Friedman on “I, Pencil” & the Invisible Hand
- Leonard Read, Milton Friedman
- Subject Area: Economics
Source: From I Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Reed (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1999).
Introduction, by Milton Friedman.
Leonard Read's delightful story, “I, Pencil,” has become a classic, and deservedly so. I know of no other piece of literature that so succinctly, persuasively, and effectively illustrates the meaning of both Adam Smith's invisible hand—the possibility of cooperation without coercion—and Friedrich Hayek's emphasis on the importance of dispersed knowledge and the role of the price system in communicating information that “will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.”
We used Leonard's story in our television show, “Free to Choose,” and in the accompanying book of the same title to illustrate “the power of the market” (the title of both the first segment of the TV show and of chapter one of the book). We summarized the story and then went on to say:
“None of the thousands of persons involved in producing the pencil performed his task because he wanted a pencil. Some among them never saw a pencil and would not know what it is for. Each saw his work as a way to get the goods and services he wanted—goods and services we produced in order to get the pencil we wanted. Every time we go to the store and buy a pencil, we are exchanging a little bit of our services for the infinitesimal amount of services that each of the thousands contributed toward producing the pencil.
“It is even more astounding that the pencil was ever produced. No one sitting in a central office gave orders to these thousands of people. No military police enforced the orders that were not given. These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another—yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago.”
“I, Pencil” is a typical Leonard Read product: imaginative, simple yet subtle, breathing the love of freedom that imbued everything Leonard wrote or did. As in the rest of his work, he was not trying to tell people what to do or how to conduct themselves. He was simply trying to enhance individuals' understanding of themselves and of the system they live in.
That was his basic credo and one that he stuck to consistently during his long period of service to the public—not public service in the sense of government service. Whatever the pressure, he stuck to his guns, refusing to compromise his principles. That was why he was so effective in keeping alive, in the early days, and then spreading the basic idea that human freedom required private property, free competition, and severely limited government.
Economics
- Aquinas on fraudulent dealing
- Atkinson: Protection promotes War - Free Trade promotes Peace
- Bentham on Usury
- Boehm-Bawerk’s Theory of Capital
- Böhm-Bawerk, “On the Completion of Marx’s System (of Thought)” (1896, 1898)
- Böhm-Bawerk, “Zum Abschluß des Marxschen Systems” (1896)
- Cobden’s Speeches on Free Trade
- Cobden: An Appreciation I
- Cobden: An Appreciation II
- Condillac’s Economic Thought
- Coquelin on Competititon
- Coquelin on Industry
- Coquelin on Political Economy
- Demsetz and Property Rights
- Early Republican Economic Policy
- Eugen Richter and the Critique of Socialism
- Famous Economists and Political Philosophers
- Faucher on Property
- Fetter’s Economic Thought
- Friedman on “I, Pencil” & the Invisible Hand
- Friedman on Capitalism and Freedom
- Garnier on the Origin of the Term Laissez-faire
- Garnier on the Physiocrats
- Grampp on the Manchester School of Economics
- Hazlitt, The Future of Capitalism
- Heyne, Economics as a Way of Thinking
- Higgs on the Influence of the Physiocrats
- Hirst on the Manchester School
- Hutt, Reflections on the Keynsian Episode
- Ingram, History of the Early Austrian School of Economics
- Invisible Hand Explanations of Society
- Jasay, The Capitalist State
- Jevons on Richard Cantillon
- Kirzner on the Economic Point of View
- Kirzner, Entrepreneurship & the Market Approach to Development
- Lachmann and the Subjective Paradigm
- Lachmann, The Significance of the Austrian School
- Lalor’s Cyclopedia - 19thC French Political Economy
- Lalor’s Cyclopedia - Preface and Table of Contents
- Marshall on The Growth of Free Industry and Enterprise
- Martineau on Property & Slave Labour
- Martineau’s Primer on Laissez-Faire Economics
- Marx’s Works
- McCulloch on Smuggling
- McCulloch on the Balance of Trade
- McCulloch on the Corn Laws
- O'Driscoll, Spontaneous Order and Coordination
- Polanyi and Spontaneous Ordering
- Political Ideas of the Classical Economists
- Rae on the publication of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
- Richard Cobden’s “I have a Dream” speech (1846)
- Rothbard on the Prehistory of the Austrian School
- Rothbard on the Public Sector
- Say on Colonial Slave Labor
- Say on Markets
- Say on Property Rights
- Selgin on Free Banking
- Sennholz, The Chicago Monetary Tradition
- Sirc, Problems of Economic Resposibility
- Smart on Boehm-Bawerk
- Smart on Wieser’s theory of value
- The Economic and Ethical Thought of Paul Heyne
- The Manchester School of Economics by William Grampp
- Tullock and Scientific Inquiry
- Tullock, Application of Economics in Biology
- Viner on International Trade
- Walker on Public Revenue (1899)
- Walker on the Wage Fund (1899)
- Walker on Wages (1899)
- Wicksteed on the Psychology of Choice
- Yeager & Smith on Central Banking