Taking sides

One of the most chilling lessons of the history of the twentieth century is how deceptive domestic tranquility can be, when it takes only the right circumstances and the right demagogue to turn neighbor murderously against neighbor. Besides Nazi Germany, in Sri Lanka, in Indonesia, in the Balkans, and in sub-Saharan Africa, ethnic polarization and strife were stirred up by either fanatics or opportunists. Both “sides” [inevitably] lost—and they lost because they became sides, instead of remaining fellow countrymen with different cultures. 

—Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals p290.

Intellectual Authority

In many ways this episode illustrates far more general characteristics of intellectual-political "relevance": (1) the casual ease with which vast expansions of the amount and scope of government power were called for by intellectuals to be used against their fellow citizens and fellow human beings, for purposes of implementing the intellectuals' vision, (2) the automatic presumption that differences between the current views of the relevant intellectuals ("experts") and the views of others reflect only the misguided ignorance of the latter, who are to be either "educated," dismissed, or discredited, rather than being argued with directly in terms of cognitive substance (that is, the intellectual process was involved primarily in giving one side sufficient reputation not to have to engage in it with non-"experts"), (3) the confidence with which predictions were made, without reference to any prior record of correct predictions nor to any monitoring processes to confirm the future validity of current predictions, (4) the moral as well as intellectual superiority that accompanied the implicit faith that the current views of the "experts" represented the objective, inescapable conclusions of scientific evidence and logic, and their direct applicability for the public good, rather than either the vogues or the professional self-interest of these "experts," and (5) a focus on determining the most likely alternative conclusions rather than whether any of the conclusions had sufficient basis to go beyond tentative cognitive results to sweeping policy prescription. It illustrates a general characteristic of socially and politically "relevant" intellectual activity—an unwillingness or inability to say, "we don't know," or even to admit that conclusions are tentative. Such admissions would be wholly consonant with intellectual processes but not with the interests of intellectuals as a social class. Politicians often proceed as if intellectuals have no self-interests involved but act solely on cognitive bases or in the policy interest of society at large. —Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions, 1980, writing of the American eugenics of the 1920s.

Decision-making

Imposing outsiders' rules to supersede insiders' understanding and flexibility is inefficient use of knowledge. The Supreme Court rejected a prescreening panel that would have reduced its work load. According to justice Brennan, "flexibility would be lost" in an "inherently subjective" process with "intangible factors" that are "more a matter of 'feel' than of precisely ascertainable facts," and which involve a "delicate interplay" of "discretionary forces." The tragedy is that he apparently considered this to be an institutional peculiarity of the Supreme Court, rather than a pervasive fact of decision making in general. Because this is what the Court has done to other institutions across the country. Constitutional guarantees encumber the State precisely so that the State may not encumber the citizen. —Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

Mafia

"If you could say one thing to the ruling politicians, what would it be?" "One word: Goodbye. Because I know there's no point in talking to them. It's like asking what I would say to the head of the mafia to get him to give up crime." —Thomas Sowell

Intellectual Discussion

Much intellectual discussion of the decisions of businessmen proceeds as if employers, landlords, and others operating under the systemic pressures of the marketplace are free to make arbitrary and capricious decisions based on prejudice and misinformation—as if they were intellectuals sitting around a seminar table—and pay no price for being mistaken. —Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed, Chap VII, p 188.

Power and Preemption

Power and preemption are the touchstones of the vision of the anointed, however much that vision is described in terms of the beneficent goals it is seeking. —Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed.

Modern monetary theory

MMT isn't new. From the first coin debasement through the Keynesian myths, "politicians have unceasingly recommended more deficit spending in order to cure or reduce existing unemployment ... systematically diverting attention from the real causes of our unemployment ... government economic interventions." —Henry Hazlitt, 1978.

The Confidence Trick

The purpose of the confidence man is not to convince skeptics but to help others to believe what they already want to believe. Displaying the paraphernalia of evidence, embellished with appropriate rhetoric, accomplished that important purpose. —Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, page 123

Tradition

Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. —Will and Ariel Durant: The Lessons of History (New York: Simon & Schuster. 1968). p. 35

Rational Markets

Chicago School economists found the market more rational and more responsive than the Keynesians had assumed—and the government less so, at least in the sense of promoting the national interest, as distinguished from promoting the careers of politicians. —Thomas Sowell.

More from Theodore Dalrymple

liberals habitually measure their own moral standing and worth by their degree of theoretical hatred for and opposition to whatever exists 

the minister of education may propose but the bureaucracy disposes 

small man is to be defended only so long as he consents to remain a victim, in need of publicly funded ministrations 

misery increases to meet the means available for its alleviation.

the poor are a goldmine 

the established church is on the verge of extinction, its bishops straining vainly after modernity by signing on to the fashionable sociological untruths of a couple of decades ago 

when every benefit received is a right, there is no place for good manners, let alone for gratitude 

the squalor of England is not economic but spiritual, moral, and cultural 

 —Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Malcolm Daniels), Life at the Bottom; and Our Culture, What's Left of It.

Freedom

It is a mistake to suppose that all men want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it. They would happily exchange their liberty for a modest (if illusory) security. Even those who claim to cherish their freedom are rather less enthusiastic about taking the consequences of their actions. The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong. Implicitly they disagree with Bacon's famous dictum that "chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands." Instead they experience themselves as putty in the hands of fate. —Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom

Doing Nothing

At least a fifth of our working time is spent doing nothing, or rather nothing productive. Most people are incapable of doing nothing, in the strict sense that a meditator does nothing. Moreover, much of their activity may not merely be unproductive but positively counterproductive, in so far as most people at work feel obliged to do something. If not only offices, but millions of journeys to offices, become unnecessary, pollution would decline and leisure time would increase. This latter would be a disaster, since most people do not know what to do with themselves as it is. It is for this reason that work is not arranged as efficiently as possible, but its productive aspect is diluted by myriad unnecessary tasks—unnecessary, that is, from the narrow point of view of production. A great deal of work is designed to keep us occupied while we produce nothing. It ameliorates boredom and prevents the bad behaviour in which boredom results. —Theodore Dalrymple