If “social justice” is the work to ensure our human-made systems operate with greater fairness, then “cosmic justice” is the understanding that the universe results in countless unexpected obstacles to that goal.
At times these forces operate in competition, and to better understand the world, one must appreciate them both. That’s among the themes of Intellectuals & Society, a dense 2010 book written by conservative economist Thomas Sowell. The book is centrally a criticism of “intellectuals,” whom Sowell describes as those “dealers in ideas” who have never implemented any. By and large, he directs his ire on left-leaning academics, authors and commentators.
Sowell’s writing and speaking are frequently distributed on social media via the Hoover Institution and other right-leaning political efforts, so I was curious to dig deeper into his work. Harvard educated and associated with the conservative University of Chicago economics department (an acolyte of Milton Friedman), Sowell is himself is one of the more prominent conservative intellectuals.
The book has a few opinions that might be considered unsavory, and others that twist facts as much as he criticizes his political opponents of doing. For example, he rightly celebrates the good of a free market, but he seems unwilling to admit of any market failures — like, industry consolidation that eventually results in limited choice, or the concentration of inherited wealth that saps productivity.
But Sowell is serious and rigorous, so I follow him for his perspective. Like, John Stuart Mill wrote of those whose politics differ from your own, “know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
In particular, I appreciate two bits of criticism he lobs at the left. For one, years back I heard his challenge that progressives spend a lot of time working to redistribute wealth without pausing much to consider how that wealth is created in the first place. In my reporting, I’ve found that to be largely (if not entirely) true. Second, in this book in particular he introduces a framework between the “tragic vision” of the world, in which the world will always be messy, and the “vision of the anointed,” in which the world can be cleaned up. Sowell, who clearly identifies with the tragic vision, criticizes intellectuals as falling victim to the vision of anointed — forever trotting out some neat and clean idea to organize the world without ever caring much about how it works in practice.
I disagree with Sowell on lots of topics. But he is someone who challenges me in important ways. I respect him, so I would recommend his books, including this long and dense tome. Below I share my notes from the book for my future reference.
My notes:
- Schumpeter: “There are many Keynesians and Marxians who have never read a line of Keynes or Marx.”
- John Dewey influenced education without many educators reading him
- Road to Damascus (Conversion of Paul the Apostle): Radicals in their 20s become conservatives in their 40s
- Marx was wrong to assume labor is true source of wealth because countries with lots of labor don’t become rich
- An intellectual is a “dealer in ideas” not someone who applies them “and intellectual work begins and ends with ideas“ not their application
- In academia, the more focused a department is on ideas the more left it is politically, he argues. (English vs economics; sociology vs medical; psychology v engineering)
- Hayek’s Road to Serfdom inspired Friedman and a whole counter revolution with Regan and Thatcher though few read the work
- Journalists and instructors are intelligentsia extending intellectuals
- “The fatal misstep of such intellectuals assuming that superior ability within a particular realm can be generalized as superior wisdom or morality overall.” 14
- John Stuart Mill in his Principles of Political Economy (1848) wrote “Even if a government were superior in intelligence and knowledge to any single individual in the nation, it must be inferior to all the individuals of the nation taken together.”
- “it is far easier to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge.” 20
- Specific knowledge vs mundane knowledge
- Intellectuals put reason above experience
- Tim Hartford in the Logic of Life (2008): We could have given every family in New Orleans $800k to move somewhere safe but instead we rebuilt
- John Steinbeck wrote “One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back.”
- Who did the robber barons rob when they lowered their prices to gain market share?
- Intellectuals frequently consider the economy a zero sum game when it is not
- Big criticism of understanding income distribution: common descriptions of inequality refer to statistical categories not specific people who do change what income level they are in over their lives
- Often household and individual income levels confused when arguing for stagnation, the number of people per household has been declining over time; In 1970, 21% U.S. households had 5 people or more; in 2007 it was 10%; Also 39 million people are in bottom 20%, but 64 million are in top 20%. This also skews stats
- Government assistance often not included in income. In 2001, transfers and in -kind accounted for three-quarters of total resources of bottom 20%
- The American poor have AC, cars , color TV and DVD players
- What are basic necessities? And even what is poverty? These are set by advocates
- Productivity and merit are different: paid more for productivity not merit
- “Prices often convey an underlying reality without being the cause of that reality.” 54
- Payday loan interest rates are small and paid over weeks but often described by advocates on an annualized rate ($15 on a $100 loan)
- “A fool can put on his own coat better than a wise man can put it on for him’
- Fundamental foundation of economics: that there is less stuff than the sum total of everyone’s desires (57)
- Economic systems convey scarcity not necessarily create it. Capitalism used prices to convey scarcity, it doesn’t create that scarcity
- Was anyone better off before capitalism? Did it cause squalor?
- Convey reality not create it
- In The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), Marx and Engels argue that a pricing mechanism signals need; John Dewey and others didn’t understand these economic foundations that even Marx did, author argues (66)
- Prices are symptoms not arbitrary constructs
- Did Rockefeller reduce the wealth of the world or reduce it?
- Woodrow Wilson, “we are not afraid of those who pursue legitimate pursuits, provided they link those pursuits in at every turn with the interest of the community as a whole” 77
- This is unrealistic, author argues, for social entrepreneurs: A “staggering requirement”
- Smith Corona owned typewriter market in 1989 but soon went bankrupt: industries create competition
- John Kenneth Galbraith’s “countervailing power” of government conveys businesses have market power and control but it’s the consumer that does. Galbraith argues over time industries consolidate which author doesn’t argue but author questions whether there is real evidence of price gouging following. (Isn’t there!?) Sherman Trust Act came at a time of failing prices
- Ida Tarbell’s coverage of Standard Oil never seems to point out that oil prices kept falling (82)
- Author argues it was Smoot Hawley acts that made Great Depression worse (ie. Government made worse, as Friedman also argues)
- Author contrasts FDR making depression worse by acting, with Reagan letting 1987 recession sort itself out, despite short-term political criticism.
- Schumpteter: a vision is a “ pre-analytic cognitive act“
- Author argues intelligentsia believes the world would be perfect if they’d just get to enact their plans
- Rousseau: “Man was born free and he is everywhere in chains.”
- There is no left-right divide; Communists and fascists are the same he argues except the communists go international and fascists (Mussolini term) are national
- Conservatives are people trying to conserve so they have no ideological consistency across countries
- Adam Smith : government must avoid paying “a most unnecessary attention” to markets. He argues market economies are as natural and organic as spoken language
- The left assumes we have sufficient and superior knowledge to decide
- Mussolini: “Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”
- His tragic vision (world will always be messy) and vision of the anointed (world can be cleaned up)
- Tragic vision prefers the “mundane “ knowledge of experience whereas anointed look for “consequential” vision of the young
- Argue the other side, like Mill wrote “know them in their most plausible and persuasive form”
- Census data about groups wirh different people overt time: IRS data is same people thru course of their lives
- Asian Americans outperform whites on credit scores and mortgages but frequently not included because the black-white conflict is preference
- Lewis Termam high IQ kids: richer backgrounds went farther
- Author argues that when men and women are compared apples to apples there are not income disparities, references Diana Furchtgott-Roth (she said corporate jobs needed 25 years before getting top job and only 5% women were)
- More often found that men and women do different jobs for different lengths of time
- When intellectuals see a gap in the world between their vision and reality they presume the world is wrong.
- Orey Ashenfelter at Princeton predicted wine prices by weather not taste
- Author doesn’t like “verbal cleansing” of swamps for wetlands and prostitutes for sex workers
- Liberal used by FDR to rebrand progressivism that had been discredited
- Schumpeter : “the first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie”
- British historian Paul Johnson: A novelist has achieved “aesthetic dominance when those who cannot understand what he is doing or why he’s doing it are inclined to apologize for their own lack of comprehension rather than blame his failure to convey his meaning.”
- There were 24 million daily prices to be set by Soviet planners
- The exceptional subject or theory that gets coverage
- Eric Hoffer: “ the intellectual cannot operate at room temperature.”
- Growing the pie has done more to increase wealth than redistributing existing wealth
- George Stigler: “ A war may ravage a continent or destroy a generation without posing new theoretical question“ not every thing has intellectual pursuits
- China’s turn to capitalism put millions of Chinese out of poverty: why don’t intellectuals see that as a case study? It is mundane and not emotionally satisfying
- Roscoe Pound early proponent of judicial review: law judged by its results
- Author hates Kelo v New London in 2005: Court agreed with the city of New London and held that the government could take privately-owned land in order to turn it over to a private developer.
- Dred Scott, Wicksrd v Filburn snd Steeekeorkers vs Weber are “judicial activism,” author argues, reflecting values not law
- Representatives on Mission in France
- Restrictive housing regulation has made housing more expensive
- Argues “root causes of crime” strategy worsened crime
- Prisons are ineffective because people fall back into crime later, like food is ineffective because you’re hungry later, author says (290)
- “Bad ages to live through are good ages to learn from.” Eugen Weber
- Interwar intellectuals were Pacifist. Books like “Farewell to Arms; All Quiet on the Western Front and Merchants of Death were all popular anti war. Hitler viewed this as an advantage, assuming the west had no appetite for ware
- “Moral disarmament” in France led to its swift collapse to Germany in the Second World War, even after battling fiercely in the First World War; this pacifism was a progressive cause gone wrong, author argues
- “In most civilized men, resistance is necessary to arouse ferocity” Bertrand Russell arguing disarmament because others would follow
- Jean Giono part of those asking what was the worst that could happen if the Germans invaded: “ I prefer being a living German to being a dead Frenchman”
- Simone Weil: “Why is the possibility of German hegemony worse than French hegemony?” 322 she later fled for England during the Second World War
- The 1960s peace movement was reminiscent of 1930s pacifism movement, author argues
- HL Mencken and other progressives of that generation supported eugenics
- Author writes at length about IQ being predictive even if culturally biased. This is where he drifts into touchy territory: “Black subculture has a negative effect on intellectual achievement”
- Intellectually homogenous classes help achievement; culture reduces intellectual aptitude
- “Culture of poverty” is taboo because we don’t like internal explanations; intellectuals want to only use the environment to explain; The Bell Curve book was roundly dismissed as genetic determinism when there is validity, author argues
- An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944) by Swedish writer Gunnar Myrdal
- Gaps and disparities are lags to be overcome not injustices to be resented
- John Stuart Mill: “Almost every people, now civilized, have consisted, and majority, of slaves.”
- Western civilization wasn’t alone in slavery but it was the leader in destroying it
- Slavery predated race (but it was race that made it so pernicious)
- In 1960, two-thirds of black children were in two parent families; From 1890-1930 black unemployment was lower than for whites. “The reasons for changes for the worse in these and other patterns must be sought in our own times”
- Here is a very controversial take from the author: Western Europeans benefited from Roman conquest, so too black Americans enjoy a higher standard than average Africans because what their ancestors endured
- Centralized planning rose and fell in 20th century
- Intellectual as noun is an insult; intellectual as adjective a compliment
- Richard Hofstader’s Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963) argues like HL Mencken, who said Americans have “an active and relentless hostility to ideas”, but author argues they’re wrong: they mistake criticism of intellectuals to be anti intellectualism
- “Error has no rights”
- Argues liberals filter toward a vision without coordinating
- Liberals think in terms of “freedom to” and others think “freedom from”
- Keynes and Friedman were exceptions: public intellectuals who also had academic rigor. Typically Posner argues fame is inverse to academic rigor
- French literature professors won’t get famous unless they speak widely and publicly. Different than engineers or surgeons
- Inequities and disparities in society are the norm
- Intellectuals can’t be sued for malpractice like a single doctor can be
- Lincoln: towering genius disdains a beaten path
- Dreyfus affair (origins of the term intellectuals) and civil rights are exceptions to intellectual success. Otherwise welfare policy and crime and education and black family have been worse since 1960s
- They pull apart how we sort ourselves: preferring race over patriotism
- Peter Hitchens: atomization of society
- “The intelligentsia encourage people who are contributing nothing to the world to complain, and even organize protests, because others are not doing enough for them.” 541
