5 ms·
Sorry, I think it's very interesting and makes some nice points with beautiful language, but I don't follow the conclusion. It oversteps in arguing without proo
by bo1024 10y ago
Sorry, I think it's very interesting and makes some nice points with beautiful language, but I don't follow the conclusion. It oversteps in arguing without proof that all forms of enterprise must function just like pencils, soluble by the natural dynamics of a free market. But not all forms of enterprise have the same properties as pencil production.
You could imagine an antithetical essay "I, police" involving a lawless village in which each person trains extensively in martial arts and marksmanship in order to protect themselves. Then each realizes it is more efficient to focus on their own vocation and hire a private security guard. Then a few neighbors realize it is more efficient to pool their money and hire just enough security to protect their block, and finally the whole village realizes it is most efficient to pool their money into just enough security, at which point they realize they have formed a government with taxes and police force. The story could end with "It is a fact most astounding that the forces of an unencumbered free market lead directly to an inevitable centralization into a collective governing whole."
Of course this story does not prove that all affairs should be handled by the government; but the pencil doesn't prove the opposite either.
- BurningFrog 10y agoOne difference is that the pencil story actually happened. It describes real practical life. Your village police story OTOH is made up.
- falsedan 10y agoPretty sure there are police forces.
- wojt_eu 10y agoI usually hear about villages forming militias rather than hiring professional security. It would be interesting to read examples of primitive governments formed like that.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoIf you count in "hiring" security from within the community, then this would probably describe most governments.
- alienjr 10y agoBut non of them is financed voluntary and non of them was created in voluntary association.
- bsaul 10y agoI think any recently formed countries, created by pionners (Israel come to my mind, and kurdistan may be the next) would contradict your claim.
- alienjr 10y agoMost Palestinians and anti-government Jews in Israel wouldn't agree. Maybe Kurdistan will be the first country in which political elites (backed by populist voting majority) treat all their citizens as subjects and not as objects to achieve their own objectives. I hope so, I don't know much about Kurdistan.
- BurningFrog 10y agoYes, but none of them were formed in a village where people were first martial arts experts, then tried hiring private security guards, and finally realized the wisdom of creating a state with taxation rights to finance a police force.
- lmm 10y agoIt's the sort of thing that happened in history as best as we can tell. If you want cases where we've observed the whole process, the development of alliances in EVE online from groups of friends to large quasi-governmental organisations complete with legalistic codes has been fascinating to watch.
- jhbadger 10y agoThe pencil story is entirely a made-up parable as well. The author is simply imagining how the pencil industry operates -- he didn't literally trace the steps in the process himself and was a grocery wholesaler in real life, not a pencil manufacturer. If you agree with his political assumptions that the free market is ideal it all sounds very convincing, but that's the problem with any political diatribe.
- BurningFrog 10y agoNow you made me find an article about how Leonard Read researched pencil manufacturing for the essay: https://fee.org/articles/leonard-read-the-spiritual-economist/ https://fee.org/articles/leonard-read-the-spiritual-economis... If such a high profile and somewhat controversial essay was wrong on the details, I think we'd have heard about those errors.
- edblarney 10y agoThe point of the article is to express how something so trivial as a pencil is created by countless intelligent actors, working in kind of dynamic unison, without any controlling agent. The article makes the point very well - and it's something that definitely should be taught more in school. I think it's very easy for kids to grasp 'top down' control in government, teams or organizations - it's something so intuitive it does not need explanation. The concept of 'free markets' and their ability to facilitate amazing things is in some ways counterintuitive, and needs to be learned. So I think the point is fair. I don't think anyone is implying that all systems must operate in this manner.
- adrianratnapala 10y agoWhile "I, Pencil" is definitely a story from the free-market tribe, and the concluding paragraph pays due homage, the point of the article is not that "all enterprise [are]soluble by the natural dynamics of a free market". The point is that the simple things in our society are the product of very complicated networks of activity that nobody understands. And this is pretty universal, whether you are talking about pencils or police. Of course this complexity is not the only consideration that determines how things should be done. But it is a consideration that is usually ignored when people seek to regulate an industry.
- CaptainSwing 10y agoI agree with the criticism that you're making, but I think your police force comparison contains fallacies. Human institutions cannot be told from the assumption that we all began as isolated individuals and arrived at the solution of centralised control as the outcome of a set of rational collective choices. I'm sure there are many 'origins of the police' narratives, but one I know is the Metropolitan Police of London were developed explicitly to curtail the dock workers from exercising their customary right to take small amounts of the goods they were unloading home with them. To generalize from this (a dangerous game, I know, but this seems to be the flavor of the thread), institutions are constructed to protect the interests of one class from another