Posted tagged ‘Thomas Sowell’

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Thomas Sowell Interprets President Obama’s Political Rhetoric

May 22, 2015

Thomas Sowell

No one puts so much substance into so few words as Thomas Sowell. His article titled, ‘Just Asking’ (click here), in which he interprets President Obama’s rhetoric about poverty, is just his most recent example. I don’t need to waste your time by saying anything else. Lets get right to some excerpts from the article.

“In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric — and disregard of reality.”

“One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to “ask from society’s lottery winners” that they make a “modest investment” in government programs to help the poor.”

“Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else.”

“Despite pious rhetoric on the left about “asking” the more fortunate for more money, the government does not “ask” anything. It seizes what it wants by force. If you don’t pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.”

“So please don’t insult our intelligence by talking piously about “asking.”

“And please don’t call the government’s pouring trillions of tax dollars down a bottomless pit “investment.” Remember the soaring words from Barack Obama, in his early days in the White House, about “investing in the industries of the future”? After Solyndra and other companies in which he “invested” the taxpayers’ money went bankrupt, we haven’t heard those soaring words so much.”

“Then there are those who produced the wealth that politicians want to grab. In Obama’s rhetoric, these producers are called “society’s lottery winners.”

“Was Bill Gates a lottery winner? Or did he produce and sell a computer operating system that allows billions of people around the world to use computers, without knowing anything about the inner workings of this complex technology?”

“Was Henry Ford a lottery winner? Or did he revolutionize the production of automobiles, bringing the price down to the point where cars were no longer luxuries of the rich but vehicles that millions of ordinary people could afford, greatly expanding the scope of their lives?”

“Most people who want to redistribute wealth don’t want to talk about how that wealth was produced in the first place. They just want “the rich” to pay their undefined “fair share” of taxes. This “fair share” must remain undefined because all it really means is “more.”

“Obama goes further than other income redistributionists. “You didn’t build that!” he declared to those who did. Why? Because those who created additions to the world’s wealth used government-built roads or other government-provided services to market their products.”

“And who paid for those roads and other government-provided services if not the taxpayers? Since all other taxpayers, as well as non-taxpayers, also use government facilities, why are those who created private wealth not to use them also, since they are taxpayers as well?”

“The real question is whether the investment of wealth is likely to be done better by those who created that wealth in the first place or by politicians. The track record of politicians hardly suggests that turning ever more of a nation’s wealth over to them is likely to turn out well. It certainly has not turned well in the American economy under Barack Obama.“
“The fact that most of the rhetorical ploys used by Barack Obama and other redistributionists will not stand up under scrutiny means very little politically. After all, how many people who come out of our schools and colleges today are capable of critical scrutiny?“
Related Article – Thomas Sowell: Obama vs. America, at austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Thomas Sowell: Obama’s Failed Economic Policies, at austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Thomas Sowell Compares FDR And President Obama, at austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Thomas Sowell’s Vision Of The Anointed, at austrianaddict.com.

 

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Michelle Obama vs. Thomas Sowell On The Politics Of Race

May 13, 2015

I heard audio clips of Michelle Obama’s commencement speech at Tuskegee University. In stead of relying on the clips I heard, I decided to listen to the whole speech to get a total understanding of the message she was trying to get across. In the video below, the speech starts at 9:10. Mrs. Obama does a good job telling the history of not only Tuskegee University but the Tuskegee Airman who flew in WWII. She talks of how racism was overcome by the efforts of each individual working and persevering to become the best they could be. It’s very inspiring.

Then at 24:00 – 27:30 it starts to veer off the inspirational tracks a little bit. This is the part I heard audio clips of, and you can listen to these if you choose. I won’t comment on them. What I found interesting was the part starting at 27:35. She gives the students the solution to take on the “deep-rooted problems” that they will face. Here is what she said.

“Our history provides us with a better story, a better blue print for how we can win. It teaches us that when we pull ourselves out of the lowest emotional depths and we channel our frustrations into studying and organizing and banding together, we can build ourselves and or communities up. We can take on those deep-rooted problems and together we can overcome anything that stands in our way.”

At this point I’m thinking she is going to reference the beginning of her speech where these individuals didn’t let racism stand in the way of their accomplishments. They didn’t turn to Government or anybody else, they just figured it out and did it on their own. But instead, Mrs. Obama says this.

“And the first thing we have to do is vote. Not just once in a while…..Vote in every election at every level all of the time. Because here’s the truth. If you truly want a say in your community. If you truly want to have the power to control your own destiny, then you got to be involved. You got to be at the table. You got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it, that’s the way we move forward. That’s how we make progress for ourselves and for our country.”

This is spoken like a true Statist. Gaining Government power is the answer. It’s what you should strive for? This is the complete opposite of what the founders of Tuskegee University, and the Tuskegee airman did.

I’m going to let Thomas Sowell respond to Mrs Obama’s comments in the video below. He is discussing his book Intellectuals and Race. I’ve said this before that nobody writes or speaks more clearly about race and culture than Thomas Sowell.

Thomas Sowell grew up in Harlem in the 40’s when there was more racism than there is today. He has said he is glad he didn’t grow up in Harlem in the 60’s when Government started their “Great Society”  programs to help blacks.

At 28:38 they show an excerpt form a speech President LBJ made at Howard University in 1965. LBJ talks about the plight of blacks. And the solution to their plight is Government, in general, and his Great Society Programs in particular. Watch up to 31:25 to hear Thomas Sowell’s response to LBJ’s speech.

About the plight of blacks today, Dr. Sowell says,“The first thing to be done is to understand that this was a result of policies begun in the 1960’s. This is not a legacy of what happened a hundred years before the 1960’s. He said he would roll back welfare and eliminate affirmative action, but it won’t happen because all “the incentives politically, are for black leaders to blame all problems in the black community on the larger society. And that enables them to take on the role of being the defender of the black community against enemies. Which in turn creates the situation in which many blacks don’t feel that anything that they do is going to help themselves, unless it is done politically as a group….” One of the most pathetic things I heard in recent years was a young black man saying at one point he thought he would join the Air Force and become a pilot. And then he said he realized that the white man is not going to let a black man become a pilot. And he was saying this decades after the Tuskegee Airman had established their reputation in combat in Europe. Hopelessness is one of the great products of the race industry.”

When asked “how do you make something out of yourself, as an African-American in America today”, he says; “The way anybody else would. You equip yourself with skills that people are willing to pay for.”

Watch the whole video. It is worth the time.

 

Related Article – Thomas Sowell: The Economics And Politics Of Race, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Best Commencement Speech Ever? Adm. McCraven Gets My Vote, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Race Politics and Lies, by Thomas Sowell, at jewishworldreview.com.

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As The Number Of Laws Increase, Individual Freedom Decreases

April 15, 2015

 

In a recent article by George Will titled, How to proceed when everything is a crime?, he says there are “an estimated 4,500 federal criminal statutes – and innumerable regulations backed by criminal penalties… The presumption of knowledge of the law is refuted by the mere fact that estimates of the number of federal statutes vary by hundreds.”

The unelected bureaucrats in regulatory agencies have piled rule on top of rule, and congress, which created these regulatory agencies, has abdicated its law making responsibility to them, and won’t use its power to rein them in. With the amount of laws that are on the books, almost everyone has broken some obscure law without even knowing it.

It is said that, “ignorance of the law is no excuse”, but if it is impossible to know, let alone understand every law, how can you be held responsible for not being able to do the impossible.

Thomas Sowell has defined the rule of law and freedom  as such.

“THE RULE OF LAW–Rules known in advance, applied generally, and constraining the rulers as well as the ruled.”

“FREEDOM–Exemptions from the power of the rulers and a corresponding limitation on the scope of all laws, even those of democratically elected Governments.”

As more laws that get passed, we move farther away from the rule of law, and closer to a point where we lose our individual freedom. Our only chance of turning this around is to get people to understand that individual freedom is in their best interest, and when government doesn’t abide by the rule of law it becomes the enemy of individual freedom and must be stopped.

Related Article – Individual Liberty Is The Least Contentious Way Of Settling Differences, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Thomas Sowell, “The Point Of No Return?“, at austrianaddict.com.

 

 

 

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The ‘Disparate Impact’ Racket by Thomas Sowell

March 18, 2015

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell takes a look at the two reports about the Ferguson Missouri shooting of Micheal Brown, issued by Eric Holder’s Justice Department, in this article titled, The ‘Disparate Impact’ Racket.

In the article Dr. Sowell talks about the difference between the hard evidence and facts used in the first report that proved Brown was in the wrong, and the “sweeping assumptions” and “misleading statistics” used to condemn the Ferguson Police Department as racist in the second report.

Here are some excerpts from the article.

“According to the second report, law enforcement in Ferguson has a “disparate impact” on blacks and is “motivated” by “discriminatory intent”.”
“Like many other uses of “disparate impact” statistics, the Justice Department’s evidence against the Ferguson police department consists of numbers showing that the percentage of people stopped by police or fined in court is larger than the percentage of blacks in the local population.”

“The implicit assumption is that such statistics about particular outcomes would normally reflect the percentage of people in the population. But, no matter how plausible this might seem on the surface, it is seldom found in real life, and those who use that standard are seldom, if ever, asked to produce hard evidence that it is factually correct, as distinct from politically correct.”

“Blacks are far more statistically “over-represented” among basketball stars in the NBA than among people stopped by police in Ferguson. Hispanics are similarly far more “over-represented” among baseball stars than in the general population. Asian Americans are likewise far more “over-represented” among students at leading engineering schools like M.I.T. and Cal Tech than in the population as a whole.”

“None of this is peculiar to the United States. You can find innumerable examples of such group disparities in countries around the world and throughout recorded history.”

“Even with things whose outcomes are not in human hands, “disparate impact” is common. Men are struck by lightning several times as often as women. Most of the tornadoes in the entire world occur in the middle of the United States.”

“Since the population of Ferguson is 67 percent black, the greatest possible “over-representation” of blacks among those stopped by police or fined by courts is 50 percent. That would not make the top 100 disparities in the United States or the top 1,000 in the world.”

THE MYTH OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

Here is a video of a younger Dr. Sowell addressing statistical disparities with host William F. Buckley on Firing Line.

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Thomas Sowell: Obama Versus America

February 10, 2015

Thomas Sowell

Her is another outstanding article by Thomas Sowell, “Obama Versus America” read here, in which he tries to answer the question: Why does the President “denigrate the United States in front of foreign audiences“?

The President is always comparing the history of the US to some standard of perfection that can’t possibly exist. Why can’t it exist? Because nothing human is perfect. He wants us to agree with him that if the US doesn’t match up to a standard of perfection, as defined by him, than our whole system must be in need of “fundamental transformation“.

The President is using the straw man of perfection as the standard to be judged against, when in fact it is the history of the US that should be compared to the standards set by the histories of other countries. Or better yet, it is other countries histories that should be compared to the standard set by the history of the US.

Here are some excerpts from the article.

“In his recent trip to India, President Obama repeated a long-standing pattern of his – denigrating the United States of America to foreign audiences. He said that he had been discriminated against because of his skin color in America, a country in which there is, even not, “terrible poverty.”

“Make no mistake about it, there is no society of human beings in which there are no rotten people. But for a President of the United States to be smearing America in a foreign country, whose track record is far worse, is both irresponsible and immature.”

“Years after the last lynching of blacks took place in the Jim Crow South, India’s own government was still publishing annual statistics on atrocities against the untouchables, including fatal atrocities. The June 2003 issue of “National Geographic” magazine had a chilling article on the continuing atrocities against untouchables in India in the 21st century.”

“Nothing that happened to Barack Obama when he was attending a posh private school in Hawaii, or elite academic institutions on the mainland, was in the same league  with the appalling treatment of untouchables in India. And what Obama called “terrible poverty” in America would be called prosperity in India.”

“The history of the human race has not always been a pretty picture, regardless of what part of the world you look at, and regardless of whatever color of the rainbow the people have been.”

“If you want to spend your life nursing grievances, you will never run out of grievances to nurse, regardless of what color your skin is. If some people cannot be rotten to you because of your race, they will find some other reason to be rotten to you.”

Even with all of its present and past imperfections, the US is still the standard of judgement.

Related Article – Thomas Sowell: Stormy Weather And Politics, at austrianaddict.com.

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Thomas Sowell: Stormy Weather And Politics

February 5, 2015

Thomas Sowell

I always read everything Thomas Sowell writes. His RSS feed is on my site so you can also enjoy his clear thinking. All his articles are outstanding, which is a bit of a curse, because that means they are all average. Some of his articles surpass his normal brilliance and these are the ones I post.

His recent article “Stormy Weather and Politics“, is outstanding. He talks about global warming theoretical models and how they can be fudged to fit the desired result. Click on the article and read it all. Here are some excerpts from the article if you can’t.

  -“The ultimate test of any theoretical model is not how loudly it is proclaimed but how well it fits the facts. Climate models that have an unimpressive record of fitting the facts of the past or the present are hardly a reason for us to rely on them for the future.”
  -“Putting together a successful model — of anything — is a lot more complicated than identifying which factors affect which outcomes….. the challenge is to determine precisely how those factors interact with each other. That is a lot easier said than done when it comes to climate.“
  -“Everyone can agree, for example, that the heat of the sunlight is greater in the tropics than in the temperate zones or near the poles. But, the highest temperatures ever recorded in Asia, Africa, North America or South America were all recorded outside — repeat, OUTSIDE — the tropics.”
  -“None of this disproves the scientific fact that sunlight is hotter in the tropics. But it does indicate that there are other factors which go into temperatures on earth.”
  -“American cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas often hit summer temperatures of 110 degrees or more, because they are located where there are not nearly as many clouds during the summer as are common in most other places, including most places in the tropics. The highest temperatures on earth have been reached in Death Valley, California, for the same reason, even though it is not in the tropics”.
  -“Putting clouds into climate models is not simple, because the more the temperature rises, the more water evaporates, creating more clouds that reflect more sunlight back out into space. Such facts are well known, but reducing them to a specific and reliable formula that will predict global temperatures is something else.”
  -“Meteorology has many facts and many scientific principles but, at this stage of its development, weather forecasts just a week ahead are still iffy. Why then should we let ourselves be stampeded into crippling the American economy with unending restrictions created by bureaucrats who pay no price for being wrong?”
 -Related Article – Thomas Sowell: The Economics And Politics Of Race, at austrianaddict.com.
 -Related Article – Thomas Sowell Discusses “Fact Free Liberals“, at austrianaddict.com.
 -Related Article – Thomas Sowell Sums Up “Fact Free Liberals” In Part IV, at austrianaddict.com.

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Random Thoughts By Thomas Sowell

January 30, 2015

Thomas Sowell

It’s always enlightening to read what Thomas Sowell is randomly thinking (Read here). Here are some excerpts from the article,

–“When someone tries to lay a guilt trip on you for being successful, remember that your guilt is some politician’s license to take what you worked for and give it to someone else who is more likely to vote foe the politician who plays Santa Claus with your Money.”

–“So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers’ unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do.”

-“Somewhere Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the purpose of an education should be to produce a mind that cannot be humbugged. But today our educational system, from kindergarten to the universities, is engaged in the mass production of fashionable humbug – propaganda rather than education.”

-“Would you go to a funeral if you knew that your presence would be unwelcome and would just add to the pain of the mourners? Probably not. But New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio went to both funerals for the two New York City policeman recently murdered – and gave speeches. that epitomized what a truly despicable human being he is, eve by the low standards of politicians.”

-“Demographic “diversity” is a notion often defended with fervor but seldom with facts.”

Related Article – More Random Thoughts by Thomas Sowell, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – More Random Thoughts by Thomas Sowell, at asutrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Random Thoughts by Thomas Sowell, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Thomas Sowell’s Random Thoughts, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Thomas Sowell’s Random Thoughts, at austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Random Thoughts And Other Thoughts by Thomas Sowell, at austrianaddict.com.

 

 

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Thomas Sowell: The Economics And Politics Of Race

December 22, 2014

I saw the video below on  economicpolicyjournal.com, and it reminded that nobody writes more clearly about race and culture than Thomas Sowell. His book, The Economics and Politics of Race, was written in 1983. I read this book after I had read Race And Culture, Migration and Culture, and Conquests and Cultures, which make up his three book cultural trilogy which was written in 94, 96, and 98 respectively. As much as I liked the cultural trilogy, I think I liked The Economics and Politics Of Race better, although the fact that I read the other books first may have had something to do with it. What I took away from the book is that some cultures are superior to other cultures, in specific areas, at specific times in history. And even though past cultural tendencies seem to follow and influence ethnic groups over time, superiority and inferiority are always subject to change.

Here are some excerpts from the book.

“The human race has, throughout history, differed greatly in its component parts. At various periods of history, some groups have been far ahead of others in military power, scientific achievements, or organizational skills. But often those who were far behind in one era became far ahead in another era. The Chinese, for example, had a huge and complex empire thousands of years ago, when Nordic Europe was living a primitive, tribal existence. It has been only the past two or three centuries that their roles have been reversed…..The Arabs conquered parts of Europe in the Middle Ages but have suffered conquest by Europeans in more recent times.”

“Virtually every portion of the human species excels at something. From an economic point or view, this means the mutual benefits can result from cooperation among different racial and ethnic groups, whether through domestic markets, international trade, or the migration of peoples. From a Political point of view, however, it is very difficult to get acceptance of these intergroup differences and their beneficial economic consequences. The conflict between the economic consequences and the political consequences of these group differences is one that appears again and again…..”

In this video Thomas Sowell discusses his book, The Economics and Politics Of Race, on the TV show, Tony Brown’s Journal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu_bKJ11O0M

 

Here are some excerpts from the book.

“History is a treasure of experience, available without paying the high price often inflicted on those who lived through it. But history is not free, however. It conflicts painfully with many cherished beliefs and shatters many carefully built theories. At best it is untidy and complex, and often it is a battleground for those with differing visions of the world today. Yet history remains a massive fact and a massive influence on out lives: “We do not live in the past, but the past in us”.”

“To seek to look ahead into the future is to seek to understand the momentum of the past and the choices available to us in the present. We live in a world of options constrained by decisions already made and actions already taken – as well as constrained by mutually competitive and perhaps irreconcilable goals among contemporaries.”

“The history of racial and ethnic groups around the world is a story of the heights and depths of the human spirit – the glory of its perseverance in the face of every kind of adversity and the vileness of its brutality against the helpless. Whether the future brings great advancements or succumbs to wretched agonies, it will have ample precedents. How well we understand the past can be an important factor in decisions to shape that future.’

THOMAS SOWELL QUOTE – “Each group tends to trail the long shadow of its own cultural history as well as reflecting the consequences of external influences”.

 

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Must Reads For The Week 12/6/14

December 6, 2014
The pen is mightier than the sword...

 The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)

Opinions vs. Facts, by Thomas Sowell, at jewishworldreview.com. Dr. Sowell lends us his common sense analysis, so we can better understand the Ferguson situation. The must read of the must reads.

Race Hustler Eric Holder Called Out, at economicnoise.com. Milwaukee County Wisconsin Sheriff, David Clarke, unloads on race hustlers like Sharpton and Holder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMQCFqgAGyM

Watch Obama Make The Case Against His Executive Order On Immigration.

The Worlds Biggest Chocolate-Maker Says We’re Running Out Of Chocolate, by Roberto Ferdman, at washingtonpost.com. I love chocolate so this article is important to me. Dry weather along with a fungal disease in West Africa has reduced global cocoa production by 30%. The demand for more cocoa is rising because of economic growth in China and more over all world demand for dark chocolate, {which contains 70% chocolate compared with 10% in regular chocolate bars). But don’t worry because the same economic forces of supply and demand that are bringing the price of oil and gas down, will eventually do the same thing for chocolate. As the price goes up individuals will produce {supply} more at the higher price, and individuals will consume {demand} less at these higher prices, eventually bringing the price down.

Forget High Minimum Wage Order Takers: Pizza Hut Will Just Read Your Mind Instead, at economicpolicyjournal.com. You can order based on what toppings your eyes look at the longest. We are at the beginning of big changes in the way we do everything. Individuals in Government won’t be able to keep up with, let alone try to regulate things that are about break through.

Your Barber May Be Closed But We’re Always Open, at shortcut.com. Shortcut is an on demand service that brings a barber to your house, work, or hotel room. It’s Uber for hair.

Vision For The Future: 1 Million Fewer Cars On The Road, by Kimiko, at uber.com. It’s Uber’s version of car pooling. When there are multiple trips that start and end at similar locations, or when there are riders along the route taken, they will take the same car and share the cost. Spontaneous activity in the market that will help ease traffic congestion in ways that the smartest central planners could never imagine.

The Flying Car Is (Almost) Here, by Josh Dean, at bloomberg.com. A step closer to “The Jetsons“.

Under Pressure From Uber, Taxi Medallion Prices Are Plummeting, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Once again the status quo monopoly is about to crack. Government regulations have artificially kept the prices for taxi medallions high for decades. Economic forces in the market always have a way of winning.

Jobs: Shale States vs. Non Shale States, at zerohedge.com. The President is trying to take credit for this, even though his administration has done everything in its power to shut down or limit oil production.

Uber Banned In Vegas, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Big taxi doesn’t like competition from the little guy, so they run to the Government for some help.

Here It Comes: Master Card Seeks “Level Playing Field” For Bitcoin Regulation, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Are we beginning to see a pattern: Status quo companies lobby their buddies in Government, in order to get rid of their upstart competitors. It is apparently less costly to do this, than compete in the market with these upstarts. The myth is, big business likes competition. In reality they liked competition when they were the up start competitors. They don’t like it as much once they get near the top.

The Difference Between Men And Women, thechive.com. I will make no comments about this post!

 

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Are People Smarter Today Compared To People 100 Years Ago?

December 3, 2014

The Thinker Statue by the French Sculptor Rodin - stock photo

I asked myself this question, “are people smarter today compared to people 100 years ago”, after reading an article titled, Dumb And  Dumber – Scientific Proof  That People Are Getting ‘Stupider’, at zerohede.com. In the article, the writer makes the assertion that people are getting ‘stupider’ {then humorously asks, is ‘stupider’ even a word}. The article states that there is now scientific evidence that this is so. SAT reading and verbal scores have been going down for decades, are examples cited as evidence to support the theory. The article also posts a 1912 eighth grade exam from  Bullitt County Schools in Kentucky. Try to answer some of these questions, you will be humbled.

DEFINE STUPID AND SMART

The question: are people getting stupider, needs to a few qualifying questions asked before we can answer it. 1) What are the standards used for comparing the intelligence of people who lived 100 years ago to people alive today? 2) Who decides what constitutes being smart and being stupid? 3) Does reciting  facts from memory, like a contestant on Jeopardy, show higher intelligence than being able to take facts and logically reason your way from point A, to a conclusion at point Z? 4) Does being smart in your chosen field magically make you smart in other fields? These are just a few questions we need to think about before we make a pronouncement about intelligence or lack of intelligence.

DIFFERENT ERAS REQUIRED DIFFERENT KNOWLEDGE

People today need to know less about some things and more about other things than the people who lived 100 years ago. If you look at the eight grade test in the article linked to above, you will find questions about spelling, arithmetic, grammar, geography, physiology, civil government, and history that not many of us could answer today. However the answers to these questions are just a click on the computer, or a swipe on a cell phone away from getting answered in today’s world. The knowledge that people had to memorize back then is now stored on a computer chip and is able to be called up at a moments notice. Think of the times you have been with people and someone asks a question that no one can answer until someone uses their cell phone to look it up. The ability to write these posts would be exponentially more time-consuming if it wasn’t for computers. The ability to use spelling and grammar checks makes writing so much easier (some times these tools can’t even save me from spelling and grammar mistakes). Think about a sports writer decades ago pounding out his story on a typewriter: talk about having to get it right on the first take. Calculators have made complex math problems easy for dummies like me. You don’t have to know how to read a map today because you have GPS on your phone with the hot British female voice telling you, “in 200 feet turn right”.

The advance in the standard of living since the industrial revolution brought about a situation where more and more people didn’t have to know how to produce food, clothing, shelter, etc in order to win their battle against the planet for their survival. People began to specialize in producing these things more efficiently which freed up time and labor to be used to produce new products and services that were created by entrepreneurs who speculated, but were not assured, that markets existed for these new products and services. Through this trial and error process of becoming more productive, we can safely say that the over all amount of knowledge in society is obviously expanding, while at the same time we can say that an individual needs less over all knowledge to survive. The process of production has become so specialized that an individual can be a welder at a John Deere plant and literally trade his labor for food, instead of knowing how to actually produce food.

THOMAS SOWELLS TAKE

Thomas Sowell writes about what we are talking about in his book, Knowledge And Decisions ( one the best books I have ever read),  was inspired by F.A Hayeks essay, The Use Of Knowledge In Society.

Dr. Sowell writes in Knowledge and Decisions (which was written in 1980), “The growing complexity of science, technology, and organization does not imply either a growing knowledge or a growing need for knowledge in the general population. On the contrary, the increasingly complex processes tend to lead to increasingly simple and easily understood products. The genius of mass production is precisely in its making more products more accessible, both economically and intellectually to more people.”

Think of how much more true this is thirty-four years after Dr. Sowell wrote this. Things we use in our everyday life weren’t around in 1980.

More from Dr. Sowell. “…Matthew Brady required far more knowledge of photographic processes to take pictures with his cumbersome equipment during the Civil War than a modern photographer requires to operate his automated cameras…..The printing press performs daily communications miracles beyond the ability of an army of the most highly trained and dedicated scribes of the Middle Ages….An ordinary individual can easily arrange travel across thousands of miles through cities he has never seen by tapping the knowledge of travel agents and/or the American Automobile Association.”

Photographic equipment? The printing press? Travel agents? Seriously. We take pictures with cell phones. We have the internet and inkjet printers. We don’t call Triple A to make travel arrangements, we call Triple A if we need a tow.

THE ONE AREA IN WHICH WE ARE CERTAINLY DUMBER

If you haven’t seen the eighth grade exam from 1912 in the Dumb and Dumber article above you should go look at it. The civil government and history part of the eighth grade exam is where we have become woefully ignorant. Unfortunately these two areas are the most important areas we as individuals need to be smart about if we want to have continued prosperity. Being smart in these areas would have kept us vigilant about the incremental taking of individual freedom by people in Government that has happened over the last 50 plus years. Two questions from the civil government part of the exam prove my assertion. How many adults, let alone eighth graders today, could get these two questions right. 1) Name three rights given Congress by the Constitution and two rights denied Congress,  and 2) Define the following forms of Government: Democracy, Limited Monarchy, Absolute Monarchy, Republic. Give examples of each.

These questions aren’t even asked today. The first question, “name three rights given congress by the constitution…and two rights denied congress”, speaks volumes about what was understood about the constitution in 1912 that isn’t even taught in schools today. The fact that congressional powers are limited is stated in the question. Today most people think congress has unlimited power to make any law individuals in congress wish to make. Most people today think the President has unlimited power to decree what he wishes. But I bet most eight graders in 1912 knew that the President had limited powers.

CONCLUSION

The amount of over all knowledge has expanded exponentially over the last 100 years, while at the same time the amount of knowledge an individual needs to survive is less, and also the kind of knowledge each individual needs to survive is different.

The real question is not; are we smarter today than 100 years ago,? The real question is; are we smart enough to understand that the process that produced today’s standard of living stretches far back in time? Free individuals cooperating in free markets produced the standard of living we enjoy today. Central planning by Governments didn’t produce it, in fact, it has hampered our advance. The passage of time has separated us from the founding principles of our country.  If we aren’t smart enough to understand this, we will continually allow democratically elected tyrants to incrementally crush our individual freedom under the heel of their central plans.

Related Article – We’re All Born In The Middle Of The Story, by austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – July 4th, Declaring Independence From Tyranny, by austrianaddict.com.

Related Article – Spontaneous Order = Free Markets, by austrianaddict.com.

 

 

 

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