Reading Analysis of 'I, Pencil'

What did you find interesting or uninteresting about the piece? Was there something that seemed intuitive or counterintuitive? Explain why.
It's almost ridiculous how many people and resources are involved in the creation of something so utterly small. Manufacturing in America seems so streamlined that you almost feel duped when reading about how much it takes to develop a pencil. When you walk into Wegmans in search of a yellow, Number 2 writing utensil you tend to only think about the fact that there is obviously a pencil factory somewhere out there in the world. After all, the product is right there in your hands. It hardly strikes you that there are other factories, worksites, and manufacturing plants--about a half dozen, even--that had a hand in creating something so little. The process seems to lack economical logic, and definitely appears to be counterintuitive. By having such a long process involving so many steps, one would think that the monetary cost would be overwhelming, yet Staples is currently advertising a Back to School Sale where a 6-pack of pencils costs $1. It's quite the phenomenon.


Discussion Questions
Leonard E. Read acknowledges that a pencil seems like a simple product, although "not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make [a pencil]." What would be the economic impacts of a society where manufacturing processes with numerous steps could be boiled down into one factory? Would this be 'better' or 'worse'? Why?


The author also asserts that humankind is slowly losing its freedom of creation. Where else do you see this occurring in our economic culture? Could there be any economic benefit to streamlining more processes or is the cost of autonomy not worth it?


Annotation
'I, Pencil' is of timeless importance because it describes the manufacturing steps that we tend to overlook or forget about. This affirms the idea that anything out of the ordinary is newsworthy. We may not understand all of the phases a pencil must go through to be a finished product, but a panic would ensue if there were suddenly no more pencils in the world. Today's society is addicted to normalcy. Read's article also illustrates the fact that people know very little about how the products they buy are created, and thus do not understand what they're really paying for. Because of the multitude of people and steps required to make a pencil materialize, Read asserts that the benefit of a free society where the government doesn't run everything is worth the monetary costs. We're paying for creative freedom.