I, Pencil

I feel that I, Pencil does a great job explaining the interconnectedness of markets and the necessity of certain freedoms for the market to be most effective. But the aspect of I, Pencil that was most interesting to me wasn't that every aspect of the product counts on innumerable other products and labors, but that all of those works depend on a series of technological developments that can be traced back to a point when man had nothing but himself and his environment without tools or skills. You can't cut down a tree without a saw, you can't make a saw without metal, you can't make metal tools without knowledge of smelting, you can't smelt without knowledge of fire and a hundred subsidiary steps along the line. Man's accumulation of knowledge is for me the most amazing lesson from I, Pencil. 

Questions:

I, Pencil accuses a centralized post system of being an attack on free people. Saying that people assume because they lack individual knowledge of the entire task, they see it as the domain of a higher power such as a government. But how is this any different from an individual looking at a corporation and saying the same thing? What if the individual sees 2 companies, or 10? Is there a point at which a number of post carriers is great enough that individuals begin to believe they could undertake the task, or part of the task, themselves? Or is the accusation that if the market is open that people will naturally fall into the places needed to create a service that is in demand?

Is it fair to say that oil costs less to ship from the persian gulf to the US than it costs to send a letter? Is this really true, and if so, is it due to poor cost management of the postal service, or an inherent difference between shipping oil in a tanker at low speeds versus moving a letter across a country rapidly?

Can we really leave everything to the “Invisible Hand” of the markets? Over time, the market has proven itself unreliable at dealing with the human rights and environmental issues, as well as being at risk to monopolies which create unfree situations. 

Conclusion:

I, Pencil illustrates the interconnectedness of a globalized economy. At this point in human development our products all depend on a vast network of people and an enormous history of technological development. We have to realize that in this setup small choices can have far-reaching effects.