Ping
Good article.
Ouch - Go Tom!!
Mrs BN & I made a road trip of several hours yesterday, listening to the Audible version of Sowell’s “Knowledge & Decisions”.
The man is a national treasure! Unfortunately, totally under appreciated.
At the time I was incredulous. But now I understand.
Commencement = We’re going to commence looking for the jobs that ain’t there.
I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. The burden of the article is how diffuse are the inputs to make a simple item like a pencil. Of course a particular company - Eberhard Faber, in the example instance - made the pencil. But Mr. Eberhard and Mr. Faber did not simply speak the pencil into existence; the company has to have buildings housing machinery, and workers to operate the machines. But beyond that, the Eberhard Faber workers have to have food, shelter, and normal amenities - including those required by their families.And the same is true of the vendors who supply Eberhard Faber with the machinery they require, and all the obvious materials - wood, graphite, rubber, and the ferrule material and the enamel. All those vendors have their own equipment, workers, and supply chain. And in all cases the workers need food, shelter, and normal amenities. So although the pencil certainly does not exist without Eberhard Faber, society works together to make the pencil. And everything else.
The correct word for all the support which surrounds the total production of the pencil - or anything else - is society. Not government, note well, society.
The “public servant” of whom Sowell speaks would be utterly obtuse about the difference.
Usual misguided self-centered advice from commencement speakers:
” do what you love and follow your dreams. Even if that leads you into a homeless shelter because nobody cares about ancient Hungarian basket weaving and you can’t find gainful employment”
Better advice: “ find out what you are really good at and that you can do better than anybody else and figure out how to make money from it.”