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I probably can't find it now but 15 years ago read an essay that made a case that 'the pencil' was complete bullshit when it was published. And is even more so today. AKA Pencil manufacturing from farming and harvesting cedar to making the steel for the metal band that holds the eraser is vertically integrated.

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Without seeing your article and without at least providing some of the supporting reasons why the article arrives at this conclusion - your argument makes no headway into disproving I, Pencil.

The pencil today, as are many other products, is produced by the free market and many many entities along the way. Focusing on whether companies vertically integrate miss the bigger point that it is free markets and Capitalism which provide us with the world we have behind us in the Western world.

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