“But empirical questions are questions that must be asked, if we are truly interested in the well-being of others, rather than in excitement or a sense of moral superiority for ourselves. Perhaps the most important distinction is between what sounds good and what works. The former may be sufficient for purposes of politics or moral preening, but not for the economic advancement of people in general or the poor in particular.”
— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell
“While facts are important, understanding the implications of those facts is even more important, and that is what an understanding of economics seeks to provide.”
— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell
“While facts are important, understanding the implications of those facts is even more important, and that is what an understanding of economics seeks to provide.”
— Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
“As the distinguished British historian Paul Johnson put it: The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.{”
— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell
“The importance of economic principles extends beyond things that most people think of as economics. For example, those who worry about the exhaustion of petroleum, iron ore, or other natural resources often assume that they are discussing the amount of physical stuff on the planet. But that assumption changes radically when you realize that statistics on “known reserves” of these resources may tell us more about costs of exploration, and about the interest rate on the money that finances this exploration, than about how much of the resource remains on Earth. Nor is the amount of physical stuff necessarily what matters, without knowing how much of it can be extracted and processed at what costs.”
— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell
“Much confusion comes from judging economic policies by the goals they proclaim rather than the incentives they create. In wartime, for example, when military forces absorb many resources that would normally go into producing civilian products, there is often an understandable desire to ensure that such basic things as food continue to be available to the civilian population, especially those with low incomes. Thus price controls may be imposed on bread and butter, but not on champagne and caviar. However right this might seem, when you look only at the goal or the initial consequences, the picture changes drastically when you follow the subsequent repercussions from the incentives created. If the prices of bread and butter are kept lower than they would be if determined by supply and demand in a free market, then producers of bread and butter tend to end up with lower rates of profit than producers of champagne and caviar, who remain free to charge “whatever the traffic will bear,” since no one regards these things as essential. However, because all producers compete for labor and other scarce resources, this means that the higher profits from champagne and caviar enable their producers to bid away more resources, at the expense of producers of bread and butter, than they would have been able to in a free market without price controls. Shifting resources from the production of bread and butter to the production of champagne and caviar is one of the repercussions that escapes notice when we fail to think beyond the initial stage of consequences of economic policies. For similar reasons, rent control tends to shift resources from the production of ordinary housing for moderate-income people toward the building of luxury housing for the affluent and wealthy.”
— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell
“Whatever its origins or its ability to influence or be influenced by external events, economics is ultimately a study of an enduring part of the human condition. Its value depends on its contribution to our understanding of a particular set of conditions involving the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. Unfortunately, little of the knowledge and understanding within the economics profession has reached the average citizen and voter, leaving politicians free to do things that would never be tolerated if most people understood economics as well as Alfred Marshall understood it a century ago or David Ricardo two centuries ago.”
— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell
💯✊🏽 nostr:note18x6qqyqxn7w8g5vnad7hj7haxsqeuyy66tekqyvryvtsh9md3ups9xqgct
Please share.
Verifying my Nostr Nests identity: rtl8JkCB1jnfbIFTz2jvozMrSW4ixyya8FY0ShQ3ebo
Verifying my Nostr Nests identity: K7JI4GTfm87ePHFCsom--CmxNM7Q5kooalEQyFUhJWE
Yet again we resolve to “regulation” and “competition laws”. I used to believe in anti trust laws being the solution. However after challenging and putting those beliefs under scrutiny it just doesn’t hold up.
If you study the historic regulations and anti trust laws that have been put in place all over the globe they NEVER have produced the intended outcomes. These laws intended to break up monopolies and cartels simply produced trade offs. Higher cost of transporting goods or delays of goods and services to particular regions. What I am saying is that regulation and laws instituted by government have not proven to bring the outcomes they were intended to produce. If one looks at the results of these laws and regulations it becomes quite clear that they just don’t produce what they were intended to produce.
On the point about healthcare and education. How does one “invest in healthcare or education” so it becomes “universal”? I’m not sure this is coming from a economically sound basis, although I agree that education and healthcare is necessary and those groups who have ready access to it may be more advanced on several fronts. Affordable healthcare is an abstract term used in politics. There is no such thing in reality. We have to get away from these terms used to play on our emotions. No such phenomena (affordable) exists in economics form the perspective that we as a society need to make a good or service achievable to everyone at the same price. It’s just not possible without incremental trade offs. We should spend more time exploring the trade offs rather than what we want to achieve (affordable healthcare or affordable housing).
Furthermore, I no longer believe based upon economics and historical empirical data that “creating greater equality of opportunity will require a multi-faceted approach…”
Government has a role that I believe needs to be redefined and set. That will in turn realign how people and society will empower themselves through developing the human capital necessary for them to advance.
Can you give a reason or example of why government would need to ensure equal access to healthcare or education? This is a topic that comes up in politics all the time. It’s an emotionally charged subject that can send a candidates run for office down a hole if not addressed with lofty, meaningless rhetoric. Usually this rhetoric is not based in any economic logic.
The challenge you present in your comment is that you cannot “carefully design and implement” a “solution” to basic necessities (healthcare education) without incremental trade offs. When you subsidize healthcare you don’t reduce cost. Prices and cost are two very different things. Prices are the result of cost, so the trade offs as you subsidize health care become less desirable healthcare. Same economic logic/realities apply to education.
Economics being the study of scarce resources and their alternative uses dictates that if left unobstructed a free market economy will apply resources where the their use is best or more efficiently utilized.
I believe we’re saying the similar things to varying degrees. I completely 100% agree that private sector, community based organizations and the like should be compelled to assist individuals develop their human capital. Human capital after all is what will rebuild a nation destroyed by war. What war cannot destroy is what is inside a persons mind. This is why international aid provided to countries doesn’t result in the same outcomes based upon who’s receiving the aid.
I simply don’t agree anymore that any entity, government or otherwise, should have any focus on creating “equality”. This is not to say that government should not ensure corruption, discrimination, and or outright violence be addressed with respect to allowing all humans to be able to have access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I suspect that when you say “by providing individuals with access to knowledge, resources and opportunities for self improvement” you mean government intervention with legislation to create this access?
How do you suggest this “access” be made available? What does this look like?
Never in history has any society, group of people, had equal opportunity or access to resources that a different group of people have had. When government steps in to create this “balance” you speak of we create trade offs, not solutions.
There is something called “human capital” that needs to be developed. Those groups of individuals who fail to develop it tend to have less wealth and are less advanced. I used to believe equal outcomes will generate equal outcomes but this is not true. When government strives to orchestrate a “fairer and more just society for all” government can and historically has made it worse for those who it intends to help through social programs and other legislation aimed at creating this balance.
Reading quotes from this book only captures a small snapshot of how economics works. If you really want to challenge your most deeply held philosophies and ideologies like I did please read this book. I got comfortable believing what I thought was true without putting those beliefs under scrutiny because of my lived experiences. However lived experiences are not realities of how entire economies operate and my sole or anyone else’s experiences cannot be used to project how government should respond to my lived experience.
“Both in the private sector and in the government sector, there are always values that some people think worthy enough that other people should have to pay for them—but not worthy enough that they should have to pay for them themselves. Nowhere is the weighing of some values against other values obscured more often by rhetoric than when discussing government policies. Taxing away what other people have earned, in order to finance one’s own moral adventures via social programs, is often depicted as a humanitarian endeavor. But allowing others the same freedom and dignity as oneself, so that they can make their own choices with their own earnings, is considered to be pandering to “greed.” Greed for power is no less dangerous than greed for money, and has historically shed far more blood in the process.”
— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell