The 1958 essay, written by Leonard Read, called “I, Pencil [1]” follows the story of how a pencil is produced and distributed, describing how a pencil gets from the tree to your hand.
The process is far more complex than most people realize and involves countless people – millions in fact – so many that you can’t actually name them all even though Read tries his best.
The story is written in first person from the point of view of the pencil itself and it goes on to detail its own complex creation, a family “tree” of sorts.
From a forest of trees to the store where you buy a pencil, the pencil tells us that “not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me” even though about a half-billion pencils were being produced at the time.
There are just too many stops along the way of production and too many people involved to give credit to everyone.
Just like every other product that gets produced.
In the production of the pencil, credit is given to the logs, the loggers, the saws, trucks, ropes, gear, miners, axes, motors, hemp, logging camps, food, chefs, cars, rails, engines, communication systems, paint, trucks, cars, erasers, factory custodians and more.
Just look around you where you work. It’s not just YOU that helps produce your work or service – or even just the supplies that you order. It’s everything around you.
Computers, tables, doors, glass, credit card machines, paper clips, phones, water bottles, calculators, mouse pads, paper, chairs, catalogs and more.
And all the people who were involved in creating those things.
Like I said, MILLIONS of people.
The essay calls the whole thing a “complex combination of miracles” and so it is.
But what we have today, with President Disaster and the democrats is a group of callous, sanctimonious, ignorant, American-hating fascists who are hell bent on destroying our capitalist system.
They are destroying EVERY step of the way of every product being made and every service being offered.
With their financial handouts and tyrannical policies and mandates, their quest to control our lives is resulting in shortages everywhere and the dire consequences of that are not far behind.
A supply chain, like “I, Pencil” describes is the entire economy. And it’s not just in the United States – unfortunately, we have to rely on the global economy as well.
It’s really beyond our comprehension to understand how many people are involved in getting a product made and put on a shelf for us to buy – or thrown into an Amazon box.
And with democrats in charge of things – and putting up roadblocks for businesses – things probably won’t get better any time soon.
At the end of the essay, Read concludes with, “The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited” and to let societies’ legal apparatus “remove all obstacles the best that it can.”
The lesson of “I, Pencil” is freedom.
A concept foreign to the democrat party – and outright rejected.