#31 Russian Trash and I, Pencil
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Manage episode 308134016 series 2821002
Radio Show #21-11, Podcast #30, Nov 2021:
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TRASH FROM RUSSIA:
Saule Omarova continues to make the case against her nomination to
be Comptroller of the Currency, as critics need only to quote her own
words.
This is the same whacko who wants to close all banks and have the
federal government control your money movements, set your wages and dictate
supply chains. You might recall she attended Moscow University on the
Lenin Scholarship. She maintains the Soviet economic model is still
superior to ours. These are the types of clowns the Bidenistas continue
to advocate for to run/ruin our government.
The latest example against her nomination is a video interview she
gave in February in which the Cornell professor opined on “the case for a U.S.
national investment authority.”
The conversation at one point turned to climate change and its
impact on fossil-fuel producers, and Ms. Omarova was on the case. “A lot of the
smaller players in that industry are going to, probably, go bankrupt in short
order—at least, we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate
change,” she said in the session that was part of the Jain Family Institute’s
“Social Wealth Seminar” series.
But then she adds that the response would be to set up a National
Capital Management Corporation that would “become a kind of equity investor at
that point, taking over management of those companies and basically leading
them through restructuring to a new technological basis and to a new
technological business model.”
So first put private companies out of business “in short order,”
then put government central planners to work to restructure them as the
political class wants. Give Ms. Omarova credit for candor. Most progressives
disguise their real intentions.
All of this matters because as Comptroller Ms. Omarova would have
enormous authority to regulate banks. It’s clear from this interview that one
of her policy ambitions is to deny capital to certain companies that she wants
to go bankrupt. Senators will have to decide if they want the Comptroller to be
a one-person systemic risk to the banking system. WSJ
I PENCIL:
“I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and
awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can
understand
me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware
of the miraculousness which I
symbolize, you can help save the
freedom mankind is so unhappily
losing. I have a profound lesson to
teach. And I can teach this lesson
better than can an automobile
or an airplane or a mechanical
dishwasher because—well, because
I am seemingly so simple.
Simple? Yet, not a single
person on the face of this earth
knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?
Especially
when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion
of my
kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.
Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the
eye—there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead,
a bit of metal, and an eraser.
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of
straight
grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now
contemplate
all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used
in
harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Then
think of all of the craftsmen that made those tools and the truck drivers who
delivered them and the union workers who built those trucks and the grocery
stores all of those people frequent to feed themselves, and the workers at
those stores, and the farmers that grew and raised all of that food.
Think of all
the persons who mined the ore, the making of steel and its
refinement into those saws, axes,
motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages
to
heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess
halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold
thousands
of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!
The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can
you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and
railroad
engines and who construct and install the communication systems
incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.
Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into
small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in
thickness.
These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put
rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a
pallid white.
The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went
into
the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the
light
and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill
requires?
Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the
men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas &
Electric
Company hydroplant which supplies the mill’s power!
Don’t overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand
in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.
Once in the pencil factory—billions of dollars worth in machinery
and building,
all capital accumulated by thrifty investors and willing lenders
from a multitude of banks—each
slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which
another
machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places
another
slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are
mechanically carved from this “wood-clinched” sandwich.
My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The
graphite is mined in Sri Lanka. Consider these miners and
those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks
in
which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that
ties
the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make
the
ships, and those who man the ships on deck and in the engine
rooms. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—
and the harbor pilots.
The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which
ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting
agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically
reacted with sulfuric acid. After
passing through numerous
machines, the mixture finally
appears as endless extrusions—as
from a sausage grinder—cut to size,
dried, and baked for several hours at
1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase
their strength and smoothness the
leads are then treated with a hot
mixture which includes candelilla
wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and
hydrogenated natural fats.
My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the
ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor
beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are.
Observe the labeling. That’s a film formed by applying heat to
carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what,
pray, is carbon black? Why, even the processes by which the
lacquer is
made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than
one
can enumerate!
My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons
who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make
shiny
sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my
ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied?
The
complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel
on it
would take pages to explain.
Then there’s my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the
trade as “the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he
makes
with me. An ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing.
It is a
rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from the Dutch
East
Indies [Indonesia] with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the
common
notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are
numerous
vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy;
and
the pigment which gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.
NO ONE KNOWS
Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single
person
on the face of this earth knows how to make me?
Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation,
no one of whom even knows more
than a very few of the others. Now,
you may say that I go too far in
relating the picker of a coffee berry
in far-off Brazil and food growers
elsewhere to my creation; that this is
an extreme position. I shall stand by
my claim. There isn’t a single person
in all these millions, including the
president of the pencil company,
who contributes more than a tiny,
infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the
only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the
logger
in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the
logger
can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the
factory or
the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of
petroleum.
Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field
nor
the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or
makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the
machine
that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the
company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one
wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade.
Indeed,
there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil
nor
would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me.
Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees
that he can
thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he
needs or
wants. I may or may not be among these items.
There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master
mind,
of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions
which
bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found.
Instead, we
find the Invisible Hand at work.
I’ll stop here. But that my friends is whycenrally planned
governments…aka socialist and communist economies are WAY less efficient than
is capitalism; There is simply too much a couple of planners can plan
for. The reward of profits for one’s efforts, the ability of
entreprenuers to recognize inefficiencies in systems and respond by providing
equal products at a lower cost, or better yet, better products at a lower cost
is how capitalism works, and we call it the “Invisible Hand.” The
definition of the Invisible Hand is simple to wit: “The invisible hand is a
metaphor for the unseen forces that move the free market economy. Through
individual self-interest and freedom of production and consumption, the best
interest of society, as a whole, are fulfilled. The constant interplay of
individual pressures on market supply and demand causes the natural movement of
prices and the flow of trade.”
So the notion that some idiot, woke thugs can run a $21 tyn
economy is a complete Friggin’ JOKE, and if you vote for socialism, then you
are the joker, and the joke’s on you!
file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/I,%20Pencil%20(PDF%202019)%20(2).pdf
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/invisiblehand.asp
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