AWOL - Homework October 23, 2008 - I, Pencil

Message:
I, Pencil explained how the natural resources from the land to make a pencil should be left alone and to teach others about 'the act' upon making a pencil. Making a pencil is not only made out of 'wood', 'lead', 'metal' & 'the plug', also known as the 'eraser, but as well with the many workers and the process that the laborers need to go through in order to make a simple pencil. The message is to free those who make so much effort into providing the materials for just one pencil and to allow others to understand the struggle people go through to make the pencil; the 'know-hows compared to the non-know-hows".

Quotes:
#1
"There 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. I may or may not be among these items."

#2
"I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, since, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: to configuration of creative human energies--millions of tiny know-hows configuration naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding!"

#3
"Now, in the absence of faith in free people--in the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity--the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by government "master-minding."

Analysis:
In quote #1, I thought it was significant to understand that laborers do not go out of their way just to make a pencil because they want to make a pencil. Laborers go out of their way because they need to make a pencil. Situations like this often has a worker involved in "the dark method" where the laborer works much more, but gains less amount of money for how much he/she has worked. In relation to quote number three, the narrator gave an example about a mail man and his involvement to mailing all of these letters. The narrator tried to compare the workers who make the pencil, to the mail-man in order to explain that government, who is 'on top of it all', that is controlling most of the manufacturing and allowing this kind of labor to happen whether its from making a pencil or delivering all the mail.