Reading Analysis #1: "I, Pencil" (Week #1)

Analysis

• A)

Throughout your middle school and high school you read a couple of books and articles in order to pass your class. However I been in this course for less than a month and I just read an article that transforms or in a fact affects how I see normal products you see in a every day basis.

"I,Pencil" started first giving me a feeling of confusion about why would somebody dedicate a essay or their time in analyzing how a pencil is done. Or not even that but trying to convince people that actually nobody understands this product. I kept on reading and then start realizing about stuff I would not have thought before. How a pencil, the simplest thing, is form by materials all around the world and with such complexity. Something that throughout your life you can forget in a classroom, throw to a friend or even brake just for fun had taken thousands of hands, effort and a lot of things to be as how you see it. After I read this essay I talked to my parents in Skype and asked all of my family if somebody understanded the process of creation of the pencil or from where does it come from. Everybody answered "From a tree". And they could never imagine the graphite from Sri Lanka, the oil from Indonesia or the wood from California that all got together with many others to combine and create a simple pencil.

Maybe that part of the essay got my attention but it wasn't the part that really shock me. The part of this essay that is surprising is that all these people talking different languages, different cultures and all of them doing different things don't know that they are helping to create a pencil.  "No one knows" really describes how it doesn't really need a higher power or somebody to tell everybody that they are creating a pencil in order to actually creating it. Every person that took part in this creation was only doing what they where doing to obtain their own needs and wants not a pencil. No one actually wants this pencil to be done or are interested in the termination of this. How can this happened? Read only needed to use the pencil as an example to show everybody how something as simple as that couldnt actually be understanded by any one.
      A pencil, a handwriting instrument, that fulfills the need of the educational system for students to have something to write on but actually also fulfills the need of thousand of people that took part in the process of. After reading this article I could take the liberty to say that after asking 10 persons about the creation of a pencil none could get not even close to what is behind this little instrument.

By these reasons is why I consider this reading completely counterintuitive to society. How could expect all this complexity out of a pencil? Logically this massive complexity of process to create it and the fact that no one knows it not even the ones that take part in the creation makes it even more interesting that I thought it was.

"Readings can transform your way of viewing the world....read more and more and more"

• B) 

1. It has been said in the essay that "A Higher Power" takes part of the creation of the pencil since trees are not created by humans. Does that mean that humans are yet not self-sufficient of the products they create?

2. Since humans don't create trees and this is a material that is used everyday in order to create pencils, wouldn't that say that there would be a moment that we could finish the trees and will be obligated to plant more and more on our own? So can trees and oil be related since both are not created by humans but used only?

3.  Sri Lanka and Indonesia are both in South Asia. If you could establish a mass production company in South Asia and be in charge of the distribution of this around the world. Monopolizing the pencil market? Can that be a business opportunity for someone or is not even possible?

4. Since the products to create this product are in several countries. Is there a possibility that the United States can start creating this material in their own land? If there is now think about the economical booming that it will cause to the economy? If is not possible, are we talking about an eternal dependence of USA pencil companies to this countries?

5. Do you think you now understand what a pencil stands for.......?

• C) 

This reading was chosen for several reasons but I can describe 3:

• It is our first reading in this course and this course is the first one in our major. "I, Pencil" is the reading that will open our eyes to realize how we have much more to learn and how they are many things out there people don't understand. "I, Pencil" shall be remember as the first step we are having inside economics.
• Everything in this world has a reason and can be analyzed without just saying that becomes somethings seems hard to explain it was caused by a higher power. 
• In my opinion,  this reading is a prove of how Rizzo has told us several times that economics is not just about the money and wall street but also about social, religious or political factors. A big social factor in this essay is how society thinking of knowing a lot doesn't even know or understand the creation of something that might seem simple. Read, a great economist, analyse this factors and didn't mention financial or monetary factors in his essay proving that economics is more than that..

P.D. Great reading can't wait for all of the new ones upcomming.