Discussion about Friedman's "pencil" video

[paulakreuzer]

@Douwe posted this video:

here:

Power of the Market - The Pencil

Is The Fairphone Vegan Too?

Sad to say that the Fairphone 2 is not vegan. As is the case with the biggest part of the Fairphone: we still have to find out where most parts come from and how they are produced or what materials went into the producing. Just analyzing the little pot of cleaning stuff that is used to finish of the black rim of the smart case, so we know what chemicals are in there and where they come from, takes time and effort. We do know that in some parts of the Fairphone glue is being used and that glue…

the following is the discussion that arose from it:

@Douwe

I agree with his part about the complexity of products made, not necessarily the conclusion that he derives from it about the free market

I also don’t agree with his main statement “there is not a single person in the world who could make this pencil”. Nowadays you can probably make a pencil from 100% recycled materials. It would probably be possible for a single person to fish all necessary materials and even tools out of dumpsters.

[Douwe]

Hm, this is getting off-topic but I do not agree with you, and would even say that you are cheating a little in your argument.

Recycling might allow one person to make a pencil, but Friedmans point is that all the ingredients also needed to be made. So the materials you are recycling can only exists because thousands of people made them.

Not even talking about who made the dumpsters and the tools you would be using…

[paulakreuzer]

Well sure, but then not even mankind as a whole could create such a pencil, because if only naked people floating around in an endless vakuum existed they couldn’t create anything. Everything - not only man made stuff - was created.

But if we are talking less in terms of philosophy and more in terms of marketing, then waste is counted as much as a raw material as the graphite and tree Friedman is talking about in his video.