Thomas Sowell Quotes
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Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.
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Most problems, decisions, and performances are multidimensional, but somehow the results have to be reduced to a few key indicators which are to be institutionally rewarded or penalized... The need to reduce the indicators to a manageable few is based not only on the need to conserve the time (and sanity) of those who assign rewards and penalties, but also to provide those subject to these incentives with some objective indication of what their performance is expected to be and how it will be judged... key indicators can never tell the whole story.
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Perhaps the most widespread misunderstanding of economics is that it applies solely to financial transactions. Frequently this leads to statements that "there are noneconomic values" to consider. There are, of course, noneconomic values. Indeed, there are only noneconomic values. Economics is not a value itself but merely a method of trading off one value against another.
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Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.
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There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.
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There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse.
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It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it "greed" to want to keep what you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes.
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Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America.
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What does 'economic justice' mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?
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A friend from India told me that a countryman of his said: "I want to go to America. I want to see a country where poor people are fat."
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People in the political world have every incentive to say things that lead voters away from a clear economic understanding of issues. What has happened more and more is that organized groups have more and more reasons to say things that don't make any economic sense.
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Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
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Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics. Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy.
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The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.
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Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side
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Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a good thing to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.
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An inmate in a Florida prison wrote to agree with me on the availability of guns, saying that a 'criminal can and will get a stolen gun faster than you can get your car washed.' He also points out that many criminals prefer guns gotten illegally, since they will be harder to trace.
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Someone once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of our own ignorance. Our schools are depriving millions of students of that kind of knowledge by promoting "self-esteem" and encouraging them to have opinions on things of which they are grossly ignorant, if not misinformed.
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It is truly a triumph of rhetoric over reality when people can believe that going into politics is 'public service,' but that producing food, shelter, transportation, or medical care is not.
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The whole notion that you can equalize opportunity in things that matter is utopian.
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Sellers in general maintain the quality of their products and services for fear of losing customers otherwise. But, when price controls create a situation where the amount demanded is greater than the amount supplied - a shortage - fear of losing customers is no longer as strong an incentive. For example, landlords typically reduce painting and repairs when there is rent control, because there is no need to fear vacancies when there are more tenants looking for apartments than there are apartments available.
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Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.
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However little president Obama knows or cares about economics, he knows a lot about politics - and especially political rhetoric. 'High-speed rail' is simply another set of loft words to justify continued expansion of government spending. So are words like 'investment in education' or 'investment' in any number of other things, which serves the same political purpose.
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In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people - and to hate those other people.