I try mightily to avoid political discussions now but when it is unavoidable I say one thing to end the discussion. It’s a small but powerful sentence and one that you use in your article.
“Everything is worse now.”
The left has had the levers of power in the US for 2 generations. And everything is worse now.
I can agree with most of that. Another tragedy is that the popular modern right factions have gone full populist too. The opinion polls show both generic R and generic D are far more popular than the actual people who are ahead in the polls. We are headed for syphillis vs. gonorrhea round 3 in 2024.
I would call it a cold (Trump) vs. cancer (Biden) Round 2. I ignore the person because I think our impression of most politicians come through a media filter. I have clients like Trump so I know who he is and he not as bad as they say.
I focus on the policies that the candidates promote. Night and day differences between the two from a policy standpoint.
Policy! I think the Rs fired almost all their policy-oriented legislators. What's left are the big talkers. By far the most important issue going forward (if the world doesn't blow up) is the deficit & debt. There's nobody's ox that won't get gored - there need to be both lower benefits and higher taxes. Some bi-partisan deal is the only way to do it. Who in the R party has the skills to draft legislation and build a coalition? Clients like Trump are the people you can say 'hi' to at your holiday party and quickly move on. If they latch on to you you might want to take a shower afterwards. Trump is about as mentally competent as Biden. We don't need to choose between 2 people way past their prime. And Trump is at least guilty on the documents case. Who wants to elect a loose lips guy in a time of high conflict?
Problem is, I think a lot of the policy people on the Republican side didn't believe what they were pushing. Bill Kristol and The Dispatch folks are a good example. I don't think the R policy people truly totaled up opportunity costs the right way. Ask Casey Mulligan
Possibly, but replacing ineffective with at best impossible dreams doesn't seem like a good path. The Dispatch posts lots of conservative policy oriented pieces. Unlike most of The Bulwark, et al crowd.
If the Republican dreams are impossible, the Demo dreams are even more impossible. Adding trillions to the deficit each year to buy votes? That's not "ineffective", that is disastrous.
It's on my shelf in the queue. Sowell is probably the most deserving person (still alive) to not yet get a Nobel. Economics is a social science (if that is a thing), not a math problem. A lot of what you are pointing out in your article is reflected in Sowell's ideas of "unconstrained" and "constrained" visions. The people who believe in the perfectibility of mankind are at the top of the current social pyramid.
We know why he didn't get one so far. He is not on the reservation. To be fair, I am not aware of his groundbreaking work like Becker or Friedman either. He has applied classical economics to a lot of issues. He himself is groundbreaking. I truly admire him.
Thanks for a great synopsis of this important book. I will definitely get a copy! Your thoughts are spot on, and illustrate why I am drawn to Substack.
The sad news is that many people live their lives by one principle and vote/support the complete opposite principles. I call this live Republican but vote Democrat. Most people I know would NEVER tolerate bad behavior in their own children, poor performing schools in their neighborhood, wanton crime in their own immediate surroundings, etc. but seem to think it's fine for "other people." So they live in their own bubble but pat themselves on the back for doing the "right" and morally "correct" thing in voting. Not until reality comes crashing through their bubble. Unfortunately this is starting to happened in many previous safe/clean places in America. Will it change behavior? I think the 2024 election could be very interesting.
Sowell might arguably be the most brillant person our country has produced in the last 120 years for a myriad of reasons. I love his work. His book Black Rednecks and White Liberals is fantastic, and what he does is just overwhelms you with facts but does it in a very unassuming way to make his points. There really is not nearly as much grey as it were in this world as people would like to suppose. To me the "grey" everyone references is another way of making an excuse and or condoning something you know to be wrong.
History, if nothing else is the single greatest mirror that mankind has as it relates to his ability one day acheive perfection. Now being that my faith all ready very clearly spells this out for me, history is not something that I necessarily need, but when one looks at history it is full of the different people, using different toys/tools over time and eventually making the same mistakes and always for the same small set of reasons/motivations. History is undefeated when it comes to showing mankind just how imperfect we are.
This is why any sort of centralized government/national structure that is adopted, the more power/decision making that is consolidated the more problems, then tragedies then horrors will occur to those under that particular yoke. The best way to combat our imperfections doing maximum damage is to decentralize everything as much as possible, and let people come together for mutally beneficial reasons and if something goes wrong, or does not work out, it only affects a small portion of the population, instead of oh say, Ukrain in the 1920's and 1930's, or perhaps Cambodia or Uganda or China.
With capitalism, if you have two parties engaged in a transaction for mutal benefit, if that goes badly it does not effect the other 340 Million people in our country. Now if you have a small group of people making decisions for the other 339,999,990 people in the country and that goes bad, well it is going to be painful to a hell of a lot of people. Adam Smith understood this condition of humanity abosolutely.
Equality is not possible, neither is equity if you want to survive as a nation. You look at our attempts at this, the amount of money we have thrown at public education and the welfare state and look what the outcome has been? Our debt, almost to the dollar can be traced directly to means tested welfare with the last lovely large jump being in the form of checks to people and PPP loans to business as well as continued attempts to simply make college debt dissapear.
I didn't pick my parents, I was completely lucky in that. For it I grew to 6'6" and was athletically capable of many things the majority of our population is not. It eventually afforded me the opportunity to get a free education, which was both an honor and very important for my family as a whole. That was simply the luck of the draw. We can not legislate, take money from one group and give it to another, degrade certain groups of people and adjust for this reality.
We have had many unintended consequences come out of all of our own central planning, some of which Jeff refers to statistically. The facts are the moment we engaged in large scale social engineering there was almost an immediate and unintended consequence(s) that developed.
You don't understand central planning. It's not about central planning, it's about the central planners. Under central planning the planners get larger and larger slices of a pie that gets smaller and smaller. Under a free market, everyone gets some, and the pie gets bigger and bigger. What fun is that?
"It's not about central planning, it's about the central planners"...years ago, I was at a company management training class at which we had several outside speakers. One was a Marxist professor, who proceeded to lecture us that our political and philosophical views were merely reflections of our class position. I raised my hand and asked if he had ever tried applying that logic to himself.
They never apply the rules they want for you, to themselves. They sure project a lot, and many of them are so far gone they can't even see their own hypocrisy.
And now in this era of postmodern "anything goes" they just simply label a factual truth as no longer so, to make their argument seem plausible.
You really can't debate these people, because they do nothing in good faith.
Great post! I only became fully aware of Thomas Sowell about a decade ago, but he is someone that everyone should become familiar with. When Sowell, a previously, somewhat devout Marxist, was asked why he rejected that thinking, his reply was fairly simple . . . FACTS. These younger (and older) social justice warriors might do some good for themselves and the world with that thinking . . .
Previously, until he took a class from Milton Friedman in the late 50s. My fav Sowell observation is that he learned that economics comes with constraints and he realized it while taking photos. You can't have everything and you have to choose.
He shares that in common with Malcom Muggridge and several other very influential English political and economic philosphers of the late 19th and 20th century. Whittaker Chambers also went through this transformation. His book Witness should be a must read for kids in high school.
Great post Mr Carter! Thomas Sowell has been a gift to the culture and the country his entire career! Thanks for calling attention to his exceptional scholarship and reasoned analysis!
Thomas Sowell is a national treasure and should be award the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Get this. He is now 91, I think. He has authored 10 books since his 80th birthday. 10!!! And I think all but one or two were best sellers.
He and George Gilder are probably the two brightest stars in the rational thinking firmament.
Truly a great man. His trilogy is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the Left and how they think (or don't actually).
Thanks for the tip. You still looking for the S&P to get to 3200? Sure has been stubborn. Seems to defy all the laws of common sense.
-->"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."
An important insight that Hayek (Friedrich, not Salma) laid out, known as the knowledge problem. In "The Use of Knowledge in Society," American Economic Review (1945).
Like others here, Sowell's book awaits my attention. I bought it on someone else's recommendation who complimented it in a similar manner. I need little convincing to read Sowell as he's a masterful explainer of complex, confusing matters by distilling the problem is its essentials.
I try mightily to avoid political discussions now but when it is unavoidable I say one thing to end the discussion. It’s a small but powerful sentence and one that you use in your article.
“Everything is worse now.”
The left has had the levers of power in the US for 2 generations. And everything is worse now.
Draw your own conclusions.
I can agree with most of that. Another tragedy is that the popular modern right factions have gone full populist too. The opinion polls show both generic R and generic D are far more popular than the actual people who are ahead in the polls. We are headed for syphillis vs. gonorrhea round 3 in 2024.
I would call it a cold (Trump) vs. cancer (Biden) Round 2. I ignore the person because I think our impression of most politicians come through a media filter. I have clients like Trump so I know who he is and he not as bad as they say.
I focus on the policies that the candidates promote. Night and day differences between the two from a policy standpoint.
Policy! I think the Rs fired almost all their policy-oriented legislators. What's left are the big talkers. By far the most important issue going forward (if the world doesn't blow up) is the deficit & debt. There's nobody's ox that won't get gored - there need to be both lower benefits and higher taxes. Some bi-partisan deal is the only way to do it. Who in the R party has the skills to draft legislation and build a coalition? Clients like Trump are the people you can say 'hi' to at your holiday party and quickly move on. If they latch on to you you might want to take a shower afterwards. Trump is about as mentally competent as Biden. We don't need to choose between 2 people way past their prime. And Trump is at least guilty on the documents case. Who wants to elect a loose lips guy in a time of high conflict?
Problem is, I think a lot of the policy people on the Republican side didn't believe what they were pushing. Bill Kristol and The Dispatch folks are a good example. I don't think the R policy people truly totaled up opportunity costs the right way. Ask Casey Mulligan
Possibly, but replacing ineffective with at best impossible dreams doesn't seem like a good path. The Dispatch posts lots of conservative policy oriented pieces. Unlike most of The Bulwark, et al crowd.
If the Republican dreams are impossible, the Demo dreams are even more impossible. Adding trillions to the deficit each year to buy votes? That's not "ineffective", that is disastrous.
It's on my shelf in the queue. Sowell is probably the most deserving person (still alive) to not yet get a Nobel. Economics is a social science (if that is a thing), not a math problem. A lot of what you are pointing out in your article is reflected in Sowell's ideas of "unconstrained" and "constrained" visions. The people who believe in the perfectibility of mankind are at the top of the current social pyramid.
We know why he didn't get one so far. He is not on the reservation. To be fair, I am not aware of his groundbreaking work like Becker or Friedman either. He has applied classical economics to a lot of issues. He himself is groundbreaking. I truly admire him.
Yes, according to Glenn Loury in the top 100 economists of the 20th century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYUaWaa3ib8
Thanks for a great synopsis of this important book. I will definitely get a copy! Your thoughts are spot on, and illustrate why I am drawn to Substack.
The sad news is that many people live their lives by one principle and vote/support the complete opposite principles. I call this live Republican but vote Democrat. Most people I know would NEVER tolerate bad behavior in their own children, poor performing schools in their neighborhood, wanton crime in their own immediate surroundings, etc. but seem to think it's fine for "other people." So they live in their own bubble but pat themselves on the back for doing the "right" and morally "correct" thing in voting. Not until reality comes crashing through their bubble. Unfortunately this is starting to happened in many previous safe/clean places in America. Will it change behavior? I think the 2024 election could be very interesting.
Sowell might arguably be the most brillant person our country has produced in the last 120 years for a myriad of reasons. I love his work. His book Black Rednecks and White Liberals is fantastic, and what he does is just overwhelms you with facts but does it in a very unassuming way to make his points. There really is not nearly as much grey as it were in this world as people would like to suppose. To me the "grey" everyone references is another way of making an excuse and or condoning something you know to be wrong.
History, if nothing else is the single greatest mirror that mankind has as it relates to his ability one day acheive perfection. Now being that my faith all ready very clearly spells this out for me, history is not something that I necessarily need, but when one looks at history it is full of the different people, using different toys/tools over time and eventually making the same mistakes and always for the same small set of reasons/motivations. History is undefeated when it comes to showing mankind just how imperfect we are.
This is why any sort of centralized government/national structure that is adopted, the more power/decision making that is consolidated the more problems, then tragedies then horrors will occur to those under that particular yoke. The best way to combat our imperfections doing maximum damage is to decentralize everything as much as possible, and let people come together for mutally beneficial reasons and if something goes wrong, or does not work out, it only affects a small portion of the population, instead of oh say, Ukrain in the 1920's and 1930's, or perhaps Cambodia or Uganda or China.
With capitalism, if you have two parties engaged in a transaction for mutal benefit, if that goes badly it does not effect the other 340 Million people in our country. Now if you have a small group of people making decisions for the other 339,999,990 people in the country and that goes bad, well it is going to be painful to a hell of a lot of people. Adam Smith understood this condition of humanity abosolutely.
Equality is not possible, neither is equity if you want to survive as a nation. You look at our attempts at this, the amount of money we have thrown at public education and the welfare state and look what the outcome has been? Our debt, almost to the dollar can be traced directly to means tested welfare with the last lovely large jump being in the form of checks to people and PPP loans to business as well as continued attempts to simply make college debt dissapear.
I didn't pick my parents, I was completely lucky in that. For it I grew to 6'6" and was athletically capable of many things the majority of our population is not. It eventually afforded me the opportunity to get a free education, which was both an honor and very important for my family as a whole. That was simply the luck of the draw. We can not legislate, take money from one group and give it to another, degrade certain groups of people and adjust for this reality.
We have had many unintended consequences come out of all of our own central planning, some of which Jeff refers to statistically. The facts are the moment we engaged in large scale social engineering there was almost an immediate and unintended consequence(s) that developed.
You don't understand central planning. It's not about central planning, it's about the central planners. Under central planning the planners get larger and larger slices of a pie that gets smaller and smaller. Under a free market, everyone gets some, and the pie gets bigger and bigger. What fun is that?
"It's not about central planning, it's about the central planners"...years ago, I was at a company management training class at which we had several outside speakers. One was a Marxist professor, who proceeded to lecture us that our political and philosophical views were merely reflections of our class position. I raised my hand and asked if he had ever tried applying that logic to himself.
He didn't like that very much.
HA
They never apply the rules they want for you, to themselves. They sure project a lot, and many of them are so far gone they can't even see their own hypocrisy.
And now in this era of postmodern "anything goes" they just simply label a factual truth as no longer so, to make their argument seem plausible.
You really can't debate these people, because they do nothing in good faith.
Great post! I only became fully aware of Thomas Sowell about a decade ago, but he is someone that everyone should become familiar with. When Sowell, a previously, somewhat devout Marxist, was asked why he rejected that thinking, his reply was fairly simple . . . FACTS. These younger (and older) social justice warriors might do some good for themselves and the world with that thinking . . .
Previously, until he took a class from Milton Friedman in the late 50s. My fav Sowell observation is that he learned that economics comes with constraints and he realized it while taking photos. You can't have everything and you have to choose.
He shares that in common with Malcom Muggridge and several other very influential English political and economic philosphers of the late 19th and 20th century. Whittaker Chambers also went through this transformation. His book Witness should be a must read for kids in high school.
Touched on alot of findings from Malcolm Gladwells Outliers. I’ll pick this up.
Great post Mr Carter! Thomas Sowell has been a gift to the culture and the country his entire career! Thanks for calling attention to his exceptional scholarship and reasoned analysis!
re Central Planning, I want to again recommend Francis Spufford's brilliant book Red Plenty:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60918.html
Thomas Sowell is a national treasure and should be award the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Get this. He is now 91, I think. He has authored 10 books since his 80th birthday. 10!!! And I think all but one or two were best sellers.
He and George Gilder are probably the two brightest stars in the rational thinking firmament.
Truly a great man. His trilogy is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the Left and how they think (or don't actually).
Thanks for the tip. You still looking for the S&P to get to 3200? Sure has been stubborn. Seems to defy all the laws of common sense.
-->"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."
An important insight that Hayek (Friedrich, not Salma) laid out, known as the knowledge problem. In "The Use of Knowledge in Society," American Economic Review (1945).
https://www.kysq.org/docs/Hayek_45.pdf
Like others here, Sowell's book awaits my attention. I bought it on someone else's recommendation who complimented it in a similar manner. I need little convincing to read Sowell as he's a masterful explainer of complex, confusing matters by distilling the problem is its essentials.
Sowell is one of the most important genius’s of our generation. Or really any generation. World-historical, in fact.