I, Pencil

Not many short stories can claim an introduction written by Milton Friedman that mentions both Adam Smith's thoughts on the invisible hand and Friedrich Hayek's thoughts on the importance of dispersed knowledge, but Leonard E. Read's short story I, Pencil is able too claim just that. Few other authors can bring the making of a pencil and the free market together in such a basic and understandable way.

~Leave all creative energies uninhibited

Happy Birthday Milton Friedman

Were he still alive, Milton Friedman would have turned 96 yesterday. Friedman was one of the leading post-war free market economists, encouraging less government intervention and more responsibility for the individual. Friedman's success rest of his relentless ability to do what economists, almost by nature, are unable to do: speak about complicated issues in understandable terms. While most of his academic work centered around price-theory, he earned the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on monetary policy.

Two quotes from Friedman sum up his thoughts on price theory quite well.

"Governments never learn. Only people learn."

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."