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I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. It was the source of Milton Friedman's much later reference to the fact that "nobody knows how to make a pencil." The point of the article is that although a pencil seems trivially simple, the Eberhard Faber company didn't make the raw materials for it, nor the equipment required to efficiently manufacture pencils from those materials. And the same applies to all the manufacturers of the enamel and the rest of the ingredients. Not only so, but the people required to do all the work in the suppliers as well as Eberhard Faber itself all had to be supplied with their needs and wants, or else they wouldn't be available to do the work either.
The obvious conclusion is that society - not just a single company - makes the pencil. Note well, I said "society." I did not say, "government":
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. - Thomas Paine,Common Sense (1776)