Not Even a Pencil Could Exist without Fossil Fuels

Authored by Connor Mortell for Mises Institute n 1964, Leonard Read wrote a genealogy from the perspective of a pencil, demonstrating the vast, complicated web of the structure of production that is handled by the division of labor on free markets. The pencil explained that no one knows how to make a pencil because of the myriad production processes involved: My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that