Thomas Sowell ( 10 of 95 )
The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that read more
The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help."
One of the peculiarities of the American Revolution was that its leaders pinned their hopes on the organization of decision-making read more
One of the peculiarities of the American Revolution was that its leaders pinned their hopes on the organization of decision-making units, the structuring of their incentives, and the counterbalancing of the units against one another, rather than on the more usual (and more exciting) principle of substituting "the good guys" for "the bad guys.".
People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information read more
Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.
Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.".
Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.".
Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
Considering the enormous range of human knowledge, from intimate personal knowledge of specific individuals to the complexities of organizations and read more
Considering the enormous range of human knowledge, from intimate personal knowledge of specific individuals to the complexities of organizations and the subtleties of feelings, it is remarkable that one speck in this firmament should be the sole determinant of whether someone is considered knowledgeable or ignorant in general. Yet it is a fact of life that an unlettered person is considered ignorant, however much he may know about nature and man, and a Ph.D. is never considered ignorant, however barren his mind might be outside his narrow specialty and however little he grasps about human feeling or social complexities.
Implicit in the activist conception of government is the assumption that you can take the good things in a complex read more
Implicit in the activist conception of government is the assumption that you can take the good things in a complex system for granted, and just improve the things that are not so good. What is lacking in this conception is any sense that a society, an institution, or even a single human being, is an intricate system of fragile inter-relationships, whose complexities are little understood and easily destabilized.
Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing read more
Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what has worked with what sounded good. In area after area- crime, education, housing, race relations- the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.
What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts.
What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts.
