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Thomas Sowell interview

city-journal.org

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Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#371

Post by treeman79 »

jiscariot wrote: post #6
z9e wrote: post #2

I’ve been reading a lot of his books lately, I cannot recommend enough. He does take a conservative approach to a lot of topics but the way he breaks things down helps you understand why. His book Basic Economics taught me more than any economics classes did in school.

I also enjoyed Basic Economics. It really encourages thinking in terms of second order effects, unintended consequences or what Bastiat referred to as the unseen.

City I lived in announced they were implementing rent freeze on all the mobile home parks. I explained to my parents (in a mobile home) that this was bad news.

Few days later they, and everyone in city got an exviction notice. Mobile home parks all decided to close down and sell the land.

Because of this book, this made perfect sense.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#372

Post by NateEag »

jahaja wrote: post #359
NateEag wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about whether he agrees with me (or anyone else). It's about whether he practices what he preaches. No one is perfect, but it's unwise to trust people who consistently advise one behavior but do another themselves. Also, if he promised to be faithful to his wife, and then engaged in multiple affairs, he broke a big promise multiple times. Again, I'd say that's relevant in deciding how much he should be tr…

> but it's unwise to trust people who consistently advise one behavior but do another themselves. Well, clergymen haven't been strangers to that kind of inconsistency throughout history. Luckily it's been relegated to gossip tabloids in modern society.

Certainly true.

Not all have been guilty of it, though.

I do not default to trusting pastors (despite being a devout Christian) - the United States is full to the brim of people who claim the title and act remarkably unlike Jesus Christ (a phenomenon predicted repeatedly in the first few decades of Christianity's establishment, I'll note).

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#373

Post by treeman79 »

HPsquared wrote: post #180
SantalBlush wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a more telling statement about the book. “My book is too edgy for academia” is a worn out trope used by pseudo intellectuals. The real reason Sowell’s book is not required is because it does not involve the necessary rigor or mathematical methodology when introducing economic principles. If people want to pretend that’s elitist, so be it. Antivaxxers do the same thing.

Mathematical rigour doesn't necessarily translate to correctness. A mathematics-first approach encourages oversimplified assumptions. An example is the efficient markets hypothesis, which is the "spherical frictionless cow" of economics.

Id taxes are raised, will tax income automatically go up?

Reading through this book you’ll understand that higher taxes often mean less tax revenue, and vice versa.

Many people get stuck on zero sum game.

This isn’t a mathematicians book.

This is a book so people don’t think stare bonds are free money, etc.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#374

Post by microcolonel »

Shraal wrote: post #186

Am I the only one here who thinks that "Basic Economics" is overrated? I loved the first chapters but I didn't finish it because of his obvious bias against regulations. While I enjoyed his analyses of failed regulations, the book makes it seem like there're no successful market regulation laws in place and every attempt is doomed to be short-sighted like all his examples. This [1] review on Amazon from someone else…

> because of his obvious bias against regulations

Could it be that you, the person who has almost certainly not had the degree and intensity of experience in this field as Thomas Sowell (as so few have), are the one with the bias in favour of regulations that are not strictly necessary?

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#375

Post by xiler »

refurb wrote: post #335
chmod600 wrote: post #145

One important impact he had on my thinking is that he rejects groupings of people based on snapshots in time. For instance, it is very common to use income as a proxy for your economic success, and then to group people into quintiles, calling the bottom quintile "the poor". It seems reasonable, but it's wrong enough to lead to very wrong conclusions. A college student living on their own will appear to be a "poor hou…

Exactly. And when you try and track people across decades, things start to look different. https://medium.com/@russroberts/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-...

Interesting read, but supposedly when we're talking about changes in social mobility we really care about the change in the percentage of people that are richer than their parents? Indeed towards the end of the article the author says:

> There is one study of progress over time that follows parents and children that is gloomy and that is “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Mobility Since 1940” by Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, Jimmy Narang (Chetty et al) They find that if you were born in 1940, you had a 92% chance of surpassing your parents income. But if you were born in 1984, the number is a depressing 50%. Chetty et al control for age — this is for parents and children when they are both 30. This does suggest that the American dream is dead or at least dying — half of the children do better than their parents but half do worse, suggesting no progress over time.

The author then says that we should measure income differently by using a non-standard measure of inflation. But if we had just used that non-standard measure on the wage data of Piketty et al., we would've arrived at the same conclusion anyway?

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#376

Post by tathougies »

RoboticWater wrote: post #356
_fq4v wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, call me crazy, but given that he believes it once existed, I find it hard to believe that he also believes that it's just over and done with now. Yes, he does believe racism exists within systems. But this is not what is meant by 'systemic racism'. Today, systemic racism is both a description of a problem, as well as an insinuation of its cause -- namely 'white privilege' and white hegemony -- and an insinuati…

See, this just comes off as reactionary, as if saying "I believe in systemic racism" somehow secretly casts a vote for progressive policies behind your back. Is it really so hard to say "I believe that our institutions are systemically racist, and I believe that egalitarianism is best facilitated by the market"? It just seems strange to get caught up in the "culture war" notions that terms are getting co-opted for ag…

Words take on new meanings. Look... you're expecting me to continue to defend a man who has written dozens of full-length books explaining his positions. I'm not going to respond to your claims on charter schools because Sowell has just released a new book called 'charter schools and their enemies', which goes very in depth into his support of charter schools. I haven't read it yet, but I imagine it would contain his response to studies like the ones you posted.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#377

Post by lawnchair_larry »

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…

> I just can't take this sort of person seriously in regards to social issues. I just can't do it.

Unfortunate, but it’s your loss. I definitely understand where you’re coming from, as I thought the same a few years ago. Challenge yourself to objectively listen to people who you think you disagree with. You might find that things you were certain about have serious flaws.

There are many reasons why terms like “systemic racism” are not constructive, and frankly, he’s not at all wrong on that point.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#378

Post by jahaja »

NateEag wrote: post #372
jahaja wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's unwise to trust people who consistently advise one behavior but do another themselves. Well, clergymen haven't been strangers to that kind of inconsistency throughout history. Luckily it's been relegated to gossip tabloids in modern society.

Certainly true. Not all have been guilty of it, though. I do not default to trusting pastors (despite being a devout Christian) - the United States is full to the brim of people who claim the title and act remarkably unlike Jesus Christ (a phenomenon predicted repeatedly in the first few decades of Christianity's establishment, I'll note).

> he United States is full to the brim of people who claim the title and act remarkably unlike Jesus Christ

Yeah, indeed. Even though I see myself as both a socialist and atheist I have absolutely zero problem with religious people or religion in itself. To each their own. I actually admire the commitment and self-sacrifice of monks/nuns of various beliefs. What leaves me dumbfounded however is how so many people have somehow managed to cherry-pick all the worst aspects - egoism, intolerance, greed, no empathy beyond the in-group etc. - but still somehow argue that they're followers of a religion based on compassion for others (and especially the less fortunate?).

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#379

Post by csours »

brickmort wrote: post #49

I've read six Thomas Sowell books in the past few years. His book Basic Economics is a classic, but my favorite of his is Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One . It covers the things that the former does but, as the title suggests, applies it to a real-life scenario. He then walks through the scenario as it plays out to demonstrate his point to the reader. For example, when a city artificially lowers the rent,…

Does he talk about job creation? I'm curious because, as much as people talk about job creation, it doesn't seem to be part of most economics curricula.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#380

Post by lawnchair_larry »

deiznof wrote: post #278
tengbretson wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, everyone here who likes Sowell can put forth specific, concrete examples where he is right, instead of making vague statements about how brilliant he is and then demanding evidence only when someone disagrees. Why? The positive argument already exists. It's Sowell's writing. What are you asking for a cliff's notes? The disagreement you're talking about must obviously stem from something in the source materia…

It exists for economics exclusively, he has never proven himself in regards to social issues to be anymore than a common twitter conservative.

Do you expect to be taken seriously when you dismiss someone with a resume like his as “nothing more than a common twitter conservative”? How do you even fool yourself into believing that?
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