Thomas Sowell Returns

[EasyAce]

One of America's top social scientists on what has changed since he sat down with Reason 38 years ago
By Thomas Winslow Hazlett
http://reason.com/archives/2018/11/26/thomas-sowell-returns

Thirty-eight years ago, Reason contributor Thomas Hazlett and Senior Editor Manny Klausner sat down with University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) economist and social scientist Thomas Sowell for a sprawling interview about race, gender, poverty, economics, and what he viewed as the government's many failed and misguided attempts to lift up poor minorities . . . In July, Sowell once again sat down with Hazlett to discuss his life and career, the consequences of fame, the surprising similarities between Presidents Trump and Obama . . . and why—despite the generally positive trajectory of the world over the last four decades—he remains somewhat pessimistic about its current state . . .

. . . From reading your work, I'd have to conclude that there is "cultural appropriation" all over the place.

Much of the progress of the human species has been the transfer of things that worked from one culture to another. I don't know of any society where people used bows and arrows, and later on had the opportunity to use firearms, that did not give up the bows and arrows and start using the firearms. Of course, the gunpowder originated in China. In fact, I've argued that isolation is one of the most deadly fates of a people because people who are isolated, whoever they are, whatever race or part of the world they're in, seldom produce anything that advances the human condition . . .

. . . It's fair to say you were a sharp critic of President Barack Obama and his expressed view, "You didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Therefore what? You're putting a burden of proof on those who own something that you do not put on those who want to seize control of it for their own purposes. Even if you take someone who, for example, never contributed to a business that he simply inherited, the question becomes, "On what grounds are we to assume that better outcomes will result if this property that was bequeathed to him is instead used by politicians, bureaucrats, and judges for what they want to do?" They didn't build it, either, and what is there either in their prospect or in their history that would lead you to expect that it would be better off for anybody other than themselves when it's turned over to them?

We have a seemingly quite different president now, Donald Trump. Yet in this regard there is a striking similarity in his dismissal of personal achievement. He says to Jeff Bezos, "You didn't create Amazon. Subsidies from the Post Office did." He takes that as a premise for threatening firms and even whole sectors of the economy with a variety of ad hoc regulatory attacks.

That's true. The fact that we don't have people who are educated to be able to analyze arguments but who are swept along by rhetoric is one of the reasons that allows people to get away with these kinds of things . . .

[Sanguine]

I love the way he thinks. 

[EasyAce]

I love the way he thinks.

@Sanguine
That and the fact that he does think.

[Sanguine]

@Sanguine
That and the fact that he does think.

Very true.

[Slide Rule]

I have read many of his books including all those noted in
the article.

He is a Treasure.

I like his favorite presidents. They are favorites of mine.
Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, Coolidge.

He cuts through bullshit like it is butter.

An indispensable man.

:)