The “miracle” of the market won’t save us from ourselves
So be careful where you put your faith.
In his 1958 essay I, Pencil, Leonard E. Read celebrated the marvels of the free-market by describing a pencil’s genealogy, from forest to classroom. He argued that even for something as unassuming as a pencil, not one person has the knowledge, on their own, to obtain and assemble the litany of ingredients needed to create it. Instead, as if by a miracle, the free-market’s price mechanism guides the intricate construction process by introducing buyers to sellers, bringing the pencil into existence. The idea won more fame in 1980 when Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman featured the essay in his book and television show Free to Choose.
Read’s religious beliefs, and the prevailing anti-communist zeitgeist of the time, influenced his praise of the free-market as a miracle. He sat on the board of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, the pastor of which was a staunch critic of the Social Gospel and of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Read’s disdain for the socialistic perspective those doctrines advanced, which was anathema to America’s business community during the Cold War era, evidently informed his libertarian attitude toward economics.
It was easier to be a free-market fundamentalist during the 1950s and ’60s. The US…
