Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?

Let's say I want to accumulate wealth, and I play the lottery and win, then, by your definition, I'm smart.

In Intellectuals and Society, he notes that many "intellectual elite" have been cheerleaders for some of the worst (economic) disasters and human rights abuses of the 20th century. In 2020, we can see this vividly with the coronahysterics causing untold and immeasurable damage to societies with arbitrary and poorly calculated lockdown rules.

Sowell argues that these intellectuals believe their excellence in one field gives them the legitimacy to talk in depth about other fields in which they're not so excellent - perhaps most notably economics, which is Sowell's own field of expertise. In A Vision of the Annointed, he describes how these intellectuals have concocted a fantasy world view which is inconsistent with actual evidence, and the academies work to insulate themselves away from this evidence when it conflicts with their world view. This is true in economics, where the current leading school of thought (MMT) pretends they're not just kicking the can down the road, and ignores the works of the Austrian school.

When he refers to 'intellectuals,' he doesn't just mean anybody intelligent or accredited with degrees. He is referring to people whose results are just ideas, and not products, inventions or scientific breakthroughs. Many "idea people" ultimately face no consequence upon themselves for their poor ideas; they have no skin in the game and are eager to inflict their world view upon society even if there is collateral damage.

A slightly older of his works, A Conflict of Visions, suggests there are two prevailing visions: an unconstrained and a constrained vision. The unconstrained vision is that held by many intellectual elite and largely ignores some aspects of human nature. It believes that people are innately good and well meaning (The just-world fallacy). They don't believe that humans should have constraints because given the opportunity, they will act in their own or others' best interests. The constrained vision is one in which humans believe that man is not innately good and has some bad inside of him. In this vision, it is necessary to have some constraints (laws, fears, etc) so that they act in a manner which is in the best long term interest of themselves or the wider society.

In the study of economics, it is not possible to ignore human nature because all economic activity is the result of people taking actions in their own self-interest. Praxeology studies how humans behave, without consideration for their thoughts or speech, but merely how they act in the real world. It argues that what someone does tells you far more than what a person says they will do, and even what they tell themselves.

Arguably, the spanish tradition continues under more modern institutions with the British and Dutch trade monopolies. Nobles and wealthy commoners could go off and stake their claims in the colonies. A more diverse elite.

Instead of being a knight that can either farm (limited number of hides) or crusade, you could also be a textile merchant. You could be a ship captain, VOC clerk or mior Raj.

In the middle ages the nobility were effectively the government (and the church provided checks and balances, kind of) as well as the investor class. In addition to financing productive capacity they also did all the administrative things governments do. Obviously administrative bloat ebbed and flowed over time. Today we have both government investment in capital project (e.g. a road, or a bus terminal) and private investment in capital projects (a new factory or whatever). Both groups can get very rent-seeky and non-productive if left alone with no reason to not do those things. It's really hard to make generalizations that are more accurate than not.

I think comparison to the pre-industrial world is more effective for understanding that time than it is for drawing conclusions about our own time. All the details are so different you really need to squint to make things line up and when you're talking about big things like macro-economics it's the fine tuning and details that make all the difference.

I know, I know, get off my lawn.