More from Sowell’s latest book: My comments in bold.
Sowell, T. (2009). Intellectuals and Society, New York, NY: Basic Books.
“Why the transfer of decisions from those with personal experience and a stake in the outcome to those with neither can be expected to lead to better decisions is a question seldom asked, much less answered. Given the greater cost of correcting surrogate decisions, compared to correcting individual decisions, and the greater cost of persisting in mistaken decisions by those making decisions for themselves, compared to the lower costs of those making mistaken decisions for others, the economic success of market economies is hardly surprising and neither are the counterproductive and often disastrous results of various forms of social engineering.”
Surrogate decisions are usually mass (political) decisions where the decision-makers bear no consequences for failure or inefficiency.
“If knowledge is defined expansively, including such mundane knowledge whose presence or absence is consequential and often crucial, then individuals with Ph.D.s are as grossly ignorant of most consequential things as other individuals are, since no one can be truly knowledgeable, at a level required for consequential decision-making for a whole society, except with a narrow band out of the vast spectrum of human concerns.”
One is bound to be more knowledgeable of those things which concern oneself.
For example, it is far easier to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge. That is why so much social engineering backfires and why so many despots have led their countries into disasters.
One of Sowell’s profound insights. Once you have power, the only knowledge that matters is the knowledge to keep and expand power.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
