Milton Friedman chose the number 2 pencil to explain to his students that Adam Smith’s economic laws of free pricing leads to the production of goods by thousands of contributors all over the world who, regardless of language, race, religion, culture or even knowledge of the end product engage in a self- fulfilling mechanism that results in the ability to buy a good at the cheapest price. That functionally, this tool could be made anywhere in the world with some clay, a stick and near-zero stress to the global ecosystem does not negate the fact that 95pct of the people living today, by many measures, live, on an absolute basis, better than 99pct of the people living 100 years ago. Even the pharaohs who could satisfy every earthly desire could not diminish the odds of suffering countless loss of children to illnesses we now treat with great ease. And, this particular progress, is owed predominantly to Smith’s capitalist economic model.

The original number 2 pencil that was mass produced for schools in America was invented by Henry David Thereau- the same HDT that nearly drove himself insane isolating himself at Walden Pond with the intention of living the most minimal life possible. This invention by a functional ascetic became an economist’s symbol for a process that both advanced the standard of living of the world’s poorest and simultaneously decimated the global environment. Irony? Or folly?

Personally, from a very young age, I have always been excited by a new pencil. I liked sharpening them. I liked writing and drawing with them. I liked chewing on them. In many senses they were objects of my earliest desires.