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Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

Rather than just downvoting, I'll offer another perspective. Sowell's statement is vacuous, just a bumpersticker retort. Rather than engaging in the issue, it simply questions the motives of the opposite party and in fact dismisses their motives as one of the seven deadly sins.

I realize this is twitter and not a well developed thesis, but that just means twitter is a terrible platform to meaningfully engage in nuanced topics. It is a great platform for shallow thinking and insults, though, akin to the excuse, "I have a wonderful proof of this but the margin it too small to contain it."

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What you say about Twitter sounds about right, but Sowell appears to have put a bumper-sticker quote on a bumper-sticker; he's written a bunch of long books if you want to find out more about his views.

Note that the twitter I linked to is not Sowell's actual twitter. He doesn't use Twitter. It's an account which tweets useful passages from his books.

Sowell has written plenty of books on these topics which are worthy reading. The quote is from one of his books. The twitter account I linked is not actually Sowell's. He doesn't have twitter. The account simply posts quotes from his books.

So no, it's not just a bumpersticker retort. Growing up in a poor south asian country, I was taught to only care about the food on my plate and not be jealous of the food on someone else's plate. That made me work hard at putting more food on my own plate without being jealous and stealing from another's plate.

The problem is not the food on my plate, the problem is I see many millions beside me with too little food and a few guys with at least 30000000 times of what they could ever want or need.

No person has 30000000 times what they could ever want or need. You need about a million dollars to retire early with a family, 30000000 times that would be 30 trillion dollars. Nobody is even close to that.

It was hyperbole. Take off a few zeros when reading it if you want.

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