Milton Friedman and Jeremy Clarkson

In the 1960s Leonard Read wrote an instructive piece on the biography of a pencil called I, Pencil.  The reading can be found in Section 1E of the Term 1 Lectures folder on Blackboard.

Here is a clip of Milton Friedman from his 1980 TV series, Free To Choose, using Read’s example.

In more recent times, the BBC’s Jeremy Clarkson appears to have cottoned on to the concept Read was trying to illustrate.  Here is a short clip of Clarkson discussing petrol prices (and bull semen!)

Selected transcript.

Jeremy Clarkson:

“You know petrol went past £1 a litre this week and everybody is running around saying it's all far too expensive and we've all got to commit suicide....Seriously, petrol.  They've got to: build an oil rig, float it out to sea, dig a hole (there's nothing in it), dig another, then another, and then you get oil.

Then you got to: put it on a ship, float it half way around the world to another country, put it in a refinery which is the size of a small county, turn it into petrol, ship it to a garage, put it in a flame proof tank, and then sell it to a customer. And they're doing that for one pound a litre. I find that incredible.”

Co-presenter James May then added:

“Actually, no. No. Because the government takes 65p, so they're actually doing that for 35p a litre. And if you buy 10 litres you get a torch!”