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> No. The pencil is built because of the incentives (read: potential for profits) for each of the people involved. I never claimed otherwise, so that 'no' is u

by deogeo 7y ago

> No. The pencil is built because of the incentives (read: potential for profits) for each of the people involved. I never claimed otherwise, so that 'no' is unnecessary. > I, Pencil is a story that shows government intervention is not needed to build the pencil. No-one claims government intervention is needed to build pencils or more complex goods. But it is needed to, for example, prevent corporations from polluting rivers with mercury: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease The whole story is nothing more than an attack on an implied strawman.

davidw 7y ago
> The whole story is nothing more than an attack on an implied strawman. I think when it came out, the world was a very different place. A large chunk of the world lived in command economies (USSR, China, etc...), and even in the west, where WWII and the massive government involvement in the economy was a very recent memory, the notion that someone could just calculate all the pieces better than the market probably wasn't quite so foreign as it seems today.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I probably can't find it now but 15 years ago read an essay that made a case that 'the pencil' was complete bullshit when it was published. And is even more so today. AKA Pencil manufacturing from farming and harvesting cedar to making the steel for the metal band that holds the eraser is vertically integrated.
  - droitbutch 7y ago
    Without seeing your article and without at least providing some of the supporting reasons why the article arrives at this conclusion - your argument makes no headway into disproving I, Pencil. The pencil today, as are many other products, is produced by the free market and many many entities along the way. Focusing on whether companies vertically integrate miss the bigger point that it is free markets and Capitalism which provide us with the world we have behind us in the Western world.
- anoncake 7y ago
  Ironically, we've got a lot better at calculating things since then.

by deogeo 7y ago

davidw 7y ago

> The whole story is nothing more than an attack on an implied strawman. I think when it came out, the world was a very different place. A large chunk of the world lived in command economies (USSR, China, etc...), and even in the west, where WWII and the massive government involvement in the economy was a very recent memory, the notion that someone could just calculate all the pieces better than the market probably wasn't quite so foreign as it seems today.

Gibbon1 7y ago
I probably can't find it now but 15 years ago read an essay that made a case that 'the pencil' was complete bullshit when it was published. And is even more so today. AKA Pencil manufacturing from farming and harvesting cedar to making the steel for the metal band that holds the eraser is vertically integrated.
- droitbutch 7y ago
  Without seeing your article and without at least providing some of the supporting reasons why the article arrives at this conclusion - your argument makes no headway into disproving I, Pencil. The pencil today, as are many other products, is produced by the free market and many many entities along the way. Focusing on whether companies vertically integrate miss the bigger point that it is free markets and Capitalism which provide us with the world we have behind us in the Western world.
anoncake 7y ago
Ironically, we've got a lot better at calculating things since then.