Why do some politicians and bureaucrats constantly forget that bad things happen when governments interfere in our largely free market?

Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled parts of her economic plan this month, but even some of her supporters say she botched it by pushing for price controls on food to “fix” inflation.

The concept she promotes is quite simple. It is based on the grand illusion that government central planners can prevent inflation—which occurs when governments spend recklessly and massively expand the money supply—by, for example, forcing grocery stores to set their prices at government-determined levels.

But such central planning never works. The main reason is that no one except God is smart enough to make such incredibly complex decisions about an incredibly complex food supply chain that involves millions of incredibly complex actions.

In 1958, Leonard Read’s classic essay “I, Pencil” beautifully explained the complexity of the market – and why the hubris of government planners can only make things worse. As he showed, the production of something as seemingly simple as a No. 2 pencil is an incredibly complex, collaborative, global process involving thousands of people who do not know each other.

It begins with a cedar tree being felled and hauled onto a truck or railroad car by workers using ropes and equipment. Countless people and skills are involved in mining the ore to produce steel and use it to make saws, axes and engines, Read wrote. The logs are transported to a sawmill and cut into slats. The slats are kiln dried, tinted, waxed and then kiln dried again.

Read wondered how many skills were needed to make the paint and the kilns. What about the electrical power? And the belts, motors and other parts of the mill?

The cedar slats are then shipped to a pencil factory. A complex machine cuts grooves into each slat. Then another machine places graphite into every other slat. Glue is applied. Two slats – one with graphite, one without – are sealed together and then cut to pencil length. Each pencil receives six coats of varnish. In complex processes, thousands of people are employed to produce the graphite and varnish.

The brass holder of each eraser is another wonder.

First, miners in countries like Peru extracted the zinc and copper and shipped it. Experts processed these raw materials into brass sheet, which was cut, stamped and glued to the pencil. The eraser, Read wrote, was made from “factice,” a rubbery material that was created when rapeseed oil from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) reacted with sulfur chloride.

It is clear that making a simple pencil requires an incredible amount of work. Millions of strangers work together to create the components, bringing their unique professions and skills to the table. What is even more astonishing, however, is that no single person could accomplish this process.

Although there is no mastermind or central planner in government, billions of pencils are produced every year with such monotonous efficiency that we take pencils for granted.

History clearly shows that governments have failed to impose price controls in complex markets. They didn’t work in the 1970s when Richard Nixon used them, and they haven’t worked anywhere else – unless you believe that Cuba is now a paradise and once-rich Venezuela is doing well under socialist central planning.

The humble pencil, Read declared, was a triumph of human freedom – of creative energies responding spontaneously to need and desire. It is alarming to learn that we have a presidential candidate who does not seem to understand this simplest economic truth.

Contact Tom Purcell at [email protected].