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artist sets out to build a toaster, inadvertently proves the wonders of capitalism
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| josh4 |
Thought this was a neat read, and why not share.
| quote: | I, Toaster
A British artist inadvertently brings Leonard Read's classic essay "I, Pencil" to life.
Radley Balko | June 24, 2009
This week, a new exhibit called "The Toaster Project" opens at the Royal College of Art in London, England. On his website, artist Thomas Thwaites explains the gist: "I'm trying to build a toaster, from scratch—beginning by mining the raw materials and ending with a product that Argos sells for only £3.99." So Thwaites has been traveling around the world to acquire iron, nickel, copper, and oil from which he planned to make refined petroleum for the appliance's plastic moldings.
Thwaites was inspired by a passage from Douglas Adams' book Mostly Harmless, in which the protagonist attempts to win over the inhabitants of another planet by wowing them with the advanced technology of Earth. But, as Adams writes in the passage quoted on Thwaites' website, "Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it."
The basic theme of Thwaites' Toaster Project, however, was first conceived back in 1958 in the brilliant essay "I, Pencil," written by Leonard Read, founder of the libertarian think tank Foundation for Economic Education. Read's influential essay meticulously runs through the processes required to create something as simple as an Eberhard Faber pencil, including the harvesting and processing of cedar, the mining of graphite, and the mining, processing, and application of the many minerals and chemicals that make up the pencil's eraser, ferrule (the bit of metal that holds the eraser in place), lacquer, ink, and the black nickel rings that fasten the ferrule to the pencil's wooden rod. Read also included those things that power the processing and refining plants, as well as the automobiles that transport the pencil ingredients to those factories (which are themselves made up of thousands of parts made up of millions of ingredients, also mined, processed, and assembled all over the world).
Read's conclusion, written in the first-person voice of the pencil:
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I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding! |
In other words, the division of labor is what makes pencils—and, for that matter, all of the conveniences of modern life—possible. Millions of people are involved in the manufacture of a single pencil, or in Thwaites' case, a single toaster. No single human being could possibly possess the know-how to make one on his own.
Thwaites may well end up making some approximation of a modern toaster, but he'll come nowhere near his stated goal of having made one on his own. He notes on his website, for example, that he used a microwave (which of course he didn't create from scratch) to smelt the iron ore he found into steel. He used modern transportation to collect his various raw ingredients. And he fed and nourished himself through the whole process with food produced by modern agriculture and industry. No single man can make a pencil, and as Thwaites' project will demonstrate, no single man is capable of making a toaster, either.
Read's larger point was that no single person involved in the making of a pencil actually wants or needs a pencil. From the miners to the factory workers to the truck drivers to the smelters to the architects of the factories to the executives that run the companies that fund and organize each step of the process, each and every participant is in the game for his own self interest—to make a living, and to make a contribution that's really only a tiny part of the end result of a product, even one as insignificant as the humble pencil. Pan back until you've framed the entire world economy, and it's hard not to marvel at the wonder and miracle of capitalism's invisible hand.
But as you might have guessed, the miracle of modern capitalism is lost on Thwaites and the eco-arts websites celebrating his experiment. He sees his project as a condemnation of trade, technology, and mutually beneficial exchange, not a celebration of it. Thwaites writes:| quote: |
The point at which it stopped being possible for us to make the things that surround us is long past...This faintly ridiculous quest to make a toaster from the 'ground up' serves as a vehicle through which questions about economics, helplessness and life as a consumer can be investigated.
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It's a peculiar kind of "helplessness" that enables us to benefit from the shared labor of millions of workers and the collected knowledge of millions of people accumulated over hundreds of years by merely traveling to the nearest Wal-Mart or appliance store, or, better yet, by merely clicking the mouse on a computer a few times and having the toaster (or, for that matter, groceries, or clothing, or medicine) brought directly to our homes.
And where Read expressed awe at the way so many people worked together—motivated only by self-interest—to produce not only pencils, but millions of other products that make our lives better, Thwaites oddly sees waste:
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Commercial extraction and processing of the necessary materials happens on a scale that is difficult to resolve into the humble toaster. This contrast in scale is a bit absurd—massive industrial activity devoted to making objects which enable us, the consumer, to toast bread more efficiently. However, this ridiculousness dissipates somewhat when you consider that life pre-toasters required stoking the fire when a piece of toast was desired.
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Of course, the "commercial extraction and processing of the necessary materials" makes a hell of a lot more than toasters, so Thwaites' suggestion that all of this energy is simply expended on toasting bread is absurd. Minerals and metals are extracted and processed to form millions of products. As for "pre-toaster" lives, most people who lived in the age before the toaster could expect to die by about age 40 (the toaster was invented in 1893, when life expectancy in the U.S. was about 43 years).
We don't live longer today because of toasters, of course, but the advances in technology, the division of labor, and the specialized knowledge that brought us the modern toaster have also given us the advances in food preparation and storage, medical technology, and other modern marvels that are the reason we live longer, healthier, and more fulfilling lives.
Read's essay and Thwaites' experiment (the latter unintentionally) also have lessons for the current economic crisis, one explicit and one implicit.
The implicit lesson is that the accumulated knowledge it takes to make both a pencil and a toaster has been aggregating for hundreds of years through the process of trial and error. No one person woke up one morning with the knowledge of how to smelt iron ore into steel. Every successful idea is built on dozens or hundreds or thousands of failures, successes, and improvements. Capitalism and the benefits we derive from it thrive on failure. When we stop letting companies fail, we smother both innovation and the free market's rewards system.
The explicit lesson is the futility of central planning. The surest sign a Soviet-era communist country had a government office of food distrubtion was the presence of food lines—again, no one person or even group of people staffing a government agency can possibly possess all of the knowledge required to move a food item from raw materials to the packaged goods in your cabinet. If there isn't a single person on the planet who can make a pencil or toaster without the aid of millions of others motivated by their own self-interest, it seems ludicrous to think, for example, that we can save the entire U.S. economy if only we can find the right all-knowing experts to use the power of government to "more properly" allocate resources.
All of which is to say that Thwaites' frustrations at making a toaster from scratch don't illustrate the "helplessness" capitalism has created in consumers, it illustrates the way free markets have liberated us. Instead of the day-to-day struggle to stay nourished or to collect wood to fuel the fire that cooks our food so it's safe to eat, developed economies have food that is plentiful, safe, and mostly delicious. That has freed us from substistence struggles to pursue other intersests, such as culture and the arts—even, inevitably, art projects that mock and denigrate the very economic processes that made art possible in the first place.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/134322.html |
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| Capitalizt |
Yep, it truly is amazing and many people don't appreciate the beauty of spontaneous order of the marketplace. My econ teacher taught us the pencil lesson on day one, holding up a cheap number 2 pencil. He got a 10-pack for 50 cents at Wal-Mart and told us if anyone could create a pencil of equal quality from scratch by the end of the year, they would get an A+ in the class and didn't need to attend any lessons. He then proceeded to give us the pencil lesson. Needless to say, nobody even attempted it after the lecture. It would have cost hundreds of thousands of $$$ to make something worth a nickle on store shelves.
I was reminded of this last week..I ran out of salt so I went to the Wal-Mart grocery to buy some. They had a tub sitting on the shelf for 38 CENTS. I had to gape at it..remembering of the lesson again. Imagine the steps one person would need to take to create that product and get it delivered to my local shop...pulling the salt rock from the ground..refining and purifying it in a factory down to a fine dust..making a perfectly cylindrical cardboard container, creating the paper to label it, making the colored ink for the label, the aluminum spout on top..then paying the truck driver to deliver it, the auto company to make the truck, the steel company to provide the steel for the truck, the oil company to drill the oil that made the gasoline for the truck, the railroad to deliver the oil, the coal and power company who made the electricity to illuminate the store shelves, the stock boy who unloaded the truck and put the salt on the shelf, the clerk who rang me up, the company that made the plastic bag I carried it out with...Nobody in the process aware of what the others were doing yet all coming together to allow me to walk in and buy a whole tub of the finished product for .38 with no tax. ;) |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
Yep, it truly is amazing and many people don't appreciate the beauty of spontaneous order of the marketplace. My econ teacher taught us the pencil lesson on day one, holding up a cheap number 2 pencil. He got a 10-pack for 50 cents at Wal-Mart and told us if anyone could create a pencil of equal quality from scratch by the end of the year, they would get an A+ in the class and didn't need to attend any lessons. He then proceeded to give us the pencil lesson. Needless to say, nobody even attempted it after the lecture. It would have cost hundreds of thousands of $$$ to make something worth a nickle on store shelves.
I was reminded of this last week..I ran out of salt so I went to the Wal-Mart grocery to buy some. They had a tub sitting on the shelf for 38 CENTS. I had to gape at it..remembering of the lesson again. Imagine the steps one person would need to take to create that product and get it delivered to my local shop...pulling the salt rock from the ground..refining and purifying it in a factory down to a fine dust..making a perfectly cylindrical cardboard container, creating the paper to label it, making the colored ink for the label, the aluminum spout on top..then paying the truck driver to deliver it, the auto company to make the truck, the steel company to provide the steel for the truck, the oil company to drill the oil that made the gasoline for the truck, the railroad to deliver the oil, the coal and power company who made the electricity to illuminate the store shelves, the stock boy who unloaded the truck and put the salt on the shelf, it and the clerk who rang me up, the company that made the plastic bag I carried it out with...Nobody in the process aware of what the others were doing yet all coming together to allow me to walk in and buy a whole tub of the finished product for .38 with no tax. ;) |
that's all wonderful and all, but you're glossing over walmart's (and other large chains') complete raping of some sectors of society, most specifically suppliers and farmers. they screw other businesses over and most of those savings end up in walmart's pockets, not the consumers.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/cont.../interviews.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...s/walmart/view/
does it bother you that businesses over other businesses in this 'free' market? does it bother you that capitalism's natural progression is to generate fewer and fewer rivals as successful businesses swallow ones? do you think it is ok for corporate giants to abuse their market share when dealing with their suppliers?
i might not be able to make a pencil, but i can damned well put some items on a shelf and sell them. |
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| Capitalizt |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
does it bother you that businesses over other businesses in this 'free' market? |
No.
| quote: |
does it bother you that capitalism's natural progression is to generate fewer and fewer rivals as successful businesses swallow ones? |
Not at all. businesses deserve to be swallowed by good ones. This is the market's form of democracy. The people decide what is good and what is bad for them. Every dollar they spent at Walmart is a vote of support..every dollar spent elsewhere is a vote of "no confidence". The public is the final arbiter. By all means raise awareness of the issues in those documentaries..but to try and prevent Wal-Mart from growing to meet existing demand and to FORCE people to shop elsewhere is just plain wrong.
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do you think it is ok for corporate giants to abuse their market share when dealing with their suppliers? |
Abuse? The suppliers don't have a gun to their head do they? They sell to Wal-Mart because they MAKE MONEY off the transaction. If they were being abused or forced to take losses, they wouldn't deal with them.
| quote: |
i might not be able to make a pencil, but i can damned well put some items on a shelf and sell them. |
Not as efficiently as Wal-Mart can. ;)
And yes I recognize the heartbreak stories of mom and pop stores being knocked out of the market by conglomerates..and I do sympathize with those people..but I'm not about to support laws that artificially prop them up and keep them in business when the public would obviously prefer to shop at megachains like Wal-Mart where they can buy everything they need at a lower price. The amount of money people save shopping at places like Walmart is a tremendous boon to society that is not taken into account by critics. Thanks to Chinese labor and bulk imports, they are able to provide significant price discounts which leaves people with surplus cash to spend on other things (at other places) they would not otherwise be able to afford. Of course this benefit is invisible and impossible to quantify, but it is certainly there. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
No. |
that's retarded and against what a "free" market is supposed to be.
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
Not at all. businesses deserve to be swallowed by good ones. |
that wasn't the point of my question. i was asking that since you love your "free" market so very much, does it bother you that advanced capitalism's tendency is to create less and less competition? how is that a good thing in your eyes?
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
Abuse? The suppliers don't have a gun to their head do they? They sell to Wal-Mart because they MAKE MONEY off the transaction. If they were being abused or forced to take losses, they wouldn't deal with them. |
if youre not gonna bother watching the docos that's fine, but don't trot out this naive nonsense at the same time.
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
And yes I recognize the heartbreak stories of mom and pop stores being knocked out of the market by conglomerates..and I do sympathize with those people.. |
i dont care about that. what im concerned about is retailers' absolute dominance over their suppliers, and what that means for consumers. im not trying to argue some tear-jerker hard luck story, i have a very real issue with massive chains that flex their muscle for the benefits of themselves, rather than their customers.
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
but I'm not about to support laws that artificially prop them up and keep them in business |
im not quite sure where this tangent has come from, i certainly never said anything of the sort.
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
The amount of money people save shopping at places like Walmart is a tremendous boon to society that is not taken into account by critics. |
again, had you watched the vid (tho to be fair an hour is a fair chunk of time and i dont expect anyone to bother, was simply citing sources) you would see that wal-mart isn't necessarily saving you as much as you think. do you think its to the benefit of the consumer when big chains screw suppliers and don't pass on the savings at the register? |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| Robber barons are goooooood. |
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| Capitalizt |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
Robber barons are goooooood. |
That's my answer pk. I love the idea of cutthroat competition and have no problem with Wal-Mart crushing their competitors. They only do it because they are amazingly efficient and providing cheap stuff that people want. If a smaller business can't evolve to provide a product or service better than Wal-Mart can, they deserve to die. The mega Wal-Mart in my city actually opened an oil change place next to the supermarket that gives complete drive-through oil changes for 15 bucks (compared to $35-40 at other express chains). They also have an optometrist office in the store where they do eye exams for $20..and even have a health clinic with several doctors on staff that see patients and write common prescriptions for a flat $50. Oh, and they have around 200 generic prescription drugs in the pharmacy that are filled for $4.00, no insurance required. That is unbeatable. If competing oil service stations and pharamacies go out of business, so be it. The benefit to consumers in the end far outweighs the jobs lost. Go Wal-Mart go! |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
Yep, it truly is amazing and many people don't appreciate the beauty of spontaneous order of the marketplace. My econ teacher taught us the pencil lesson on day one, holding up a cheap number 2 pencil. He got a 10-pack for 50 cents at Wal-Mart and told us if anyone could create a pencil of equal quality from scratch by the end of the year, they would get an A+ in the class and didn't need to attend any lessons. He then proceeded to give us the pencil lesson. Needless to say, nobody even attempted it after the lecture. It would have cost hundreds of thousands of $$$ to make something worth a nickle on store shelves.
I was reminded of this last week..I ran out of salt so I went to the Wal-Mart grocery to buy some. They had a tub sitting on the shelf for 38 CENTS. I had to gape at it..remembering of the lesson again. Imagine the steps one person would need to take to create that product and get it delivered to my local shop...pulling the salt rock from the ground..refining and purifying it in a factory down to a fine dust..making a perfectly cylindrical cardboard container, creating the paper to label it, making the colored ink for the label, the aluminum spout on top..then paying the truck driver to deliver it, the auto company to make the truck, the steel company to provide the steel for the truck, the oil company to drill the oil that made the gasoline for the truck, the railroad to deliver the oil, the coal and power company who made the electricity to illuminate the store shelves, the stock boy who unloaded the truck and put the salt on the shelf, the clerk who rang me up, the company that made the plastic bag I carried it out with...Nobody in the process aware of what the others were doing yet all coming together to allow me to walk in and buy a whole tub of the finished product for .38 with no tax. ;) |
Enjoy it while you can. Its not gonna last. (environmental / human costs, in the long run)
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
That's my answer pk. I love the idea of cutthroat competition and have no problem with Wal-Mart crushing their competitors. They only do it because they are amazingly efficient and providing cheap stuff that people want. If a smaller business can't evolve to provide a product or service better than Wal-Mart can, they deserve to die. The mega Wal-Mart in my city actually opened an oil change place next to the supermarket that gives complete drive-through oil changes for 15 bucks (compared to $35-40 at other express chains). They also have an optometrist office in the store where they do eye exams for $20..and even have a health clinic with several doctors on staff that see patients and write common prescriptions for a flat $50. Oh, and they have around 200 generic prescription drugs in the pharmacy that are filled for $4.00, no insurance required. That is unbeatable. If competing oil service stations and pharamacies go out of business, so be it. The benefit to consumers in the end far outweighs the jobs lost. Go Wal-Mart go! |
Now, either I really suck at explaining myself or you’ve deliberately attempted to misconstrue what im talking about. Assuming it’s the former, I’ll try one last time.
Im not talking about “cut throat competition”. Let’s make this clear. Im not talking about walmart competing against other like businesses. I don’t care about businesses going under. I am only concerned with the outcomes for CONSUMERS. I care more about
a)walmart abusing its market share by forcing its suppliers (in a very UN-free market kind of way) to make savage cuts to cost, which they don’t pass onto the consumer, but keep for themselves. Do you think this is an example of market-based economics working out for the best for everyone? Since these suppliers don’t have a choice to sell their products elsewhere, would you still call that a “free” market?
b)Do you think it is an example of the “free” market when chains like walmart send suppliers and farmers to the wall, NOT through competition, but by forcing them to sell at unreasonably low (unsustainable) prices? Do you think such practices pose a problem for the future of agriculture and other supply-side businesses?
c)Since capitalism’s natural tendency is to head towards monopolisation, do you see a problem with anti-competitive behaviour that becomes a bigger problem as the business grows in size? Do you think government has a role here to prevent/punish anti-competitive practices?
If you’re bored, watch the docos. You might learn something ;) |
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| Capitalizt |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
a)walmart abusing its market share by forcing its suppliers (in a very UN-free market kind of way) to make savage cuts to cost, which they don’t pass onto the consumer, but keep for themselves. Do you think this is an example of market-based economics working out for the best for everyone? Since these suppliers don’t have a choice to sell their products elsewhere, would you still call that a “free” market? |
Given that Wal-Mart offers many products and services cheaper than they can be found anywhere else, I'd say they most certainly are passing on some of the savings to consumers. That's why the store is so damn popular...but of course they are going to keep as much profit as possible for themselves. That's why all corporations exist! Wal-Mart wasn't founded with the sole intention of providing goods at low cost to consumers. They were founded to make a load of money for the owners...and they do so by providing low cost goods to consumers! Beautiful isn't it? ;)
and I think you really need to look up the definition of force pk.. Wal-Mart can't force anyone to do anything. Force implies the threat of violence, and no private individual or company has that right. They can use their clout and mass purchasing power to demand better prices.. If they don't get the price they want they can seek another supplier. I see nothing wrong with that. The first supplier isn't "forced" to do anything. If he loses Wal-Mart's business, it is by choice.
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b)Do you think it is an example of the “free” market when chains like walmart send suppliers and farmers to the wall, NOT through competition, but by forcing them to sell at unreasonably low (unsustainable) prices? Do you think such practices pose a problem for the future of agriculture and other supply-side businesses? |
Again pk, you have a very warped definition of the term "force". I understand your sentiment but there is no force involved. Wal-Mart got where they are by cutting costs to the bone and providing consumers with the cheapest products. This is the business model they have used to succeed. It is the business model that has enabled them to grow from a single store in 1969 to a company employing 2 million people today. It works. It makes money. It saves money for hundreds of millions of customers around the world. So it provides farmers and wholesale distributors with less profit than they would like to make? *cries a tear*
| quote: | c)Since capitalism’s natural tendency is to head towards monopolisation, do you see a problem with anti-competitive behaviour that becomes a bigger problem as the business grows in size? Do you think government has a role here to prevent/punish anti-competitive practices?
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First, I don't think capitalism has a tendency towards monopoly.;) Most monopolys in the past formed as a result of government favoritism to established companies..special subsidies to them and stupid regulations, tax laws, and endless red tape that make it hard for newcomers to break into the field. Secondly, what specifically do you define as "anti competitive practices"? It seems to be the government has a monopoly on anti-competitive practices these days with their zoning laws and other nonsense. You'll need to file dozens of forms and pay thousands in incorporation and health fees before you can open a simple ice cream parlor..Baskin Robbins is lovin it. |
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| Capitalizt |
I am especially against anti competitive practices like the one below pk..though I believe you'll probably side with Wal-Mart on this case..and inadvertently increase their "monopoly" even further.
Link from your favorite site |
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| pmoisse |
While I agree to some extent that the whole "survival of the fittest in the market" is all well and good, companies like Wal-Mart do actually vendors over just because they're big enough and arrogant enough to get away with it.
My own experience was with dealing with their distribution centres. They would make their suppliers pay for the transport to deliver the goods, but they would hold the full trailers for weeks (regardless of whether a delivery appointment had been made in advance) and me as the transport company was now faced with charging the sender for the trailer detention that wasn't their fault at all. Wal Mart didn't give a about any extra costs incurred by the vendor. Consequently, we as the transporter didn't always charge the shipper due to whatever business relationship we had going on and therefore we indirectly lost money on that full trailer sitting there for weeks.
Same thing applied to delivery appointments where the driver would have to wait to be unloaded. They would take as long as they pleased, but wouldn't accept being charged for that driver's waiting time. |
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