I scream. You scream. We all scream for iPencil.

The first reading assignment. I, Pencil by Leonard E. Reed is a thrilling tale of how a pencil is made.

Actually I found this story very interesting as it describes how our economic system is not run by just one person and is based on self-sufficiency. Instead I, Pencil describes how a pencil is created by several people in a society where we all work together. There is no master mind.

I always thought that pencil companies would know how to make a pencil, but upon reading Reed's paper, I realized that the company only knows how to get the materials to the people who can make the pencil. The companies get the graphite from Asian mines and the wood from western USA. The materials come together at factories where different people are dipping the wood in lacquers and making the rubber erasers. I never really realized the complexity of our economy.

That was the intuitive part of Reed's paper. The fact that he used a pencil, not a car or a complex item, to get his point across. He showed that the pencil is created not by a master mind, but by the invisible hand. I was amazed out Reed's ability to explain this idea that guides our economic system. How the coal miners and lumberjacks exchange their goods and abilities for money so the next part of the pencil making process can continue. It just happens and it seems as if it happens with such ease and very little motivation.

However, questions remain about Reed's story. Why did he bring up the mail department and the governments control of it? It seems to contradict the pencil idea for a little. Also, it seems as by writing this, Reed has done sufficient research and it seems that if someone wanted to they could create a pencil they could. This story was written over 50 years ago so can someone make pencils today and what is the economic effect of that? And finally, why has no one tried to monopolize the pencil industry? Despite legal restrictions of monopolies, it seems that if a company really wanted to, they could monopolize the entire pencil industry and each process involved, in a very Rockefeller form.

The idea of I, Pencil may have purely been to introduce the ideas of Adam Smith's invisible hand in a way that makes sense; he used a simple item. Personally, I feel like I understand the whole community process of our economy because Reed used a pencil and not a more complex item, and I am starting to believe that our economy is truly run by an invisible hand. The whole idea that there was an exchange of coal and lumber and rubber to make the pencils seemed so smooth and flawless that an invisible hand must have been doing it. This whole community idea is very interesting. The only other point that I, Pencil may have had was to challenge it's readers to make a pencil. Challenge accepted!