"One way – there are many ways, of course – to highlight the marvelousness of our age is to note that, unlike for the multitudes of all of our pre-industrial ancestors, nearly everything that an ordinary denizen of our age consumes is something that (1) that person did not personally make; and, most spectacularly, (2) no single person knows how to make – that it, it is something the construction and supply of which require the knowledge, skills, and efforts of literally millions of individuals... ...And perhaps even more marvelously, all of these things that you consume are affordable. Even the quotidian pencil required for its production and supply millions of people, almost all of whom are strangers to you – and, don’t forget, also strangers to each other. And yet you can buy a pencil for just a few cents! Ponder this astonishing fact: Each and every thing that we consume today in market societies is something that requires the coordinated efforts of millions of people, yet each of us is able to command possession and use of these things in exchange for only a small fraction of our work time." -Donald J. Boudreaux
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 04:20:23 +0000