Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg
“Chris Griswold, the policy director at the new right think tank American Compass, has written an essay titled ‘I, Sharpie.’ Perhaps not surprisingly, given how so much of the new right is dedicated to salvaging old left ideas, ‘I, Sharpie’ is supposed to be a pointed rejoinder to Leonard Read’s canonical free-market essay ‘I, Pencil.’ Longtime readers know I love that essay. For those who don’t know it, ‘I, Pencil’ is written from the perspective of a specific pencil. It’s an almost poetic celebration of the way the spontaneous order of the free market can work to allocate resources without centralized planning. … [Grisold] seems to think that because Chris Peterson, the CEO of Newell Brands, Sharpie’s parent company, figured out a way to manufacture Sharpies in the U.S., Read’s essay is now — or perhaps always has been — somehow irrelevant or obsolete.” (10/30/25)
https://thedispatch.com/article/sharpie-pencil-manufacturing-onshoring-free-markets/