I, Pencil

Most of us take the products we use everyday for granted. We never give a moment's thought to how they came to be or how many people were involved in their production. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has taken a story by Leonard Read about the simple lead pencil and turned it into an excellent video illustrating how complex and intricate free markets are.

They're like ecosystems, and, like ecosystems, they're vulnerable to human interference, particularly to interference by a government which thinks it can somehow control some aspect of the process without disrupting the whole system.

Thanks to Mary Katherine Ham at Hot Air for posting the video.

Open Borders

A student sends along a humorous piece by Joey Vento on the plight of illegal immigrants in this country. Vento observes that:

If you cross the North Korean border illegally, you get 12 years of hard labor. If you cross the Iranian border illegally, you're detained indefinitely. Cross the Afghan boarder illegally, you get shot. Cross the border illegally in Venezuela, you're considered a spy and thrown in jail to rot.

NOW, you cross the border illegally in America, you get a job, drivers license, social security card, welfare, food stamps, credit card, subsidized rent or a loan to buy a house, free education, a lobbyist in Washington, and the right to carry your country’s flag while you protest that you don’t get enough respect.

It's funny because it's true. There's no other country in the world whose borders are as porous as ours, no other country which entitles those who cross their borders illegally such astonishing access to its citizens' wallets, and no other country which takes it more to heart than does ours when people complain that we don't do enough for the illegal aliens in our midst.