New at Reason: John Stossel on Spontaneous Order

February 10, 2011

The pencil is one of the simplest tools that most of us own. Yet no one person can make a pencil. Vast numbers of people participate in making the materials that become a pencil: the wood, the brass, the graphite, the rubber for the eraser, the paint, and so on. It's all without central direction, without these people even knowing they are all working ultimately to make pencils. Thousands of people mining, melting, cutting, assembling, packing, selling, shipping—and yet you can buy pencils for a few pennies each. That's spontaneous order, writes John Stossel, and it's replicated with every product we buy, no matter how complex. It’s also proof that the "best and brightest" stand no chance of centrally planning an economy.

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