Pencils And Politics

Who commands the millions of people involved in making a pencil? Who is in charge? Where is the pencil czar?

By George F. Will | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 13, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Sep 22, 2008

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  • Posted By: trythinking @ 10/04/2008 11:11:16 PM

    Bad timing, George. What a wonderful fairy tale of how everything is okay, as long as you leave it alone and not try to influence market forces. Yet it's the fervor for deregulation and the idea that government is evil that got us a $700 billion comeuppance. The failure of Republican-led government to apply anti-trust law and to regulate and enforce our regulatory laws is abhorrent. For you to write about the wonders of unfettered market forces at this time is unbelievalbe.

  • Posted By: grej @ 09/14/2008 5:41:27 PM

    One Basic economic fact you need to know:
    The government takes. It takes money. It takes property. It produces nothing. It does not earn anything.

    It re-directs wealth according to the whims
    of a few powerful people in Washington(elected and unelected).
    Before Jimmie Carter, there was no Depts' of Education and Energy. We are spending $500-600 billion

    combined each and every for these two behemoths. Are we getting our money's worth? Who cares?

    It does provide some necessary services for sure. Unlike private industry services,however, there is no

    competition.
    So there is no economic referendum which would demonstrate(and kill off) whatever
    services are the least needed or no longer justified or necessary.

    What is a billion dollars?

    If you spent $1000 a minute 16 hours a day(I'm allowing 8 hours for sleep, eating, etc.) it
    would take over a thousand years to spend a billion dollars!


    There is also the problem of waste and inefficiency. All these things
    can only be addressed by putting constraints on governmnet income(taxes)
    and through legislation, eliminating or reducing unneeded programs and thereby feeding
    capital to the private sector.

    One example is post-high school education. There is a legitimate need.
    However, in large part because of government largesse we are
    allowing students to access to higher education who couldn't even
    get into college in most other industrialized(and even third world) countries.
    And there is evidence that because of government policies, some of
    our best and brightest students are not getting the kind of challenging education
    in high school that they need.

    Government has grown to be such a large sector of the economy that it is
    a balancing act to get it under control. The beast has to be tamed,though.

    • Posted By: thinkb4acting @ 09/15/2008 4:19:17 AM

      "If you spent $1000 a minute 16 hrs a day for 1000 years..." In the US, a billion is a thousand million. Your multipliers actually add up to approx. $350.6 billion, not one billion. If YOU were the only one spending it? Ludicrous comparison - way out of 'scale. Comparing personal expenses to a government agency or even a small private business is ridiculous, unless you're a billionaire yourself, I suppose. Makes for emotionally charged arguments and useless conclusions. It 's much more accurate to say it costs our approximately one hundred million taxpayers $10 each for every billion spent, or $10,000 per trillion. Have fun figuring out how much your families share of the ballooning national dept and interest payements are

      • Posted By: lightveder @ 10/04/2008 11:54:32 AM

        But when doing the calculation of your family's share, remember that we don't have a) a system that taxes everyone equally (every person pays $x regardless of income), or b) a flat tax (every person pays x% of income), but rather c) a graduated system in which the top 1% of income earners pay 40% of the taxes. Unless you are in the top 10% of earners, using (c) for your calculation will produce a much lower result than using the more common (a)

  • Posted By: Vcubed @ 09/27/2008 12:57:54 PM

    A beast in a pinafore, your dressing up of the invisible hand.

  • Posted By: DouglasGH @ 09/23/2008 1:43:38 PM

    Dear George Will,
    Thank you for reminding us that the essence of all great comedy is timing. Your parable in favor of self-interest unfettered by common sense limitations (or humanity for disaster victims) appearing as our financial markets stand poised on the brink of collapse was truly hilarious. Or at least it would have been if so many of us who never took out a sub-prime mortgage or invested in one didn't nevertheless stand to lose our jobs and a substantial portion of our life-savings in the event of a collapse.

    Markets unrestrained by regulation represent greed untempered by wisdom. However, in other ways, your column was very educational. It is now clear to me why so many of our churches are perennially short of funds. When Katrina hit, their members rushed to the Gulf Coast to give away blankets, food, and water, forgoing the opportunity to find out just how much men, women, and children who are dying of thirst will pay for a sip of water.

    Those of us who favor common sense regulation do so not because we don't understand how markets work, but because we understand them better than you, and we are unwilling to accept the cost in human lives. We favor common sense regulation because there are ideals that we hold higher than self-interest, and because we worship God and not mammon. Come and join us. We would welcome you.

  • Posted By: mcbrummer @ 09/20/2008 12:30:47 AM

    I read George Will's "Pencil Czar" column as an allegorical argument espousing the theory of evolution and rejecting the idea of intelligent design, as well as a literal endorsement of the free-market system. The article was compelling on multiple levels...brilliant!

  • Posted By: philosoholic @ 09/18/2008 10:57:27 PM

    This is an interesting article. But why are "prices" the equivalent to " the rational allocation of resources."? I would think that 300 Billion dollars of bailout -so far- would indicate that markets are far from always being rational. In other words, when you say that " To disrupt markets is to tamper with the unseen source of the harmony that is all around us." it appears that you are saying that the current financial meltdown is harmonious. A kind of harmony we don't seem to want...

    • Posted By: Andrew D. Whitmont @ 09/19/2008 4:52:29 PM

      What makes you think the meltdown requiring the rescue cash infusion was the result of "free market forces" and not changes in legislation that enabled, nay encouraged speculators to go overboard?

  • Posted By: Andrew D. Whitmont @ 09/19/2008 4:49:51 PM

    That's all very nice, but it means that corruption and graft, such as laws passed that allow big bucks contributors who "own" legislators, and get unfair advantages this way, will also always exist, just like the author's example of "mediocre schools".

  • Posted By: Andrew D. Whitmont @ 09/19/2008 4:48:22 PM

    This is all well and good, but that means government graft and corruption, lobbyists promoting the passage of laws that benefit the big bucks donors, etc will always be there, just like the author's examples of "mediocre public schools" etc.

  • Posted By: citizen1000 @ 09/17/2008 7:56:33 AM

    Capitalism is the great engine that has made teh United States the economic leviathan of the world. Capitalism has also given us booms and busts, wealth and starvation, democracy and tyranny. If, instead of pencils and flashlights, you were talking about food, water, shelter, energy, and access to basic health care, it would be clearer that "market corrections" involve people perishing because they do not have the money to acquire the basic necesities of life. Not only is the death of millions lamentable, it is the forge that creats revolution and terrorism. World War II, you may recall, was preceded by a period of market correction.

    Parables about pencils may appear to be simple, but reality is a lot tougher. If letting millions starve is your idea of the beauty of the markets, we have that already in Africa, and more is on the way, thanks to the hands-off approach to regulation so deified by the current administration. Or you could talk about real solutions, which will be messy, involve compromises, and will not adhere to some dogmatic purity.

    • Posted By: linda in cincinnati @ 09/18/2008 2:19:01 PM

      How can anyone "regulate" personal trust, mercy, charity, honesty, or last but most important, love?

  • Posted By: pdubya @ 09/18/2008 1:32:35 PM

    George: Thanks for the good read. I'm glad you're reading www.campaignforliberty.com. Keep up the fruitful educational efforts.

  • Posted By: WhoAreYouKidding? @ 09/18/2008 1:18:34 AM

    To gdavidbell: Spare us the same old, tired and refuted arguments. Are you kidding? The loggers, miners and workers cannot afford a pencil? Your insistence on seeing things through the blind of ideology made you miss the entire point of the article. There was no analogy. He gave an example (actually three examples). He said that people together acting in their self-interest create a balance in the system. That is an indisputable fact, proven by history, which liberals refuse to acknowledge.

  • Posted By: WhoAreYouKidding? @ 09/18/2008 12:54:39 AM

    To gdavidbell: Spare us the same old, tired and refuted arguments. Are you kidding? The loggers, miners and workers cannot afford a pencil? Your insistence on seeing things through the blind of ideology made you miss the entire point of the article. There was no analogy. He gave an example (actually three examples). He said that people together acting in their self-interest create a balance in the system. That is an indisputable fact, proven by history, which liberals refuse to acknowledge.

  • Posted By: WhoAreYouKidding? @ 09/18/2008 12:53:25 AM

    To gdavidbell: Spare us the same old, tired and refuted arguments. Are you kidding? The loggers, miners and workers cannot afford a pencil? Your insistence on seeing things through the blind of ideology made you miss the entire point of the article. There was no analogy. He gave an example (actually three examples). He said that people together acting in their self-interest create a balance in the system. That is an indisputable fact, proven by history, which liberals refuse to acknowledge.

  • Posted By: WhoAreYouKidding? @ 09/18/2008 12:52:35 AM

    To gdavidbell: Spare us the same old, tired and refuted arguments. Are you kidding? The loggers, miners and workers cannot afford a pencil? Your insistence on seeing things through the blind of ideology made you miss the entire point of the article. There was no analogy. He gave an example (actually three examples). He said that people together acting in their self-interest create a balance in the system. That is an indisputable fact, proven by history, which liberals refuse to acknowledge.

  • Posted By: gdavidbell @ 09/17/2008 11:13:15 AM

    Nonetheless, there is a boss of the pencil factory and of the loggers of the cedar trees and the miners of the aluminum. None of these operations would work without the guidance of expertise. There are also owners of these operations as well as employees. It is a basic fallacy of argument by analogy to emphasize the similarities that support your conclusion and ignore or de-emphasize the dissimilarities that undermine your conclusion.
    And what do we do about a "free" market that so miraculously produces a pencil that is not affordable by the factory workers, loggers and miners?

  • Posted By: davids25 @ 09/16/2008 12:54:27 PM

    Dear Mr. Will,
    Thank you for the excellent article refuting the idea of an intelligent designer and creationism. Your clear and concise critique of our cherished capital market outlines several salient ideas that can be direcly attributed to the theories of evolution and natural selection. I never realized that economic theory and theology had so much in common.

  • Posted By: TWG55 @ 09/15/2008 10:22:33 PM

    It sounds as though Rusell Roberts relied rather heavily on Leonard E. Read's classic essay, "I, Pencil," first published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman. I hope that Mr. Roberts remembered to credit Mr. Read.

  • Posted By: joshdvm @ 09/15/2008 3:56:56 PM

    "Government is important in establishing the legal framework for markets to function."--But only insofar as that is government's only legitimate function. However, if you're implying that legal frameworks can only be established by government, you're undermining your own articles thesis. If social cooperation miraculously and spontaneously produces pencils, why shouldn't also be able to produce something even more mundane as a legal framework? Hint: society no more needs a 'law czars' than it needs a pencil czar.

  • Posted By: linda in cincinnati @ 09/15/2008 3:52:39 PM

    ladalang: The beauty of America's "brand" of freedom allows anyone, including you, to move-on to Austria. It's a choice I wouldn't trade for all the tea in China. Capitalism is a daily roll of the dice so they must strike while the iron is hot. Don't like it? You have a choice to be grateful or harbor anxiety driven resentment. This is America thank God.

  • Posted By: joshdvm @ 09/15/2008 3:49:19 PM

    "Government is important in establishing the legal framework for markets to function."

    Only true insofar as that is government's only legitimate function. But if you are implying that legal frameworks can only come from government, you are undermining the whole point of your own article. The question you now must examine is, if social cooperation solves the most complex problems and produces order spontaneously, why shouldn't it be able to produce legal frameworks as well? Hint: society doesn't law czars any more than it needs pencil czars.

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