I, Pencil Summary and Analysis

Summary: 

I believe that the main idea of the story I, Pencil is that the author Leonard E. Read wanted to show us that it takes so much to build one little item. Not one person can make one object, it takes people and machines all around the world helping out when making products such as a pencil. The pencil is created by the natural forces (the Invisible hand) that controls people and things and makes people trade for goods/services. 

Quotes: 

1.  "Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication..."

2. "Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants."

3.  "...most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it... No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil."

Analysis: 

The deeper idea of the article, the main idea behind the main idea I believe is Capitalism. When the pencil speaks of the people that make it and the different materials needed to make it are all simple to the main factors of capitalism. The Labor in this story are all of the people (workers) mentioned in the story such as, the miners. The land in the story would be the tree, the seeds that plant the tree etc. The capital would be the saws, and the trucks. All of this is then provided by the household which then helps the factor market. The business makes more money because of the fact that the household is providing (through taxes) the cost of making all of these products (the pencil). While they're making more money they can make more of the product and then sell it to the household. In the story the person or thing that controlled all of this was the Invisible Hand. The hand can be construed as the Profit Motive, which is the chance for businesses to make more money. People buy into capitalism because of all the goods that come out of it.