I never read the essay, “I, Pencil.” This is truly frightening. We are allowing pencils to be a product of chaos. Overcoming this must be made a top priority.
First we need a federal mandate that all pencil makers be taken over by an appropriate bureaucracy, say, the Department of Education.
Next, all pencilmakers must be federalized immediately. This will insure their permanence. The logical next step is to seperate each of the materials into agencies, one for wood, one for lead, and so forth. A pencil czar will insure that all of these departments work together effectively.
Finally the President must mandate production and control usage. There is substantial waste and fraud of pencils. They are often left unsharpened and children are injured trying to sharpen them with penknives. A special self sharpening pencil for children is required. This is a perfect task for NASA. They certainly do not want all those bits of wood and carbon floating around in a space capsule.
Follow up legislation will be needed to insure that government pencils are required in all hand writing. There will be Tea Party extremists who will call for boycotting government made pencils. To overcome this pens and ballpoints must be outlawed. Indelible pencils will have to be developed, more work for NASA.
The pencil mandate could easily become one of the largest and most effective government bureaucracies, touching every aspect of social communication and private scrivening. With proper legislation, mandates and enforcement pencils can become a source of income to the government surpassing health care.
It is time we recognized the need for central planning for the lowly pencil. Truly it will become a source of pride that the US government knows how to make a pencil.
In these hard times wouldn’t it be wonderful if all government doles were in the form of pencils that the recipients could sell? This would provide an immediate boost of 100% employment and end welfare and unemployment with the stroke of an indelible pencil.
The mind boggles.