about your entertainment: wine and wine bottles, dark beer. Think of all the brandy that you’ve consumed or stored.
Think of your playing cards or tarot cards or magic cards, your hoops, your chess-or-checker-board.
Think of packaging again. Think of the packages that all your things arrive in.
Think of your gardening equipment, or any other metal or wood or plastic or glass items you may use.
Think of your ball-peen hammer and your nails and your screws.
Think of your tape measures and pliers, your wrenches, your saws and your multicolored chalks.
To say nothing of your electricity — the lights, the cameras, the watches, the clocks.
Your computers and modems, MP3s and stereos, word-processors and photo-editing software — and of course your phone, your phone, without which we’d be alone.
And televisions and lights (“More light!” said Goethe, then died) and musical instruments and medical equipment and rocket ships and edible water bottles…
Think of anything. Think of airplane models.
Look around you. Is your chair metal or wood? Does your desk or table have bolts and nails?
Notice details.
I insist, I positively insist.
Think of me as a kind of oculist.
Because I promise you — I absolutely promise — that the filthy, hardcore industry, which I believe in and love so much, the industry that went into producing, for instance, just one small component of your phone, or your bicycle, or the paperback book in your hand, or the shoes on your feet, or the glasses on your face, or the contact lenses in your eyes, or the ring in your navel, nose, or nipple, or the needles which tattooed your skin, that industry was amplified a thousandfold compared with one solitary pencil, no matter how cheap or how thin.
So please take one more look — and then look again.
Take one more look at the blue-black ink across your skin.
There’s a moral to this story and that moral is this:
Embrace technology.
Look suspiciously on the buzzword ecology.
Technology got us to this point. Only technology can get us beyond.
It is a magic wand.
Pollution? Technology is and always has been the one truly sustainable solution.
The wealthier the country, the healthier the country.
Which is why the poorest lands are the most polluted:
Poverty is what makes countries less able to cope with waste and pollution — because poverty is where the problems are rooted.
There’s something profoundly paradoxical in the quest for less technology and a more simple way of life, while flying the world in jumbo jets. In fact, it’s about as paradoxical as it gets.
Celebrate, rather, human progress and specialization.
Celebrate the division of labor that technology creates, thereby freeing us all to pursue the things we most enjoy and at which we excel, since we are no longer each yoked to the task of day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month survival, but can trade freely and peacefully with those who have the things we need and want, in exchange for the things we ourselves have in turn worked to produce — being no longer condemned to a life of drudgery and tedium.
(Money is only a medium.)
Celebrate individualization.
Celebrate civilization.
Civilization is the progress toward independent, private lives, wherein we are no longer dominated by the group, gang, tribe, or community but live freely: free to associate with others as we please, or not.
This is the fundamental thing you’ve never been taught.
It is, I say again, the only thing that’s truly sustainable. It’s what you’ll never hear from any of the postmodernists, the intellectuals, the politicos, the hipsters, the academic phonies and imposters:
Celebrate human freedom and the independent mind that freedom fosters.
Published in Economics
That’s great, many economists have used the pencil, did it begin with Read? And the things on that small list emerged only after millions of failures interacting with millions of other piece of this Darwinian process (Darwin got it from Adam Smith) and it just emerged, like we did. The failures are as important as the successes because this process corrects them immediately. Which is one of the reasons these things can’t be done from the top down by planners, or nudgers, or subsidies, or by the better insights of our betters sitting on a higher perch.
That is a long list of things to be thankful for!
And — at the risk of putting too fine a point on it — it doesn’t even scratch the surface.
Thank you for dropping by!
You’re too sharp @rayharvey
Ray, I wouldn’t worry about other people supplying and supporting things to be made for the benefit of me and mankind as long as the Government and especially Democrats are here to help me.
Wow Pal! Ok, I’m thinking! Great, great post – thank you! How often do you see a pencil? My sister, the one with the art talent in the family along with her 2 kids (not me – I can’t draw a straight line), sketched free hand a pair of drawings that I cherish today. She picked up a pencil, and copied a rooted sweet potato in a mason jar on her window sill, the roots going every which way, and the beautiful vine trailing down off the jar – so beautiful. She framed them, as a young mom, as a birthday gift to me.
The fact that a simple pencil produces such beauty, and employs so many, reminds me that we lack the knowledge to realize how important it is, no matter how simple, to earn a living, a wage, to support your family, which produces dignity, pride, accomplishment and food. Not everyone is college bound, but can offer something we need, and the unspoken benefits are worth noting. A robot cannot produce that.
I do, every day. Products of human ingenuity. We are quite remarkable, and “sustainable”. Actually, I was thinking about bread last night in my kitchen in this same way. How really complicated it is to make bread “from scratch”.
Forget the bread how about the flour.
Brilliant, Ray! As always.
You sarcastic son-of-a-gun!
Hardly that.
But you’re an absolute angel.
Thank you for reading.
Great post Ray! I especially want to highlight the above. At their core, the environmental left is anti-people.
They are! And they’re anti-fun.
A long time ago, I read an essay by an economist, whose name escapes me, about that very subject: a pizza. He focused specifically on the flour and bread — and how much agriculture goes into it. It was very eye-opening and persuasive.
Oh, tigerlily, you really know the way to my heart.
I’m about as sharp as a beachball, baby.
Free market economics and poetry, beautiful.
Ha-ha!
I’ve never seen that one before.
Poetry … you’re very generous and very kind, my friend.
Back in the 1980s I was working for Merrill Lynch as a broker in Seattle. We had monthly lunch meetings with the American Stock Exchange Club. At one of those meetings we had a presentation by a pencil company, one of the big, familiar ones, whose name escapes me. During that luncheon, held at the Washington Athletic Club, we were shown a video which described the manufacture of a pencil. It was fascinating. I had used pencils all of my life, but never before had considered the manner in which one was created. It is a very complex process, from the selection of the cedar used to the joining of the two halves surrounding the graphite and painting of the pencil. It is truly one of those things which we take completely for granted that could only have been invented and marketed in a free economy. As a teacher I had used quite a few brands of pencils, and there is no question which of them are the best quality. You get what you pay for.
I totally agree with you.
That’s actually what prompted me to write this.
I also think it’s an irrefutable argument for laissez faire.
The pizza you mentioned above and the pencil are both such good examples of the everyday items liberals and everyone else use all the time, as a way we can teach liberals why they can’t espouse the causes they espouse without constantly painting themselves into ethical corners.
Indeed. And nor can they be done (with anything remotely representing efficiency or equilibrium) whilst artificially constrained within borders where fiscal barriers are applied to “protect jobs”.
There is a fascinating book by a man (Gennady) who served as deputy manager of a Soviet factory (a lumber mill) during the Stalin era.
The most difficult problems faced by this factory involved the acquistion of supplies. Equipment and spare parts were always difficult to get, becaue of the rigidity of the planning process, and personal relationships were key, along with off-the-books trading and outright bribery. The plant was entirely dependent on the supply of raw lumber, and allocation decisions were arbitrary and very political. Gennady, whose father had been in the lumber trade before the revolution, was contemptuous of the chaos into which the industry had been reduced by the Soviets:
The free and “unplanned” and therefore ostensibly chaotic character of lumber production before the revolution in reality possessed a definite order. As the season approached, hundreds of thousands of forest workers gathered in small artels of loggers, rafters, and floaters, hired themselves out to entrepreneurs through their foremen, and got all the work done. The Bolsheviks, concerned with “putting order” into life and organizing it according to their single scheme, destroyed that order and introduced their own–and arrived at complete chaos in lumbering.
As Gennady says:
Such in the immutable law. The forceful subordination of life’s variety into a single mold will be avenged by that variety’s becoming nothing but chaos and disorder.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/31715.html
It was a good read.
Thank you.
Paper. Wasted by the ton. Yet one of the most capital-intensive industries on the planet. And tissue — waste by application — requires some of the most expensive single pieces of equipment to be found anywhere.
You can look it up…
It’s true, I know.
And yet it’s so abundant and so inexpensive that no one thinks twice about flushing Kleenex down the toilet.