America by Heart, by Sarah Palin: on Free Trade

Milton Friedman: Chain of producers making a pencil need not like each other

"None of the thousands of persons involved in producing the pencil performed his task because he wanted a pencil. Some among them never saw a pencil and police enforced the orders that were not given. These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another--yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil."

Sarah Palin: Government is unnecessary for economic cooperation

This argument has been around for a long time. I remember back when I was studying the American economy in my high school history class, the late economist Milton Friedman had won the Nobel Prize in economics a few years earlier and he was all the rage. Friedman uses the making of a pencil to illustrate the power of human economic freedom--and the damage government can do when it steps in to replace the collective energy and decision making of free individuals: "None of the thousands of persons involved in producing the pencil performed his task because he wanted a pencil. No one sitting in a central office gave orders to these thousands of people. None of their differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil.