We Have a Printing Paper Problem

A new supply chain parable for our times

- By Katherine Mangu-Ward

I am a print magazine-the ordinary paper magazine familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

I, Magazine, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe. I am seemingly so simple, yet not a single person on the face of this Earth knows how to make me.

Fans of the great Leonard Read will recognize (and hopefully forgive) the bastardization of his lovely market parable, "I, Pencil." As Milton Friedman wrote of this brief, powerful essay by the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education: "I know of no other piece of literature that so succinctly, persuasively, and effectively illustrates the meaning of both Adam Smith's invisible hand-the possibility of cooperation without coercion and Friedrich Hayek's emphasis on the importance of dispersed knowledge and the role of the price system in communicating information."

While my affection for Read's essay remains undimmed, my faith in the mechanisms it describes has been tested over the last several months. I'm not alone in this: Consumers around the world are more aware than ever before of the workings of their supply chains and of what happens to prices and availability when those lines are strained. From the toilet paper shortage that kicked off the pandemic to the semiconductor crunch of 2022, it's been an education.

Until recently, I had only the vaguest grasp of the specific complex market that enabled the physical version of Reason magazine to come into being. This is as it should be; my ignorance was one of the great gifts of functioning markets.