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Comment by claudiawerner | Hacker News Reader

I strongly disagree with Sowell on almost every topic one can think of, either in terms of philosophy, society, or economics, but I admire his outspokenness and plain speaking, as the article notes he is known for, and it's a shame to read ad-hominem style attacks have been made against him. From what I can gather, however, the academic literature engages better with his arguments than journalists do.

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Be interesting to see where you think he's wrong especially where his arguments are based on some uncompromising statistical facts.

It's not that I disagree with his use of statistics, but my own philosophical framework (particularly inspired by the ideas of J.E. Roemer, Gerry Cohen, Nitzan & Bichler, and more recently Roberto Veneziani) sees serious problems (I think exploitation, domination, alienation, and insufficient focus on capabilities qua equality of opportunity) with not only capital in general but the state too.

I can't easily recall the statistics or framework he used, though the disagreement between our frameworks of society (such as methodological individualism) was what stood out to me. I recall Pikkety making a more convincing case on the economic side, and Frederic Lordon making a more convincing case on the philosophical side. I also disagree with Sowell on his position on sweatshops (again, not rejecting the principle on which it is made, which is that the workers would not be employed otherwise, or have lower wages from domestic companies, but rather a disagreement on the reach and justification of that argument).

For what it's worth, Thomas Sowell was a Marxist up until he did a summer internship at the US Department of Labor.

Excerpt from interview where he talks about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6PDpCnMvvw

I know that; I think his book on Marx(ism), from the parts I've read, is actually one of the better ones written by mainstream economists, but that's quite a low bar. There are some good criticisms of it floating around on the 'net.

The best criticism of Marxism I've read is in the introduction to Human Action by Mises where he shows that the concept of class struggle, specifically class itself, is illogical.

Also FWIW I have been upvoting you as you get downvoted.

Rothbard (and later Mises) are both on my reading list, I'm nothing if not open-minded. Thanks.

Personally I would recommend starting with Human Action by Mises as it represents essentially the purest distillation of that school of thought and the culmination of a lot of Mises' earlier works. Rothbard studied under Mises so it would serve as a good introduction to him as well.

I highly recommend Rothbard's Anatomy of the State as an excellent starting place. It's really short, practically a pamphlet.

At the end of the day, when it comes to Ludwig von Mises, it's a question of whether or not you believe humans have free will. If you've studied long enough to become a neurologist, you find that free will is laughable.

Do people that have studied long enough to become a neurologist, find this laughable out of their own free will?

Remember the rules.

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The one place where I align with the Piketty-neo-Marxist crowd is that economic ignorance leads to some terrible, terrible public policy. I daresay Sowell believes the same. But it ends there.

What do you think of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's claim that Piketty basically has his math all wrong?

https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...

>>with not only capital in general but the state too

Why should capital in general be a problem? Isn't it crony capitalism the actual problem? If you are very rich, that isn't usually a problem to your neighbor. But if you are very rich and can thus get away with tax evasion but your neighbor lands in jail for the same reason, isn't that when it actually becomes a problem?

I haven't read Taleb's response; I might, though Pikkety is less my focus, because I think he spends a lot of time arguing for the system, but continuing along the line of reducing inequality, rather than questioning the system itself.

I see capital as a problem precisely not as a matter of quantity (one person having more than another), but as a matter of quality. While 'crony capitalism' is obviously a problem, I don't think it's the root of the problem, philosophically speaking. I'd still think that a system in which a rich person can't get away with tax evasion has serious problems. This is where I likely diverge from, say, Warren's or even Sanders' platform (speaking as someone not from the US).

I think deep issues (exploitation, domination, and alienation) deserve a look, even if they seem to be an alien perspective from the outset.

His argument that Donald Trump would be a better choice for President than Hillary Clinton because the former would be easier to remove from office than the latter, arguing specifically that "congressional Republicans would [not] automatically spring to his defense, if he overstepped the line". Doesn't seem like a great example of keen political judgment in hindsight.

That's a pretty uninformed reading of the situation as it happened. If you followed conservative media throughout the process it wasn't at all obvious that establishment Republicans were going to actually mount a defense of the President. There was a lot of wavering back and forth as the narrative evolved and was fought over. It was not automatic at all.

Your reading of the situation seems predicated on a conveniently pedantic definition of "automatic" from my perspective. I watched the entirety proceedings as they transpired and don't recall witnessing much hesitation from Republicans, but it's definitely possible that by not "following conservative media" I overlooked the actually agonizing deliberation that transpired behind the scenes. I would love to educate myself more on this topic, can you link to any examples of what you're talking about?

Most of the conservative establishment was against Trump at the beginning. Especially Fox News, the primary mouthpiece of the then-traditional Republican Party. Remember that Trump was/is quite critical of the Bushes and other neocons. Watch one of those "Trump won't be president" highlight reels on YouTube and you'll see plenty of Republicans included.

Even today, you have a fair amount of Republicans who criticize Trump for various reasons, including Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee, and John Kasich. Additionally the new "Lincoln Project" is funded and run by anti-Trump Republicans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lincoln_Project

The Lincoln Project is mostly a group of ad guys who would normally get paid at this time of year but have made themselves anathema for the time being from their traditional customers. They've just pivoted because the smart money is on getting funding from Trump oppo groups.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/02/romney-...

> but it's definitely possible that by not "following conservative media" I overlooked the actually agonizing deliberation that transpired behind the scenes.

This is actually exactly what I'm talking about, not the proceedings themselves. With the exception of the potential wildcard of the Bolton testimony (which never ended up happening) at that point the party had essentially been whipped and it was just theatre.

Here are the names that were discussed incessantly in conservative media: https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20908684/senate-republicans-t...

Up until Matt Gaetz did his stunt disrupting the private/secret hearings of House witnesses there wasn't very much fire on the Republican side which was why these close-door pre-impeachment vote hearings happened in the first place. Remember that at certain point there was a pseudo-impeachment process occurring prior to any impeachment vote having taken place. Even convincing Republicans that they needed to fight to get an actual vote on the record was not an simple process.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/23/20929023/...

"Five days before the House even approved the articles of impeachment on Dec. 18, McConnell took to television to say he would be in "total coordination with the White House counsel" as the impeachment process moved forward.

"During an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, McConnell said that "everything" he does "during this, I'm coordinating with the White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president's position and our position as to how to handle this, to the extent that we can."" (https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/mitch-mc...)

"But it evidently has great value to the president and to Mr. McConnell, who had spent nearly a year preparing for it. From the instant that Democrats assumed power in the House last January, denying that they had any intention of impeaching Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell, a six-term Kentuckian and the longest-serving Senate Republican leader, directed his staff to quietly dig into the history of impeachments and consult with outside experts.

"“We thought they would finally work themselves up to doing this on something,” Mr. McConnell said. “It has been threatened endlessly. We needed to come up to speed on what actually happens, and that began in earnest last fall.”

"So when Mr. McConnell fielded a phone call from Mr. Trump days before Christmas, he was ready. Stung by the House vote to impeach him on two charges, the president reached out to the majority leader from his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Fla., throwing out ideas about how to handle his coming Senate trial.

"Mr. McConnell had a reassuring response for the third president ever to face removal by the Senate, urging Mr. Trump to trust him to manage the confrontation." (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/us/trump-impeachment.html)

That's probably true, since Hilary's campaign cost 3 times more than Trump's campaign. In the end, both sides are there to defend their interests, and not yours.

I made this back in 2016, about voting and that famous paper that talks about how the opinions of voters are really only expressed for the top 10% of income earners in the US:

https://battlepenguin.video/videos/watch/99a2d4b3-cfe6-4a77-...

and few months later I followed it up about the outrage and anger that was being poured out:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-fallout-of-american-a...

We're still in the shadow of that outrage, and it's directed at the puppets and not the Fortune 500 execs that are pulling the strings.

I've seen numerous examples of congressional Republicans not automatically springing to his defense

"Numerous examples" is fantastic but what he said was a generalization and as a generalization it holds up. What % of congressional Republicans would you estimate "did not automatically spring to his defense"?

Meanwhile Senate Republicans wouldn't even vote to see evidence in his impeachment trial.

Depends on when this was said. 2015, there was a long list of republicans who didn't like Trump.

It actually doesn't depend on when it was said. It was wrong. But, for the record, he said it in October 2016.

According to the OP he said Trump would be easier to remove than Clinton. The fact that Trump was not removed from office does not make the statement wrong.

He also said, "congressional Republicans would [not] automatically spring to [Trump's] defense, if he overstepped the line," which was clearly wrong.

I don’t think they automatically sprung to his defense though.

It seems to me that the Republican establishment didn’t support Trump but that he was able to rally his base in order force their support begrudgingly.

I believe the term that Trump’s base used for those Republicans was RINO, Republicans In Name Only. So the fact that this vocabulary existed among Trump’s base to me indicates that their support for Trump was not automatic.

Mitt Romney was the first Senator, of any party, to cross party lines to vote for an impeachment of a President of their own party. Many Republican legislators immediately and publicly renounced Trump's comments[0] regarding delaying the election.

The [R]'s can read the wind and since their base is tied to the hip to Trump at the moment they'll play ball on day to day things and have his back on most things, but they are all quite aware he is a temporary force that will be spent eventually and the last thing they want to do is give him the permanent keys to the kingdom.

[0]:https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/30/politics/trump-election-tweet...

I think there is merit to that, although I wouldn't care as much about republicans holding him to account. It would be nice but unrealistic from observations (not based in US).

I would argue that you should vote someone the press is actually critical of. Now, the press was very critical of H. Clinton too, but that was ignored because people made fun of Trump.

There is nothing simpler than misusing statistics.

The right wing does it all the time.

53% of all prisoners are black, ergo blacks are criminals.

Homosexuals represent 70% of all HIV infections, ergo homosexuality is inherently risky and should be treated the same way as hard drugs.

Now Thomas Sowell doesn't say any of those things himself. His points are much more interesting ... to people who have been only exposed to the liberal side of the story for their whole lives.

To someone who has read the original red in tooth and claw conservative talking points from the 80s his books are just a rear guard action and a not very interesting one at that.

Which is why the success of Thomas Sowell with people who have gone to university and then exposed to the real world is entirely the fault of the people who cancelled racism/sexism in the 80s/90s and are trying to do it again today.

You're projecting your bias into the causation.

Most conservatives I know understand that disproportionate black crime has nothing to do with race and everything to do with disproportionately adopted negative value systems in the black community.

Specifically, fatherless homes and lack of appreciation for education. These variables have the same impact on people of all races.

Unfortunately, instead of correcting the problem, movements like BLM think the idea of two parent families needs to be "disrupted".

> lack of appreciation for education

Have you ever been to a Black public school, like actually attended one as a student? I promise you the #1 problem isn't lack of appreciation for education.

>fatherless homes

Except this actually has a pretty pinpoint time when it began to cultivate and it overlaps with the War on Drugs and the stagnation of Black middle class growth in the 80s. The modern situation is accumulation of these effects, not their cause.

The rate of non-marital births steadily increased for Blacks and Whites from 1950-1995 (although Blacks did start from a higher baseline). From 1995 until now it has mostly levelled off.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_F...

"Disruption" of the "nuclear family" comes from the Marxist view that a monogamous family unit leads to the holding of property. In earlier non-monogamous societies, only the women knew for sure which children were theirs. That meant that property tended to accrue to communities formed around matriarchs, rather than single families.

As a father, if you didn't know who your child was, you protected them all, and had to cede property to the matriarchs.

Engels wrote that this was why "the patriarchy" should be fought and "dismantled" because it led to property ownership, and sensitivity against redistribution. Therefore, this remains a core value of modern Marxists, to move society back to fatherlessness so that establishment of redistribution mechanisms is more palatable.

Seems like a fairly horrific goal to me. Property rights have led to the single greatest increase in standard of living for all of Western civilization. Seems like we would want more people joining the system than tearing it down.

Wow, you made a lot of maxist angry.

> There is nothing simpler than misusing statistics

Lining up strawmen and knocking them down, maybe.

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