The Quest for Cosmic Justice

In the Quest for Cosmic Justice, Thomas Sowell talks of cosmic justice vs. traditional justice.  Under traditional justice, certain rules were set and all parties were expected to meet them.  Whether those rules were for college acceptance or conviction for a crime, there was just one set of rules.  However, this was unfair to some.  Student A went to a good school while Student B went to an inner-city school.  That Student A is more likely to be accepted to a good college is a forgone conclusion.  However, it is no credit to A that he was raised in better circumstances.  Nor is it the fault of B that he didn't have the same benefits.  Those seeking cosmic justice seek to balance the scales where nature and/or society does not offer the same opportunities.  This sounds like a fine goal.  However, where traditional justice is easily administered, cosmic justice requires more information.  Rather than just looking at the text of laws, judges must now weigh the various attributes of people (e.g., race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, circumstances of upbringing, etc.) to determine the just outcome.  This sort of thinking is why Justice Sotomayor said that a wise Latina woman would reach a better conclusion.  Cosmic justice is impossible and its administration is capricious.  Justice is pursued in the laws that legislatures pass, not in the rulings of judges.  Lady Justice wears a blindfold for a reason, but modern justice - social justice - has removed the blindfold.  If you are this race, you get a bump in your score for college admissions.  If you are that religion, you are above criticism, if you have that condition, your employer must make reasonable accommodations for you, etc.  Sowell prefers traditional justice.

There are additional topics to discuss.  The book is really a collection of 4 essays that play upon one another.  After the Quest for Cosmic Justice, he delves into the idea of equality, namely that it is a mirage and, like Cosmic Justice, unachievable.  Not only do different cultures hold different values, there are different levels of effort and different degrees of talent.  If two children raised in the same household by the same parents could have drastically different outcomes, what hope is there to have equality on a mass scale.  Yet another impossibility.

Next he talks of the Tyranny of Visions.  Here he digs into the peace movements that followed the First World War and how that inevitably allowed Hitler to build a military machine that plunged the world into yet another devastating war.  The signs were all there but an adherence to a pacifist vision led the leaders of the free world to stand by as the Axis Powers grew more dangerous.

Lastly, he covers The Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution.  Where private property was once private, the state can now take it not for public use but to transfer it to another private owner who will pay more taxes.  Where it used to be that the burden of proof was placed on the prosecution, in many cases it is now up to the defense to prove innocence.  This is particularly true in discrimination cases where guilt is presumed if the makeup of employees is not the same as the makeup of the local population.  Worse still, the government has taken to purchasing citizens' freedom with citizens' taxes.  For example, the government offers a subsidy to School A on the condition that it follow several rules, then that will give School A an advantage over all schools that don't accept the subsidy.  In this way, the government imposes rules that it has no authority to impose.

Though a short book, it is packed with provocative ideas and strong arguments for a return to the rule of law.  Highly recommended.

Minimum Wage is Always Zero

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

Thomas Sowell

Whenever someone talks of raising the minimum wage, I think of this quote from Thomas Sowell.  Is it better to raise the wages and thus shove the least productive into unemployment or abolish the minimum and let employers pay what the employee will accept.  No person will voluntarily accept a job that does not make them better off and no employer will hire an additional employee if that does not make them better off.  The minimum wage is just a case of self-declared do-gooders deciding what is 'fair' according to them, without regard to the market, the employee, or the employer.

Along those same lines, taxing the rich does not improve the lot of the poor.  It may please some to see the wealthy punished through taxation, but it harms the economy.  The government is always less efficient in spending money than private individuals.  Had the money remained in the hands of the wealthy, they would invest it with an eye toward profit or spend it on goods, both of which spur growth.  By contrast, government will spend it with no concern of a financial return, which is how we get expensive boondoggles with huge cost overruns.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. 

Abraham Lincoln

Intellectuals and Society

In this 2010 book, Thomas Sowell defines intellectuals and the intelligentsia, then discusses their impact on society.  To him, an intellectual is a person whose output is ideas.  Whereas an engineer might build a bridge, an intellectual will produce ideas.  The intelligentsia are followers of the intellectuals and provide a path for dissemination of the ideas the intellectuals produce.  For most of history, intellectuals had little impact on society.  Firstly, society was usually illiterate, so the ideas mostly stayed in the cloistered realm of the intellectuals.  Starting in the 18th century, those ideas began to seep into the general populace and get adopted.  The problem with ideas is that they have no effective feedback loop for the intellectuals who propose them.  Karl Marx paid no price for his disastrous ideas.  Indeed, his ideas are still in circulation despite an uninterrupted series of failures whenever a country tries to implement them.

All too often, intellectuals who are expert in one field offer commentary on fields where they do not have expertise.  Many intellectuals were in favor of World War I, especially since President Wilson, former dean of Princeton, was an intellectual himself.  However, after the war, such pro-war ideas were extremely unpopular.  Soon, the intellectuals were proposing unilateral disarmament and painting war as the enemy.  France and England paid the price for implementing such policies when Hitler started World War II.  They were unprepared and spent several years suffering defeats before the tide finally turned.  Had they used the older idea of 'If you desire peace, prepare for war,' things would have been much different.  Another example he offers was when a police commissioner warned that a given ruling would cause crime to increase.  At the time, crime had been on a steady path down, with murders at half what they had been 30 years before.  The judges implemented their policy preference and, ten years later, the murder rate had doubled.

Dealing in ideas, intellectuals have rhetorical skills far beyond those of your average person.  Often, an intellectual can carry the argument simply because of such rhetorical skills even if the proposed idea was counterproductive.  A skilled debater can often win either side of an argument.  A person who has spent years gaining experience in a field and has more practical knowledge on a subject may not have the ability to verbalize that.  On those occasions when someone might provide a good counterargument, the modern intellectual all too often resorts to "verbal virtuosity."  The counterargument need not be answered because the person voicing it is sexist, racist, etc.

Intellectuals tend to be in academia and are generally in certain fields.  Colleges of engineering, medicine, business, economics, and sports tend not to have as many intellectuals.  Many of these people are as highly educated, but there are feedback loops.  Bad ideas in medicine lead to sickness and death.  Bad ideas in engineering have collapsing buildings and bridges.  Bad ideas in political science can be blamed on the politician who implemented it rather than the professor who proposed it.  Intellectuals are more often on the left than the right.

An excellent book and highly recommended.

Amazon Documentaries

Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World: Here is a documentary about Thomas Sowell, PhD economist who studied at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Chicago.  Jason Riley outlines his career and interviews various friends and associates of Sowell.  As a longtime fan and avid reader of Thomas Sowell, I was already familiar with most of what the documentary covers.  This is a good primer for Sowell, but only scratches the surface.  There was not enough of Sowell himself in this documentary about him.  A search on YouTube will provide some great videos of Sowell covering a wide array of topics.  Recommended.

Val: The life and career of Val Kilmer, narrated by his son, Jack.  The story is told both in the present with a dramatically diminished Kilmer (he has survived throat cancer) and in the past through home movies.  Val had carried a video camera with him throughout his career and had captured a great deal of behind-the-scenes video, both on the sets of his movies and of his home life.  Val Kilmer has always seemed like the coolest of the cool, but his autobiography is one long tragedy interrupted by moments of joy.  At least, that is how the documentary paints it.  Well-made but depressing.  Proceed with caution.

Shatner in Space: On October 13, 2021, William Shatner, the original Captain Kirk, went to space on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.  Here is the background of how he met Jeff Bezos and then launched into space to become the oldest person ever (90) in space, surpassing the previous record holder, Wally Funk (82), who had flown on the first crewed New Shepard.  Shatner is astonishingly spry for a man his age and still mentally sharp.  He does not seem 90.  Though sometimes saccharine sweet and occasionally preachy about the environment, it is mostly fun and worthwhile.

Uncle Tom

Here is a movie that explores right-leaning blacks in America.  Many of them have been called an Uncle Tom or worse for not siding with the Democratic Party.  These are their stories.  What struck me most was when it was noted that they all knew who Jay-Z was (a self-admitted drug dealer) but not Thomas Sowell, a Harvard graduate and noted cultural commentator.  The media highlights left-leaning blacks but attacks right-leaning ones.  When Kanye met with Trump, he was said to be off his meds.  Candace Owens has been linked to white supremacy despite being black.  The theme is that blacks who don't toe the liberal line will be ostracized and attacked by those who do.  Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Larry Elder have spent decades countering the idea that blacks can't advance because of racism in America.  The most successful blacks in America today are Nigerians.  Why?  Because they haven't been told since birth that racism in America will never let them succeed.  It is not by chance that black Americans are marinated in the racist America myth.  Those who embrace the myth will vote Democrat and those who don't will be called Uncle Toms and race traitors.  Not an accident.  Herman Cain, an extremely successful business man and one-time presidential nominee, talks about his life and rise to success.  He says that hard work pays.  Ben Carson, a famous brain surgeon and also a presidential nominee, has been regularly mocked by late night comics.  If you are black and on the left, it is racist to mock you.  If you are black and on the right, you are fair game.

This is an excellent film that shines a light on the other side of this conversation, a side that is mostly hidden.  See this movie!

Thomas Sowell Retires

In college, I took quite a few economics classes.  In retrospect, I wish I had taken more, perhaps even changing my major to economics.  I really enjoyed it and, in fact, got better grades in econ than history.  It was when I was taking Macroeconomics at Iowa Western that I first encountered Thomas Sowell.  He was included in the textbook, albeit just a brief biographical snippet (he earned his Bachelors at Harvard, his Masters at Columbia, and his PhD at the University of Chicago) along with a couple of economic questions that he answered for the author.  Not long after that, I discovered that he wrote a column.  He and Walter Williams (another favorite of mine), are lifelong friends.  Of all the columnists I have read over the last 25 years, none have held my attention for all that time as well as Sowell.  In his farewell column, he offers a positive view of how far the country has come but also laments what has been lost.  Unencumbered with a column, he plans to devote more time to photography.  Over the years, his affinity for photography has figured in many columns.  A number of his photos are displayed here.  I will miss reading his analysis of current events.  I have only read two of his books; he has written 40 so there is plenty left to discover.