I appreciate your comments on who owns the production and for the language lesson. I would propbably agree with your re-write as a generalization across a range of industries.

With respect to the Pencil Industry & the timber/lumber supply chain in China. The vast majority are owned by Chinese interests particularly in the timber/lumber part of the value chain. While there has been more Western investment in pencil slat production and some in finshed pencil production (us at CalCedar, Dixon and a few others), the great majority of capacity in this segment is again Chinese owned and controlled at this point.

The Indonesians have a mixed base of domestic and German producers.

You might say that Western (or perhaps more appropriately developed country) producers & marketers for the most part are purchasing finished product from these Asian producers. To the traditional manufacturers are doing so at delivered costs lower than domestic production costs and they are not forced by the powerful big box retailers to give away all those gains, then yes the traditional manufacturers and marketers may be reaping the gains. In reality most of the profit gains are going to the steamship and transportaion providors of the longer supply chain from Asia, to the ever powerful retailers and passed on as savings to the consumer.

Good luck with your effort.

- the developing countries get richer and westerners lose their jobs.

It’s quite likely that Westerners get richer as they own quite a bit of the industry in question, and the profit margins are higher when environmental, labour, and other costs are kept down by ignoring concerns about deforestation, loss of habitat, increased runoff, absence of job security, lower wages and so on.

The caveat is that I don’t know the specifics of pencil production as it pertains to a globalising industry, and it’s clear that plenty of people here do know, so maybe I’m blowing the wrong end of the straw.

But even with the caveat, I’d rewrite your sentence as ‘developing countries bear the brunt of environmental degradation, western shareholders get richer, former employees get shafted, and the consumer gets a pencil at a lower price, but at what cost?

One more thing. Cow towing sounds like fun, just like cow tipping, but I think you mean kowtowing, from the Chinese (Mandarin) kòu tóu, a kowtow: kòu, to knock + tóu, head. Head-knocking in order to show deference. I do wish more politicians would do that.

Thanks for the compliment, but I’m no Milton Friedman.

The Palomino 2B, B, H & 2H samples just arrived and I’m doing a little testing right now. The Palomino Acquarelle pencils will be arriving in another couple of weeks. I expect to get these all listed on Pencil World store by mid November along with a couple other surprises in the Palomino line.

Great post. Your understanding of ecomomics is second to none…

Now, when are you going to start selling those new items you mentioned in another post on your ebay storefront?

For what it’s worth the only area I can guess that there may be any potential for animal testing is in production of cosmetic pencils. So far as I know none of our customers are involved in such testing. I’ll check into it when I next talk to any of them and let you know.

Without your site and kind support through your reviews I would have never bothered with setting up our ebay site to make the Palomino and some other secialty items available here in the US. I wouldn’t have great Pencil Revolutionaries like Frank C. and other new fans trying out our products. We wouldn’t have great photos being posted on the Flickr site to further build our connections. You provide a great service for anyone interested in pencils from any walk of life and in my book should win an award for what you’ve accomplished in the blogging community for one of the best new blogs of 2005.

As for negative comments on wood use in pencils all I can say is “keep on sharpening”. All species of trees used for pencils (and all commercial species for that matter) have multiple uses for wide product ranges. One less tree consumed due to lower pencil demand doesn’t change the fact that the tree would still be used for another purpose bulding somebody’s home, fence, deck, furniture or whatever. Reduced demand across a wide range of products would just stimulate lower prices which then drive demand back up to normal long term sustainable harvest levels from any well managed forest.

It’s simple economics and has nothing to do with “social or environmental judgement” until or unless you get non-market interventions by politicians cow towing to the environmental vote to remain incumbent in their office.

And guess what happens then, supply gets artificially restricted and prices go up for the consumer until some new substitute wood joins the market from another developing country with less sound management principles and poor governance over harvest policy to meet that demand. Then the Chinese, Indonesians, etc. replace the US. Latin American and European jobs in the industry. The end results:
- the consumer gets a cheaper but inferior performing product with greater risk of some toxicity issue
- the developing countries get richer and westerners lose their jobs
- a net increase in negative environmental impact globally due to less efficent use of resources and poorer environmental practices in developing countries.

For example, one might claim that a blog devoted to pencils cruelly disregards the animals who cannot read it, and that only a concerted effort by literate animals to share the contents with their non-literate comrades would provide a just resolution to the disparity.

All you chicken farmers out there should know that the hens are waiting to hear the latest news.

Don’t let that kind of thing bother you. Everyone has different preferences. No matter what you like, someone will think you’re crazy (or worse) for liking it. In the real world, you rarely hear from them on things as harmless and inconsequential as choice of writing instrument. But on the Internet, some people go looking for a fight.

Ignore ‘em.

I like it here. And it seems I’m far from the only one.