http://www.sightline.org/publications/books/stuff/stuff_excerpt

What is freedom? Take driving for example. Are our freedoms are taken away when we aren’t “free” to go whatever speed we want? Don’t speed limits actually give us the freedom to drive on the roads in a safer environment, feeling more secure? Not all regulation is bad. Not all government action is bad. In much the same way, not all government action is good. North Korea demonstrates this all too well and in many other areas alike. There is no simple solution. No single right answer.

Really think about what people are saying. Don’t just follow blindly because someone said it well. Many aspects of this essay are true. But just remember it is not always so.

Funny how he goes to the effort to describe the wondrous distribution system of the oil refiners to “many retail outlets,” but fails to enlighten his pupils as to a) the incremental cost difference resulting from the hundred million or more additional distribution destinations there are in delivering mail to hundreds of millions of businesses and households, b) the incremental cost of doing so on a daily basis as opposed to retail refinery deliveries ending up at your local gas station twice a week. Impressively, Mr. Geiger is able to squeeze an additional artifice in his logic by further conjuring up the misleading image of postal deliveries being sent “across the street.”

I’m not taking a position as to which system is better, but the problem with kneejerk reactionaries like Mr. Geiger is they have a funny way of distorting the truth, misleading those looking for information and ultimately muddying the waters in what could be a spirited and intellectually honest debate. We’re never going to solve any of our most serious problems until dishonest fringe lunatics like Mr. Geiger can come to the table with honest, open dialog and logically constructed, factually supported arguments. Until then, this country’s in the toilet, demagogues from the left pitted versus angry, fear-mongerers from the right in a gruesome death spiral, with no hope for solving our problems and no progress for our children and our future.

I had two further intersting thoughts after reading I, Pencil.

First, the author concludes that nobody will endeavor to think of a way to do something the government is already doing, that we’re so limp and conditioned we can’t build a better mousetrap, yet this piece was published in 1958, Fred Smith graduated HBS in 1959 and went on to found Fed Ex shortly thereafter. Since that time UPS has also blossomed. I guess this author missed the mark with his predictions of doom and gloom at having a government run US postal system.

I loved the illustration of all the thousands of pieces and people that come together to get a pencil into the hands of a pupil, and it made me think again, how ignorant it is when folks like Mr. Geiger take to oversimplifying complex problems, and further, it begs the question, while capitalism is great, is gutting the middle class to reward crony capitalists and high level execs to the tune of the highest income gap in our nation’s history the cause of so much of our nation’s anger and divisiveness? When I read the I, Pencil piece, I have to ask why should a journeyman exec earn $50 million a year when his average employee makes less than 1 thousandth his salary, if like the pencil, bringing a successful product to bear is the result of myriad factors and efforts?