Reading Assignment #1- I, Pencil

A. I found a number of parts of I, Pencil to be extremely interesting and eye-opening. For one, I never actually considered how much work goes into making what seem to be the littlest things, such as a pencil. As the essay shows, literally thousands upon thousands of people took part in creating a pencil, which is a tool that almost every single working person in today's world uses at least once a day. The article really has given me a new perspective on the value of items that seem as unimportant as a pencil.

A pencil provides a very good example of how we as human beings are
more than capable of creating very good solutions to societal problems.

But by far, the most interesting idea that I took away from the essay was whether or not we as a society may indeed be better off with as little governmental intervention as possible. The author's writing is extremely convincing in this regard.

I mean, just consider how much we as human beings have created to simplify our lives when the government has not regulated what we are and are not allowed to do. I think the best example shared in the essay was that of the email.

As our society progressed through time, simple letter sending through government mail became too slow of a process, especially when an urgent message needed to be sent to someone. People- "free people" as the essay calls them- developed an new way to send letters through E-mail, which costs a lot less in terms of how much time is being wasted sending one's message to a final address. 

The cost of sending an important letter in the past by mail was the lengthy amount of time it took for the letter to arrive at the desired destination (and not to mention, the monetary cost of buying an envelope, the paper used to write the letter and a stamp). Now, with email, communication is as seamless as people can receive emails within seconds. That takes away the cost of having to wait a lengthy amount of time to contact a person through a letter (as well as the cost of a stamp/paper/envelope). The government had absolutely nothing to do with the development of email. Email was all created by "free people".

This leads me to side with the author's point of view completely. While I do believe that some governmental regulation is important to maintain peace in our country, I truly feel that the less restrictions the government puts on us, the better. As we have seen throughout history, we as people are more than capable of responding to human need by developing our own creations- without the guidance of governing bodies.

B. 

1. The author is trying to argue that in many (if not all) instances, society is better off when government does not place restrictions on what we can and cannot do. We as human beings are more than capable of developing solutions to our own human needs- as seen by such creations as email, airplanes, etc. Is it at all possible that the author believes that we would be better off with no government at all? On that note, could we as a society live safe and productive lives without a government guiding us?
2. At one point in the essay, the author comments that oil/gas is shipped for less money than it costs to send a letter across the street with a stamp. How would not having such governmental intervention be reflected in our economy? For example, would monetary prices for items that our government plays a large part in obtaining (such as gasoline for cars) be as high as they currently are today if our government did not regulate society as much as it currently does?
3. The author mentions that we as people don't believe we can accomplish certain things that the government runs- such as delivering mail. The government takes care of our national defense as well. In today's day and age, is it in anyway viable to believe that someday, we actually could take over mail delivery, national defense, and other responsibilities from the government? If so, how would we go about doing that?

C. I, Pencil is an extremely interesting essay that explains a number of ideas relating to economics.

According to the author of I, Pencil, we as a society are more than capable
of taking care of ourselves without the over regulation of a government.

The majority of the piece explains how a pencil is not made by one single person. When you stop to think about it, there are thousands upon thousands of people who take part in the creation of a pencil. This idea can of course be related to the production of pretty much every single thing in the world no matter how big or small the item is.

Just to give an idea of exactly what I'm talking about, here are a couple of the tasks that go into the making of a pencil, as described in the essay:

-Trees taken down to use for the wood of a pencil. The tools being used to take down the trees are made by many people.

-People who cut down the trees and covert them into logs have to live in a camp on-site where the trees are being taken down, as it is a more than one day job. The camps of course have living arrangements for the workers, so consider how many people took part in building shelter for the workers. Also consider how many people we're involved with making all of the food and the electricity/water pipes in the house.

-Then there is also a countless amount of scientific elements that must be mined from the Earth's surface for the pencil to be made- such as zinc. Consider how many people had to work to find the zinc in the Earth.

-The eraser is made by something called factice, which is a product from the Dutch East Indies. Think about how many people are involved with finding factice and then shipping over the factice from the East Indies to wherever the pencil factory is. Think about how many people we're involved in making the form of transportation that is used to send over the factice.

Following the author's explanation about the creation of a pencil, he goes on to explain how man is capable of doing so many great things in the world when he is left to try on his own. 

For example, take a pencil. When a pencil was first created, there was no direction being given out by the government or some overseeing body as to how a pencil should be made. On their own, people simply figured out the best way to make some sort of writing utensil, which ended up with the development of the pencil. Email, airplanes, and many, many more tools we're created in the same way.

The author's point is that when we as a society are left to fix our own problems, we almost always figure out the best - or at least a very successful- way deal with them. We don't always need governmental intervention to fix our problems.

The author uses the example of regular mail. The government takes care of all of our mail, but is it really necessary for the government to do this?

Over time, we as humans could have adapted to the problem of not being able to communicate over long distances, and would have most likely figured out a process of how to best send letters to one another.

The end lesson the author is trying to make is that the government should remove certain societal obstacles/problems the best it can, but it should, for the most part, allow people to figure out how to make things/deal with issues on their own. The government should let human beings be free to invent and produce as they wish, because as history has proven, when the government has given humans the freedom to create new technologies, some pretty amazing tools have been produced.