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Thomas Sowell interview

city-journal.org

391–400 of 457 posts

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#391
post #37

Thomas Sowell has had a huge impact on me and my views on economics. I'm from a poor working-class background and am often irritated by the needless language barriers of academics. > “Too many academics write as if plain English is beneath their dignity,” Sowell once said, “and some seem to regard logic as an unconstitutional infringement of their freedom of speech.” Sowell is unique in this respect. He's book, "Basi…

I recently started to read his book Intellectuals and Race, but stopped because his putative citations did not support his claim that whites in America are at a disadvantage relative to Asian Americans w.r.t. mortgage applications and keeping their jobs during downturns.

I think he has interesting things to say, and is certainly a great interview subject, but I would approach his claims with caution.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#392
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be a minority, but I'm willing to stick out my neck for meandering, illustrative, and indirect writing. Don't get me wrong, if it was the only thing available, I'd probably go crazy, too. But I believe there is a time and place in my "reading diet" for this kind of long-form journalism. As your adjectives suggest, New Yorker articles are less bullets of breathlessly-repeated facts, and more illustrations of n…

What about the bleatings of a person like Kevin D. Williamson, whose prose I identify as horrifically boring, not only because he isn't a deep thinker on any of the subject matter he writes about, but also because he spends about 80% of any essay trying to beat his audience over the head with how familiar he is with obscure and / or inconsequential tangential topics to the matter at hand. I don't have an issue with w…

I can't say I've heard of Mr. Williamson, but it looks like he hasn't written for the New Yorker.

I'm talking more of the style used by Ben Taub [0] [1], or Sam Knight [2] [3]. More investigative than "think piece", although there are some big ideas in the presentation.

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-da...

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/24/iraqs-post-isi...

[2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/17/can-farming-ma...

[3] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/30/theresa-mays-i...

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#393
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is your point by posting that? Is it that these people should not have advocates?

> What exactly is your point by posting that? Is it that these people should not have advocates? That I wanted to know the orientation of the group, and thought I might save others the trouble of looking it up? I didn't know people would be so sensitive about seeing the first two sentences of a Wikipedia article.

I'm not implying this was your original intention, however without providing any commentary other than the Wikipedia quote your reply read to me like a "rebuttal" or counterargument to the OP. Furthermore, it comes across like a lazy one (perhaps explaining the downvotes?).

While interpreting it as such goes against the "assume the best" ethos of HN, in an argumentative thread such as this it's an understandable reflex.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#394
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "indirectly coerced" you mean that they need food and shelter and they don't have slaves to grow their food and build their house for them?

> By "indirectly coerced" you mean that they need food and shelter Yes, and more. > and they don't have slaves to grow their food and build their house for them? Is this the level you sink to as soon as Capitalist dogma is questioned? It's not the poor and workers that have servants in modern society.

It's not dogma to suggest that people want to be compensated for building houses and growing food and won't do that for free unless a gun is put to their head.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#395

I'm going to be a nonconformist myself and oppose the near-univeral approval of Sowell in this discussion. His book Basic Economics was the first book on econ that I read, and I was very impressed by it. It reaffirmed the rather right-wing political views that I'd inherited from my parents. However, after taking a few introductory econ classes at university and doing further reading on my own, Sowell starts to appear…

> I'm going to be a nonconformist myself and oppose the near-univeral approval of Sowell in this discussion.

> It reaffirmed the rather right-wing political views that I'd inherited from my parents.

I really did not know HN was this conservative. I am very surprised at all this unanimous approval of Sowell.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president. Kaepernick was "fired" because he was poor at his job. Defenses started to understand his 1-dimensional attack and then shut it down. He was cut after the 2016 season, but had been benched in 2015 because the 49ers offense was struggling.[1] This was nine months before he ever took a knee before a game.[2] Did…

Kaepernick was blackballed by the league, full stop. Find me another instance of an uninjured QB under the age of 35 who led a team to a Super Bowl 3 years prior who was not only cut by his current team but not signed for even a backup role by another club. There's a reason that Cam Newton has a job today and Kaepernick doesn't, and it's because Newton didn't get cancelled.

Both players debuted in the NFL in 2011. In 2015, Kaepernick led the 49ers to a 2-6 start, while Newton led the Panthers 8-0 (and to a Super Bowl berth). Sure, the QB isn't the only player responsible, but he is the single point of failure. Isn't it possible that Cam Newton is just a much better player than Kaepernick, all else being equal? If Kaepernick were so good and such a talent that teams should have been picking him, why wasn't he winning?

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#397
If I understand the article correctly, Sowell thinks that blacks have a highly inferior status today because they have a culture that is not suited to succeeding in modern society.

If we assume Sowell is correct about that, then my reply is that culture is not fixed. For instance, Western European culture is vastly different than it was 500 years ago.

So the question is why blacks have the particular culture they do at present. Does Sowell address this?

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#398
post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

FWIW, if you believe the Gospel accounts, that's exactly what happened in Jesus' day.

His interactions with the Sadducees and Pharisees are mostly him lambasting them for doing much what you describe.

As he himself said, regarding eventual judgement:

> Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7%3A21-...

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#399

If I understand the article correctly, Sowell thinks that blacks have a highly inferior status today because they have a culture that is not suited to succeeding in modern society. If we assume Sowell is correct about that, then my reply is that culture is not fixed. For instance, Western European culture is vastly different than it was 500 years ago. So the question is why blacks have the particular culture they do…

He's written a lot of books, and I'd say these are some that dive into this topic:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36222735-discrimination-...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3040.Black_Rednecks_and_...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50623786-charter-schools...

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As OP said," pretend they advocate for the lower classes"

Hence why I wrote 'subjectively or objectively'. They have no pretence to being a working-class magazine, or to advocating a working-class politics.

OK.

Maybe we're not so different after all!

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