Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thomas Sowell interview

city-journal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 457 posts

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#251

Post by vadansky »

deiznof wrote: post #250
vadansky wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>He then shows data that the anti discrimination legislation increased black default rates and questions whether you encouraging minorities to declare bankruptcy and enter financial ruin is really something to be desired. >Sowell talked about the CRA and was proven wrong by multiple studies, like this one, which has a section dedicated to how the CRA wasn't a problem: https://www.responsiblelending.org/mortgage-lend…

He brought up anti discrimination legislation causing defaulting and bankruptcy, which the 2008 crash literally caused. I brought up a specific example of how Sowell is wrong. Sowell has directly commented on this matter. It is obviously relevant and doesn't require me to explain any further.

>He brought up anti discrimination legislation causing defaulting and bankruptcy, which the 2008 crash literally caused.

No he didn't, what are you talking about? Just because he mentioned foreclosures means he meant the CRA caused the 2008 housing crisis? No one was talking about it, you just brought it up out of no where.

His statement had NOTHING to do with the housing crisis, the only link between them seems to be "both involve foreclosures, so if I prove CRA did not cause the crisis I will prove his other statement is also incorrect... Because they both have the word 'foreclose' in them"

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#252

Post by 323454 »

diffrinse wrote: post #179
IanDrake wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're projecting your bias into the causation. Most conservatives I know understand that disproportionate black crime has nothing to do with race and everything to do with disproportionately adopted negative value systems in the black community. Specifically, fatherless homes and lack of appreciation for education. These variables have the same impact on people of all races. Unfortunately, instead of correcting the…

> lack of appreciation for education Have you ever been to a Black public school, like actually attended one as a student? I promise you the #1 problem isn't lack of appreciation for education. >fatherless homes Except this actually has a pretty pinpoint time when it began to cultivate and it overlaps with the War on Drugs and the stagnation of Black middle class growth in the 80s. The modern situation is accumulatio…

The rate of non-marital births steadily increased for Blacks and Whites from 1950-1995 (although Blacks did start from a higher baseline). From 1995 until now it has mostly levelled off.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_F...

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#253

Post by djrobstep »

joachimma wrote: post #41
djrobstep wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that somebody's pre tax income is "their earnings" in the first place is precisely the problem. The tax you pay doesn't belong to you and you didn't earn it - the law is very clear on this.

Why is it not their earnings? That pre tax income gets payed out and taxed, because someone worked for it. If someone did not work for it the company they work for would not pay the tax amount to the government. It exists because of someones work. Once taxed it then belongs to the government, in a very real sense, the tax-payer no longer have access to it. While it no longer belongs to the tax-payer, it does not ther…

Why does the cheque sent to the government because of my labour count towards what I morally earned, but not the cheque sent to shareholders?

Why do some institutions (property law, contract law) count towards what I truly morally earned but not others (taxation law)?

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#254

Post by hajile »

deiznof wrote: post #76
alexarnesen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to be obtuse... but isn't "who decides how much people earn" always the two people that enter into free association with one another, either by an employment contract or a sales contract?

It completely ignores political corruption 100%. It completely ignores union stomping over the past 60 years, among other things. This is what I mean by his ultra reductionist views, he refuses to consider external factors when he talks about social issues, which is weird for a top economist to do.

The corruption issue is well-known, but not relevant. Corruption has been demonstrably worse in non-capitalist societies. Likewise, the biggest issue with capitalism is actually the lack of perfect information (and manipulation of information), but once again, non-capitalist systems have at least as big of an issue here (usually far worse).

The partial solution for information involves requiring more disclosures, having a smaller government with higher transparence, and (historically impossible) making that information easily available and publicly searchable on the internet. This also tends to help reduce the corruption issue.

A complete solution for either corruption or information transfer seems out of reach at the moment.

The short answer is simply that of all the systems we've tried as humans, capitalism (though imperfect) is the least worst and results in the least human suffering.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#255

Post by jmeister »

poilcn wrote: post #167
alexarnesen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you recommended the heavy work, not just the propaganda pamphlet - good. I haven't read Das Kapital and I should. However... My question: an oft repeated refrain, when Marx is touted as a reasonable alternative, is that any time anyone tried his ideas out, it was a total disaster (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Chavez). I have watched some Wolff on Youtube, as well as other lectures on Marxism, because I'm interested an…

You mention Pinker, that opens question whether you've met with work of Nicolas Taleb. He is not Marxist per se, one could say he's the opposite, but he is an ardent opponent of Pinker and his kind of reasoning, so his books could've challenged Pinker's opinion on these topics as well.

Taleb has attacked Pinker only on some technical statistics issues related to trends in violence post-Enlightenment and maybe merits of IQ.

Taleb leans libertarian on large scales himself.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#256

Post by manfredo »

peterpeppers wrote: post #210

[flagged]

Comparing China and Rome to a modern economy is basically impossible. Those were agrarian societies whose net output per unit of territory was largely static, and determined by the amount of food that can be grown in the land. I don't think it's valid to categorize them as either socialist or capitalist societies. Marx agreed: he wrote of feudalism (and probably, by extension other agrarian civilizations) as a distinct kind of society that predated the capitalism that rose out of the industrial revolution.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#258

Post by djrobstep »

mmm_grayons wrote: post #40
djrobstep wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that somebody's pre tax income is "their earnings" in the first place is precisely the problem. The tax you pay doesn't belong to you and you didn't earn it - the law is very clear on this.

> the law is very clear on this "That's what the law says" is a lousy moral justification for something. There are plenty of unjust laws or just things that are not laws.

Indeed. You make a powerful critique of those who say that pre tax property law defines what somebody has morally earned.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#259

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

philwelch wrote: post #227
deiznof wrote: post #17

His economics are sound, but I often find that his takes on social issues are extremely reductionist. His social views a lot of the time are just standard conservative views (and wrong IMO), I wish he wasn't being praised for that. One example being his view on systemic racism, which he described as: “It does remind me of the propaganda tactics of Joseph Goebbels in the age of the Nazis, in which he was supposed to h…

Sowell has some well-thought-out views on these issues, and he’s been expressing many of them for decades, but he has a curmudgeonly side as well. And I think if you understand his more well-thought-out views on these issues, I think you’ll also at least understand his curmudgeonly attitude. Oddly enough, what you’re doing now—if it were done to dismiss the thoughts of a “progressive” black person—would probably be c…

Sowell has been criticized widely for his reductionist take on economics. Not sure what "tone policing" has to do with anything...

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#260

Post by deiznof »

vadansky wrote: post #251
deiznof wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He brought up anti discrimination legislation causing defaulting and bankruptcy, which the 2008 crash literally caused. I brought up a specific example of how Sowell is wrong. Sowell has directly commented on this matter. It is obviously relevant and doesn't require me to explain any further.

>He brought up anti discrimination legislation causing defaulting and bankruptcy, which the 2008 crash literally caused. No he didn't, what are you talking about? Just because he mentioned foreclosures means he meant the CRA caused the 2008 housing crisis? No one was talking about it, you just brought it up out of no where. His statement had NOTHING to do with the housing crisis, the only link between them seems to b…

OH MY GOD...

The OP brought up that Sowell said that anti discrimination legislation increased defaulting and bankruptcy. Thomas Sowell literally wrote an entire article blaming CRA about 10 years ago. I brought up how Sowell is wrong because studies show that he is wrong.

Post reply on HN