“I, Pencil” - Leonard E. Read

somi

This timeless and perspective-shifting essay was originally written by FEE founder Leonard E. Read in 1958 and is a must-read for anybody curious about economics. Read tells a story through the eyes of a pencil that details the innumerous forces behind market production, and how no single person could possess the know-how or resources to produce such a thing. (This is the first econ book I ever read, and it completely transformed the way I view the world.)

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I 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.
Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the USA. each year.