The Importance of I, Pencil

Finally, to wrap up this series, I'd like to show a video which essentially ties it all together. When you think about a pencil, it is as low-tech as one can get. And yet, no ONE person could make a pencil. The I Pencil movie shows how inexorably linked we are to one another all over the globe.

One of the ideas that got to me the the number of people required for any one of us to eat a ham sandwich. You need a farmer,  financial people for the farmer to be able to buy his farm and equipment, people to build tractors, the farmer needs to plant, water, fertilize the wheat, keep it healthy and pest free. He must harvest it, thresh it, pack it and have it transported to the mill. There people will grind it into flour, pack it and ship it to bakeries where other people will use even more equipment and ingredients gathered from other places (salt, water, etc.) to bake the bread and then ship it to the supermarket, where someone is required to stock the shelves and someone else to sell it to you...and that's just and extremely simplified story about the bread...We haven't even got to the ham yet! What? You want cheese on that???

And all of this happens routinely every day without a moment's thought! My deepest thanks to Leonard Read for his profound insight over 50 years ago.

"No person knows enough to be able to control our lives." --Walter Williams

Or as F. A. Hayek put it, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Trade & Specialization

This topic, in my opinion, is very closely related to connectivity. We may think of it as countries trading goods and services, but that's just a product of our truly amazing brains being able to abstract highly complex issues without a second thought! 

You see, countries can't trade with each other, because they have no hands! For that reason, they also cannot build or manufacture things or provide services. ONLY PEOPLE can do those things. 

So when we by Japanese cars, for instance, our country is not buying from Japan. The people in our country are buying a product manufactured and sold by Japanese people. Because it is difficult to think of the individuals going to work in specific factories, first we group things by make or brand, then we group makes and brands by countries. 

The problem is that when we talk about it in those abstract terms, we lose sight of the fact that it is one or more individuals connecting to one or more individuals to buy something they have made because it is cheaper or better or simply because we like it more.

At the end of the day, buying, selling and trading are really about people! It's all about people serving other people in order to be able to fulfill their own aspirations! What could be more beautiful and life affirming than that?

CON---NECTIVITY

An idea that I have been talking a lot about with my students is individualism. There are a number of misconceptions surrounding this term. To my mind, in individualism, the individual is NOT the end, but rather the beginning. The end is what individuals can do when they come together through voluntary interaction, each one contributing his unique gifts and talents to create something greater than the sum of the parts.

It is not about being self-absorbed and self-indulgent but quite the contrary; it is about fulfilling the imperative to be the best individual one can possibly be. I've often said this the obligation we have to ourselves. That doesn't mean we all have to be rocket scientists who perform brain surgery on the side...unless that's what YOU desire! It just means that we should strive to live a life that will leave us satisfied with ourselves when our inevitable end comes! In other words to lead a life worth living as defined by the person living that life.

Many fear that individualism will lead to atomism, but I think that fear is unfounded because even atoms only very rarely exist alone. They come together through mutual attraction to form molecules which benefit both atoms by sharing their outermost electrons.

These molecules then are greater than anyone of the single atoms. Take water, for example, 2 hydrogen atoms get together with an oxygen atom and form water...none of them could do that on their own...and none are "forced" to come together either. The hydrogen atoms could (and do) bond with other atoms as does oxygen which even forms bonds with other oxygen atoms, but to make water...

For me, that is what connectivity is all about. Check out the video and see for yourself!