Review: "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read"

To read an extraordinary essay on capitalism and money, I recommend "I, Pencil" by Leonard E. Read. Told from the perspective of an ordinary No. 2 pencil from the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company, Read narrates the complex miracles of money and manufacture that combine to create an object of seeming simplicity.

This fifty-year old work captures the full range of miracles that combine the energies and know-how of human beings from coffee harvesters, to miners and loggers, to various skilled craftsmen, to salesmen and managers into the instrument that enables human beings to record their thoughts and communicate. The marvel of it all is completed by the stunning observation that no individual human actually knows how to make a pencil yet thousands to millions (depending on how you count) combined their skills, talents and resources to create this little wonder. The other miracle, of course, is the absence of government dictate throughout the process.

If you want to read Milton Friedman's take before getting to the story itself click here.

In the alternative, click here to go straight to the story.

You will never look at a pencil in quite the same way.

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