Fallacies

They Are Hard To Give Up

In my recent travels, I read the book, Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell. It’s tremendous. You need to buy it and read it. It’s an easy read. One of the great things about people like Sowell is they distill very complex concepts in ways that people who don’t have a grasp of the math or statistics underlying the complex concepts can still process and understand them.

Here is a passage:

The history of totalitarian dictatorships that arose in the twentieth century, and were responsible for the deaths of millions of their own people in peacetime, should be an urgent warning against putting too much power in the hands of any human beings. That some of these disastrous regimes were established with the help of many sincere and earnest people, seeking high ideals and a better life for the less fortunate, should be an especially relevant warning to people seeking social justice, in disregard of the dangers.

Wow.

Because Professor Sowell is a dedicated scholar there are 57 pages of indexed notes referring to peer-reviewed studies that back up his points. Do you want to argue with him? You better come with some peer-reviewed data.

Yet, for some reason, people think that if they expand government, come up with a new program, or have a government regulate something somehow they will be “safer” when all the data shows that they won’t be.

One continuous theme of the book is that virtually no one can hold all the information necessary to make an autocratic decision over a large group or program. Only the free market can do that.

Central planning has destroyed people, industries, and the climate, and put lives at risk.

It doesn’t matter if it’s education, law, the economy, medicine or any other industry. Central planning cannot imagine or prepare for every outcome or contingency.

Free market capitalism can.

Sowell dismantles the entire Social Justice agenda adeptly. It’s a beautiful argument and if it is the last book he ever pens it is a wonderful send-off.

Here is another example:

Among the many factors that can prevent equal human potentialities from producing equally developed capabilities are factors over which humans have little control-such as geography-and other factors, such as the past. There are innumerable things that can create unequal chances, some of which are worth examining in great detail.

Do you think there is any chance that the government can tackle regulating something as complex as artificial intelligence and get it right? Yet, old Joe Biden that beacon of knowledge on artificial intelligence put his best people on it and came up with a proclamation. What hubris….

The world is rife with things we cannot control that make developing capability harder in one place than it would be in another. That is why when people say, “One of the greatest things that ever happened to me is being born in America.” It’s not trite or tongue-in-cheek. If you are born in the USA, you have a better shot at success than if you were born anywhere else.

Suppose I want to be a great Olympic skier but I am born in Mississippi. I might have the potential to be a great skier. Maybe my body type is perfect for skiing. Maybe my emotions allow me not to get fearful at high speed dropping down the side of a mountain. I have the “potential” to be a great skier. But, someone born in Utah or Colorado with the same characteristics as me is going to have more of a chance to develop those capabilities. Someone born in the Alps has a better opportunity to be a better skier than the kid in Mississippi.

We have no control over things like that. Is it “fair”? A government central planner might identify me, set up a program, and ship me to Utah. They did that in Iron Curtain countries if you recall. Of course, the politics develop in order to get into the program. The social justice warriors aren’t far behind since there aren’t enough of XXXX type of people in the program. The culmination is boys ski on the girls’ ski team.

It turns out human networks and local knowledge passed over generations can make a big difference. Sowell cites the German’s ability to make beer. Who makes the best beer in China? Germans. In many US cities that have a craft beer industry, the best brewers come from German heritage. It turns out they have a tremendous internal knowledge network that passes it from generation to generation. It’s not unlike a great old family recipe passed down from generation to generation.

Birth order can have a huge bias over outcomes. You cannot control where you are born nor whether you have older or younger siblings, or none at all. If you are the oldest, you have a better chance of succeeding than the last. This research goes back to the 19th century. What your mom ate during pregnancy can affect your IQ. If you are born into a fatherless family, statistically you will have a rougher time of it than someone who has a father.

Government programs cannot correct those kinds of inequalities. Yet, we have spent trillions trying to fix them. Trillions.

What’s the result? Everything is worse. Everything. Besides, we are more divided now than ever with a (fill in the blank)-American or some of the 9000 genders that people have “discovered” in the last couple of years.

Black families have an over 70% fatherless rate when in the 1940s it was under 20%. That’s the core problem not lack of the ability to play midnight basketball. It’s terribly sad.

But try and tell a Social Justice Warrior these things and they will tell you not to confuse them with facts.

Read this book. Send it to your favorite liberal.