Thomas Sowell on intelligence and government
A
wonderful essay from one of America's better political writers:
How Smart Are We?
Many of the wonderful-sounding ideas that have been tried as government policies have failed disastrously. Because so few people bother to study history, often the same ideas and policies have been tried again, either in another country or in the same country at a later time-- and with the same disastrous results.
One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control and plan economic and social policies so that there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things being allowed to take their own course. It sounds so logical and plausible that demanding hard evidence would seem almost like nit-picking.
In one form or another, this idea goes back at least as far as the French Revolution in the 18th century. As J.A. Schumpeter later wrote of that era, "general well-being ought to have been the consequence," but "instead we find misery, shame and, at the end of it all, a stream of blood."
The same could be said of the Bolshevik Revolution and other revolutions of the 20th century.
Take the five minutes to
read the whole thing. This guy is a national treasure.
Sowell goes into the 'elites' and why they are unfit to run a big government. Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek wrestled with the same ideas back in the 1920's -- the
Economic calculation problem is their explanation and it shows why central planning will always fail.
I often wonder why Keynes is so popular with the statists but the answer is obvious -- Keynes' ideas mesh with the statists desire for more power and centralized decision making. The Austrians tell us to bust up big government and put things in the hands of the free market. People like Obama, Pelosi, Reed, et. al. do not like this train of thought...
Posted by DaveH at July 26, 2010 8:59 PM