A link to the video referenced in the article.
Posted on 09/07/2014 1:47:00 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
How to gear the free market so that people floursh.
Two young girls sit on the front porch of an idyllic suburban home, staring at the wonder that is the modern smartphone. After one girl lists all the things the smartphone can do—“I can watch movies on it, read a book, talk with my friends...
...prompting the other girl to say, “I want one; make me one!” The smartphone then explains that “no one knows how to build even one of these things”—that millions of inventors, designers, miners, oil drillers, and factory owners around the world are needed to create just one. The smartphone enthuses that the competitive forces between smartphone providers help “inspire my company to make me more fabulous!”
While the girls listen in awe, the smartphone concludes that its existence seems “magical.” And when it comes to grasping the reach and forces of the market system, magical seems the appropriate word. Markets have enabled progress and prosperity far beyond what anyone even a century ago could have imagined... A well-functioning market offers lower prices and higher quality products. Indeed, as the smartphone reminds us, when we consider the various goods that emerge out of the “flowering of free cooperation, competition, and creation,” we have reason to marvel.
This is the lesson of I, Smartphone, a short film created in 2012 by the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (IFWE). The film pays homage to economist Leonard Read’s 1958 essay “I, Pencil,” in which a pencil describes all the economic forces, materials, and human labor that combine in the production process (what economists call “spontaneous order”) to create him.
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
This is really subversive!
Not quite as powerful as the original, which took a seemingly simple object to make the same point. Nobody really thinks that a smartphone or the networks it connects to are simple.
But how many people use pencils these days? Apparently, this video is updated so that people can relate to it and understand the principles of production.
Were you ever called a sourpuss when you were a child?
STOP That little girl.... stop being so incredible cute..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.