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To: PatrickHenry; jennyp
This article is unusually good; it has begat an unusually hysterical response from the bedwetting brigade.

Salient point of the economic model is that no individual actor in the economic activity has the knowledge needed to do all the things required to produce and deliver the simplest of goods, nor is any individual participant needed to direct oe coordinate the activity of hundreds of thousands of others in order for a product to be created, and even more stunningly, none of the people who contribute to the production of a particular product even need to care if it is ever made; a pencil is the example that Leonard Read used to illustrate this. No one on this planet possesses the knowledge required to make a pencil from scratch, and yet pencils are made and sold, cheaply, by the millions, every year, with no shortages or massive surpluses. No all-knowing, all-seeing "intellect" is required to plan, coordinate, or regulate the entire economic activity that is ultimately required to make a pencil.

Pretty cool....

55 posted on 01/26/2006 2:27:50 PM PST by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: longshadow
No all-knowing, all-seeing "intellect" is required to plan, coordinate, or regulate the entire economic activity that is ultimately required to make a pencil.

I really like the analogy of biological evolution and free enterprise. The more I think about it the more striking it is.

65 posted on 01/26/2006 2:30:53 PM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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