Showing posts with label thomas sowell. Show all posts

Sowell's Law: Using Politics To Predict Your Preferences



Thomas Sowell's insight in the conflict of visions between the constrained and unconstrained ways of looking at the world is one of the best means available to understand the liberal/conservative divide in American politics. Not only that, it's quick way to predict choices and preferences that people make in their daily lives.


For example, before last week, it would have never occurred to me to wonder about the political affiliations of the CEO's of America's leading guitar manufacturers. But now that I know, is it any surprise as to what my choice of guitar has been for the last 8+ years?


As with conservatism, Gibson guitars are something you work up to. Like many guitarists, I started out playing a no-name Korean brand, then moved on to some cheap Squires, then to a "Made In Mexico" Fender (a Tele, if you must know). After 20 years of semi-serious playing, I picked up a Gibson SG and realized, my God, now I'm playing a guitar. There's just something in the thickness of the neck and the perfectly balanced weight of the body that makes you feel like you're playing something that a human being labored over. I know that the Stratocaster is the "sexy" rock guitar, but Gibsons are what everyone uses when they want to get serious.


As for twee little Martin, and its progressive CEO, well you're talking about the Martha's Vineyard of guitars: expensive, exclusive, and mostly used by Peter Paul & Mary types who want to sing about whales. Never liked Martins much (frankly, I don't care about acoustic guitars as much as I do electrics), but Gibson acoustics are much more beautiful, and user friendly.


Just don't ask me about my favorite brand of drums.




Declaring Victory


For any fence-sitting Tea Party congressmen out there: I think if Thomas Sowell is urging you to take the sell-out Boehner deal, it's time to sell-out

Is the Boehner legislation the best legislation possible? Of course not! You don’t get your heart’s desire when you control only one house of Congress and face a presidential veto.

The most basic fact of life is that we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available. It is not idealism to ignore the limits of one’spower. Nor is it selling out one’s principles to recognize those limits at a given time and place, and get the best deal possible under those conditions.

That still leaves the option of working toward getting a better deal later, when the odds are more in your favor.

There would not be a United States of America today if George Washington’s army had not retreated and retreated and retreated, in the face of an overwhelmingly more powerful British military force bent on annihilating Washington’s troops.

Later, when the conditions were right for attack, General Washington attacked. But he would have had nothing to attack with if he had wasted his troops in battles that would have wiped them out.

Similar principles apply in politics. As Edmund Burke said, more than two centuries ago: “Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavors.”

This vote really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. It's what comes after that matters. If Boehner and other members of the "leadership" - both in Congress and in the GOP Establishment - are unwilling to keep pursuing cuts with the same fervor that the left pursued health care deform, then it really is time for new leadership.



And When She Went To The Cupboard...

Thomas Sowell on the endless tug-of-war over "reforming" the American welfare state (h/t the Free Will brother):
One of my earliest memories of revulsion against war came from seeing a photograph from the First World War when I was a teenager. It was nothing gory. Just a picture of a military officer, in an impressive uniform, talking to a puzzled and forlorn-looking old peasant woman with a cloth wrapped around her head.

He said simply: "Don't you understand, madam? The village is not there any more."

To many such people of that era, the village was the only world they knew. And to say that it had been destroyed in the carnage of war was to say that there was no way for them to go back home, that their whole world was gone.

Recently that image came back, in a wholly different context, while seeing pictures of American seniors carrying signs that read "Hands off my Social Security" and "Hands off my Medicare."

They want their Social Security and their Medicare to stay the way they are -- and their anger is directed against those who want to change the financial arrangements that pay for these benefits.

Their anger should be directed instead against those politicians who were irresponsible enough to set up these costly programs without putting aside enough money to pay for the promises that were made -- promises that now cannot be kept, regardless of which political party controls the government.

Someone needs to say to those who want Social Security and Medicare to continue on unchanged: "Don't you understand? The money is not there any more.

The amazing thing is that the "respectable" position continues to be that of the Democrats who speak of lock-boxes, and Social Security Trusts, and the promises made to the elderly; as if there was a big pot of money sitting around waiting to be disbursed to retirees. Yet these same Democrats - often the same people! - have also arranged to spend this money to fund current expenditures. And, all along, the "disreputable" position has been to point out that the system is unsustainable, that it needs to be restructured, and that providing for retirement need not be done through the mediating hand of the government.

Making things worse: the public debate does not focus on pointing out the essentially criminal fraud of the "respectable" position because the MSM that has arrogated to itself the position of the nation's public forum will inevitably focus on the "throw Grandma off the cliff" aspects of the debate, even when reformers go out of their way to exclude the over-55 set from their proposed reforms.

We are walking quickly towards disaster, but the best educated (hah!) among us are actively working to stay the course.
Interesting times &c.


De-development: Jerry Brown Steps On Some Urbanist Toes


Unlike certain former governors of California I could name, Jerry Brown has been making good on his promise to propose deep cuts in budget areas that have attained the status of sacred cows. For one thing, he wants the state to stop funding the "redevelopment" of blighted urban areas, a position that has generated some intense, if polite, pushback from urban liberals

Gov. Jerry Brown defended his controversial plan to eliminate redevelopment agencies in California, speaking at an event hosted by one of the biggest supporters of the agencies and telling them his plan is what's best for the state.

Afterward, Brown told reporters that some of the more than $1.5 billion of redevelopment projects approved by cities in recent days - essentially an end run around his proposal - may not be legal.

At a gathering for new mayors and council members hosted by the League of California Cities, which has been one of the most vocal opponents of Brown's plan, the Democratic governor said the budget cuts this year are a "zero-sum game."

"If we don't do redevelopment, then what do we do, what do we take? Do we take more from universities? Do we cut deeper into public schools that have been cut year after year?" Brown told the group, some of whose members displayed posters and buttons opposing his plan. "I think we have to, all of us, rise above our own particular perspective, get out of the comfort zones and try to think of California first."

But League of California Cities leaders at the event, where Brown received three standing ovations and brought the crowd of several hundred people to laughter multiple times, said that while they would work with the governor, they flat-out oppose his proposal.

"We've told him we're willing to work with him, we will continue to work with him, but his proposal is so draconian, it's so bad for the creation of jobs in California ... it's so contrary with so many things he wants to accomplish," said Chris McKenzie, executive director of the league of cities.

I guess I could start with a crack about how all of this opposition would not be nearly as respectful and filled with "we're willing to work with him" blandishments if Brown had an (R) after his name, but I have a feeling I could say that every day for the next year.

Still, Brown is on to something, and has even managed to catch the tenor of our budget cutting times: why is it, exactly, that the state has to spend billions of dollars so that municipalities can engage in economically dubious "development" schemes? Schemes, I might add, that often involve government behaving at its worst, whether through union featherbedding, "unexpected" cost overruns, contracts to favored insiders, and Kelo-esque eminent domain seizures. All so someone like Antonio Villaraigosa can get his picture taken next to an oversized pair of scissors? No thanks.

Re-development advocates claim that these funds are well spent because they can jump start economic activity in depressed areas without the uncertainties of private financing. The redevelopment of Emeryville from a depopulated strip of warehouses to a vibrant shopping area filled with Ikeas, and the like is the classic success story that proves the rule. But couldn't Emeryville's city fathers sold some bonds, or otherwise sought private financing? Sure, but that would have meant having to work for a change. Can't have that! Other cities likely would have a hard time raising funds because so many of them are already earmarked for important endeavors like paying six figure pensions to 55-year old retired garbagemen. That's really why these guys need to the state to pay for redevelopment, they don't have the funds to do it themselves, and don't trust private enterprise to do it for them.

Thomas Sowell put it best on the issue of redevelopment: You could air-condition Hell if you spent enough money. The point isn't whether you can do it. The point is whether you should do it, especially when the people on the scene don't seem able to do it themselves.

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