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More about that new book on Sowell — 11 Comments

  1. From a post yesterday that links to two more reviews of the book:
    https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/thomas-sowell-in-one-volume/

    Friedrich von Hayek’s essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society” gave Sowell the inspiration to write one of his most important books, Knowledge and Decisions (1980), about the decentralization of decision-making in a market economy.

    The Use of Knowledge in Society
    https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/hayek-the-use-of-knowledge-in-society

    From the review Neo linked, which has much more personal detail about Sowell and how it relates to his career, applied analysis in the same vein seems to be a common theme:

    Perhaps Sowell’s most famous idea, a massive influence on my own thought, was the idea of the “conflict of visions.” One of the defining features of upper-middle class life in the modern era has been the idea that a degreed elite, often trained in such novel new fields as Post-Colonial Studies and Feminist Psychology, has a moral duty to guide society forward. This manifests itself all the time, from the necessity of wearing COVID-19 masks outdoors to the importance of allowing puberty-blocking drugs for young teenagers: trust the in-field experts, they always know best.

    Against this, Sowell famously proposed the alternative idea of trusting in common sense, or the shared wisdom of the intelligent crowd—what Psychology professor Gad Saad calls “nomological networks of cumulative evidence.” While the very occasional lambent genius might indeed know more than any other single person in close proximity to her, even such a Mozart or Al-Jabir would almost never have access to more knowledge that all of the farmers, general practice doctors, National Guard officers, and local pharmacists contained within even a very small town. And honesty compels us to admit that perhaps not every single human being with a PhD is such a lambent genius. The collective wisdom of the tax-paying citizenry—literally the sense of the commons—is very often correct.

    It is fashionable to scoff at this point, but, particularly in The Vision of the Anointed, Sowell defends it empirically and in detail. Using three distinct time-series-style case studies—of explicit sex education, criminal justice policy, and welfare policy during the American cultural revolution of 1960–1980—Sowell points out that common-sense traditionalist arguments about why liberal policies might fail were made almost immediately in each case, were then widely disparaged by the intelligentsia, and were eventually proved correct. …

  2. From a post yesterday that links to two more reviews of the book:
    https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/thomas-sowell-in-one-volume/

    Friedrich von Hayek’s essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society” gave Sowell the inspiration to write one of his most important books, Knowledge and Decisions (1980), about the decentralization of decision-making in a market economy.

    The Use of Knowledge in Society
    https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/hayek-the-use-of-knowledge-in-society

    The review Neo linked has much more personal detail about Sowell and how it relates to his career. But applied analysis in the same nature as this seems to be a common theme:

    Perhaps Sowell’s most famous idea, a massive influence on my own thought, was the idea of the “conflict of visions.” One of the defining features of upper-middle class life in the modern era has been the idea that a degreed elite, often trained in such novel new fields as Post-Colonial Studies and Feminist Psychology, has a moral duty to guide society forward. This manifests itself all the time, from the necessity of wearing COVID-19 masks outdoors to the importance of allowing puberty-blocking drugs for young teenagers: trust the in-field experts, they always know best.

    Against this, Sowell famously proposed the alternative idea of trusting in common sense, or the shared wisdom of the intelligent crowd—what Psychology professor Gad Saad calls “nomological networks of cumulative evidence.” While the very occasional lambent genius might indeed know more than any other single person in close proximity to her, even such a Mozart or Al-Jabir would almost never have access to more knowledge that all of the farmers, general practice doctors, National Guard officers, and local pharmacists contained within even a very small town. And honesty compels us to admit that perhaps not every single human being with a PhD is such a lambent genius. The collective wisdom of the tax-paying citizenry—literally the sense of the commons—is very often correct.

    It is fashionable to scoff at this point, but, particularly in The Vision of the Anointed, Sowell defends it empirically and in detail. Using three distinct time-series-style case studies—of explicit sex education, criminal justice policy, and welfare policy during the American cultural revolution of 1960–1980—Sowell points out that common-sense traditionalist arguments about why liberal policies might fail were made almost immediately in each case, were then widely disparaged by the intelligentsia, and were eventually proved correct. …

  3. I’m sometimes in a hurry. If it wasn’t clear, the long quote at the end of my last comment is from the review in Neo’s blog post, which I will also link here:
    https://quillette.com/2021/06/13/one-maverick-documents-another-jason-rileys-biography-of-thomas-sowell/

    I will also provide direct links to the two book reviews from the NR post I linked to, in another post below. Both reviews are quite good, one short and one longer. I’ll quote something from the longer one, but IMO both are well worth reading for anyone interested. Each contain some good detail about Sowell.

  4. I’m sometimes in a hurry. If it wasn’t clear, the long quote at the end of my last comment is from the review in Neo’s blog post, which I will also link here:
    https://quillette.com/2021/06/13/one-maverick-documents-another-jason-rileys-biography-of-thomas-sowell/

    I will also provide direct links to the two book reviews from the NR comment I linked to, in another post below.

    Both reviews are quite good, one short and one longer. I’ll quote something from the longer one, but IMO both are well worth reading for anyone interested. Each contains some good detail about Sowell.

  5. Contrary to what I said, I am going to try this without links (which are available at the NR link above). For some reason, WP thinks this is a duplicate post and isn’t letting me post it.

    Here is a quote from The New Criterion review:

    In hopes of reaching a wider audience than Hayek, who wrote in the technical language of economics, Sowell’s book, in “lieu of graphs and equations . . . offers rich metaphors and copious real-world examples that make the weightier concepts under discussion not merely digestible but tasty.” This appeal to a wider audience is no small part of the reason that Sowell has been so influential.

    Another is that, while an economist by training, Sowell’s mastery of subjects is far wider. …

    The New Criterion review provides greater detail about why Sowell was a Marxist. His own experience is relevant to how people today still observe and think about such issues. What made him a Marxist was personal experience. What made him a non-Marxist was also, and follows directly after that in the review.

    I would say differences in wealth that he observed are not strictly market-related, but relate also to government policies and to money production in particular.

  6. I am having problems posting so will try it without direct links that are available in the NR post linked in my first post above.

    Here is a quote from The New Criterion review (the longer one):

    In hopes of reaching a wider audience than Hayek, who wrote in the technical language of economics, Sowell’s book, in “lieu of graphs and equations . . . offers rich metaphors and copious real-world examples that make the weightier concepts under discussion not merely digestible but tasty.” This appeal to a wider audience is no small part of the reason that Sowell has been so influential.

    Another is that, while an economist by training, Sowell’s mastery of subjects is far wider. …

    The second link provides greater detail about why Sowell was a Marxist. His own experience is relevant to how people today still observe and think about such issues. What made him a Marxist was personal experience. What made him a non-Marxist was also, and follows directly after that in the review. The reason he changed his view stands. I would say differences in wealth he observed are not strictly market-related, however, and relate also to government policies and money production in particular.

  7. I tried it again with just the direct links, and it wouldn’t take. Where I said “The second link” in my paragraph above, I meant The New Criterion review.

  8. There seems to be some duplication above (at 1:45 and 1:58).

    I didn’t believe the first one posted; so maybe it was released later. Perhaps more will show up later. I hope not many with extra special characters. 🙂

  9. HumphreyP —
    Agreed: “Knowledge and Decisions” is really a love letter to Hayekian socio-epistemology, which applies Austrian methodological individualism to the social nexus.

    It’s a highly valuable work for anyone on the Right side doing any social science or humanities scholarship or seeking deep application of the best of Enlightenment thinking.

    For example, take art historian Ernst Gombrich or philosophical anthropologist Ernest Gellner’s corpus (both influenced by Karl Popper).

    Reading these intellectual lights through “Knowledge and Decisions” ideas and copious examples yields fresh insights, generating expanding tests relevant to our lives, not simply theoreah and dopey arcana.

    Thus, grounded realism typically lacking in these fields can be vigorously regained.

    Most ideas and claims are false. But Sowell’s K&D forced me onto the pathways of constructive criticism in ways no one else has. Given the ongoing rediscovery of Sowell’s works, I hope the greater appreciation goes beyond applied economics and politics and into the social sciences and humanities as well.

    So much benefit to be gained through Sowell’s thought.

  10. TJ:

    Thanks. That is a great synopsis. I read some of it maybe 20 years ago, and I have an audiobook, but I should really revisit and finish it. I have some idea, but it has been so long, my memory is vague.

    It is probably the first thing of Sowell’s I should read right now.

    With the internet, I’ve been reading many classic economics works online, or in electronic format, (even in the original print), that people virtually never read in school. This includes Human Action, which I recall in the economics reading room. I remember that it mentioned Henry Wallace, but never read it. To understand it, it helps to understand earlier works by John Bates Clark, Frank Fetter, Herbert Davenport, Philip Wicksteed, Stanley Jevons, and others (including the British classical school, and Say). This includes Eugen von Bawerk, Mises’ teacher, whose works were translated into English not long after publication and were argued over by some of the people above, and the seminal work (1871) by Carl Menger, that wasn’t translated for many decades after. Menger intended for his Principles to be the first of more volumes, but got dragged into the debate over method with German Historical School economists.

    Someone in a law school is similar to that for me, in that you have to read a lot of his work (law review articles) to understand it, and eventually realize and know his shortcomings. It was helpful in a way but takes a lot of time. He talks about ideas of a few of those above, including outmoded ideas so it might help me in interpretation, but other economists seem conspicuous by their absence. Some or even many things he says probably make sense in a micro- sense, but he has little or no training in formal economics I believe, and would reach different conclusions if he understood general equilibrium. Instead of collecting lots of data like German Historical School economists, and their American Institutional brethren in the United States, he cites these Institutionalists as if their ideas have never been debunked. Instead of things like tax rates historically, their ideas are his data. Such ideas are still the understanding of many or even most Americans, unfortunately, still today.

    I’ve read Marshall’s Principles some (it is a huge book), reportedly the only economics text Keynes read, and important to Chicago school economists.

    I’ve read Frank Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit more, which outlines assumptions under “perfect competition” and includes a theory of entrepreneurship virtually identical to Mises’. Mises uses probability concepts developed by his younger brother Richard though instead, who I believe was a professor of aerospace engineering at Harvard.

    Rothbard has been a great help, a very clear writer who made original contributions (in production theory in its detail, and monopoly), and who traces Mises back to his sources, what the issues are. As someone with some graduate level myself, I find that I prefer to read Human Action, which assumes a more advanced level, instead of Man, Economy,and State, perhaps in a way like Rothbard himself might have done.

    But Rothbard has been a great help in what I need to understand, invaluable really.

    I could go on at length but won’t. 🙂

    All this forced me to better understand (even remember) what I learned in school, if I wanted to understand how these approaches differ. I actually have an empirical background but understand theory in a much broader sense today than I did when I was in school.

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