Another discussion brought this to mind.  It's just a brief summary of a much longer description but I think it gets the point across.
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Take a look at one of the most basic stationary objects: the pencil. On first impression, it is a very simple thing. But it is unlikely that any one person in the world could produce a pencil by him or herself.

The example of the pencil in economics was popularised by Leonard Read. He pointed out the complexity in manufacturing such a product. The first stage of the process involves the felling and transportation of the wood. The wood is then milled into slats and a groove is carved length-wise to accommodate the lead. The graphite for the lead is mined in Ceylon, transported, treated and refined to make it smooth and strong. The lacquer for the paint involves a great deal of chemistry, even the little rubber holder on the end - the ferrule - needs to be constructed entirely separately. The manufacture of this little brass ferrule would take another few hundred words to explain. And then the most important part for those error-prone among us – the rubber - contains rape-seed oil, sulphur chloride and various chemically-complex agents.

Yet despite the complexity in making a pencil, no one is centrally planning the manufacturing process. The company selling the pencils probably has no idea which tools should be used to process the wood. Thousands of people have come together to make the pencil on your desk, yet it costs a tiny sum. What force has got all these thousands of people - of different nationalities, religions and views - to work together and specialise? It is the 'invisible hand' of the marketplace.

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The free market will work out most of our problems if we can just get our politicians to leave things the heck alone and quit demagoging the issues.

Discuss...