Thomas Sowell: The Life and Work of the Legendary Social Theorist (Jason Riley)
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- The Michael Shermer Show # 235
Shermer speaks with Jason Riley about Maverick - the first-ever biography of Thomas Sowell, one of the great social theorists of our age. In a career spanning more than a half century, Sowell has written over thirty books, covering topics from economic history and social inequality to political theory, race, and culture. His bold and unsentimental assaults on liberal orthodoxy have endeared him to many readers but have also enraged fellow intellectuals, the civil-rights establishment, and much of the mainstream media. The result has been a lack of acknowledgment of his scholarship among critics who prioritize political correctness.
Shermer and Riley discuss: Riley’s documentary on Sowell; Sowell’s philosophy that “there are no solutions, only trade-offs”; mismatch theory and affirmative action; race and IQ; why Riley thinks liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed; political correctness; BLM, antiracism, reparations; charity and welfare; income inequality and UBI, and much more…
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I’m constantly impressed with the tremendous output and quality that Michael produces. He is seriously prolific. Keep up the great work Michael.
Thomas Sowell is an American intellectual treasure.
And like the gold in Fort Knox anything actually valuable to the nation and its capitalist will be locked away and hidden from view. As long as he keeps within the glorification of private property and profits his job at the Hoover Institution remains "SAFE".
It's ridiculous that I went through high school, college and grad school, and didn't encounter the works of Thomas Sowell at any point along the way.
In fact, I didn't discover Sowell until I stumbled upon him while doing some personal research. The man is a national treasure and grossly underrated in terms of research and thought.
I hope that you don’t believe the Sowell omission from the curriculum was a coincidence or oversight?
@@PetraKann The only thing good about Sowell is he opens the debate about capitalism, markets and profits. They avoid economics other than what is called home economics because they don't want the population to gain an understanding of the how and why the bosses and government do things. They don't want you raising questions that expose the complications that a system of private profits and trade using money has. The goal is to prove Marx wrong by the vulgarization of Marx's ideas.
Thomas Sowell is a genius. The king of COMMON SENSE. Jason mentioned that there are barely any people to continue his legacy. Well! It's on us to keep his legacy alive and fight to spread COMMON SENSE IN A SENSELESS WORLD!
Common Sense was the title of the pamphlet about the role of the King and parliament in making decisions. What Sewell fais to do is show is how the role of profit, private property and money is not that of an unbiased actors. That the bourgeois organization of society is not the ultimate but just a transitional one. That the contradictions with in it lead to its eventual overthrow and replacement with one better tan that of the past. As the true motor of history is not money and profits but class struggle along with the accumulation of surplus value.
Jason Riley in an incredibly talented and straight forward author. Thankfully the craziness of 2020 led me to discover him and Thomas Sowell's work. It is never too late to learn, I hope more people realize empirical truth is better than rhetorical truth. Thank you Michael Shermer.
Sowell with his neoliberal glorification of capitalism is why we have the problems we do.
A discussion on Thomas Sowell's biography? SOLD! Thanks...
The fact that Kendi, Coates , & Hannah-Jones are much more widely known and celebrated than Sowell is a devastating indictment of our culture.
What Sowell fails to explain is why the capitalist stopped their cultural revolutions once they had the agreements of the landed aristocracy to release their slaves and serfs.
Love Sowell but hearing about his biography makes me feel like he’s died!!
He’s still alive and kicking.
American blacks are the most conservative people i know
Nice!
We should do whatever voodoo magic human sacrifices we need to make Thomas Sowell young again.
Sowell never understood Marx except in a vulgar way. We had segregation for 100 years and the Northern Capitalist market lovers decided that it was to expensive to defend Blacks from KKK violence of the former slave owners. It would be blacks organizing as small farmers and industrial workers who had been soldiers fighting the White NAZI's who came back and destroyed segragation.
37:58 - Such an important clip on media coverage of police shootings. It's about 10 minutes.
*_The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Conservatives there are in their sociology department._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?_*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?_*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The left takes its vision seriously - more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you've earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else's money._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_When any branch of government can exercise powers not authorized by either statues or the Constitution, 'we the people' are no longer free citizens but subjects, and our 'public servants' are really our public masters. And America is no longer America. The freedom for which whole generations of Americans have fought and died is gradually but increasingly being taken away from us with smooth and slippery words._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Those who want to "spread the wealth" almost invariably seek to concentrate the power. It happens too often, and in too many different countries around the world, to be a coincidence. Which is more dangerous, inequalities of wealth or concentrations of power?_*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one's own behavior._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from 'society,' rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by 'society'._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?_*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_By the end of the 20th century, "liberals" had again discredited themselves, to the point where they went back to calling themselves "progressives" to escape their past, much as people do when they declare bankruptcy._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Envy plus rhetoric equals 'social justice'._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism -- unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_To say that 'wealth in America is so unfairly distributed in America,' as Ronald Dworkin does, is grossly misleading when most wealth in the United States is not distributed at all. People create it, earn it, save it, and spend it._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_If the world was the way the left conceives it to be, the world would be a better world than the way the right conceives it to be. Unfortunately, the world doesn't happen to be that way._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_People who believe in evolution in biology often believe in creationism in government. In other words, they believe that the universe and all the creatures in it could have evolved spontaneously, but that the economy is too complicated to operate without being directed by politicians._*
~ Thomas Sowell
www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2056.Thomas_Sowell
*_If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting them from standards that others are expected to meet._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The vision of the left, full of envy and resentment, takes its worst toll on those at the bottom - whether black or white - who find in that paranoid vision an excuse for counterproductive and ultimately self-destructive attitudes and behavior._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_People sometimes ask if I have tried to convince black ‘leaders’ to take a different view on racial issues. Of course not. I wouldn't spend my time trying to persuade the mafia to give up crime. Why should I spend time trying to convince race hustlers to give up victimhood?_*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing . . .social pathology in today's ghettos to 'a legacy of slavery' even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Racism is not dead. But it is on life-support, kept alive mainly by the people who use it for an excuse or to keep minority communities fearful or resentful enough to turn out as a voting bloc on election day._*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as "racists."_*
~ Thomas Sowell
*_Charter schools, and especially some particular networks of charter schools, located in low-income black and Hispanic neighborhoods have achieved educational results not only far above the levels achieved by most public schools in those neighborhoods, but sometimes even higher educational results than those in most schools located in affluent white neighborhoods. No one expected that._*
~ Thomas Sowell, _Charter Schools and Their Enemies_
*_In a realm where educational failure has long been the norm-schools in low-income minority neighborhoods-this is success, a remarkable success. What is equally remarkable is how unwelcome this success has been in many places. What has been especially remarkable is that it has been the most educationally successful charter schools that seem to have drawn the most hostility, both in words and in deeds._*
― Thomas Sowell, _Charter Schools and Their Enemies_
www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2056.Thomas_Sowell
@@davidhunt7427 The change from farming economy to industrial workers is what has broken up the life of working people. If Blacks are more affected than it is possibly the legacy of slavery which was followed by racial segregation and discrimination. But workers of both colors are seeing their families broken up. While Wilson the Democrat founded the League of Nations the socialist who became the founders of the Communist International they declared war upon Imperialism. While the League of Nations was nothing more than a talk shop among Imperial powers the ideas of Lenin lead to the indepence of nations.
This interview inspired me to learn more about Thomas Sowell. Is there peer review? Are facts cherry picked? So far I am disappointed.
What exactly are you disappointed by?
@@maambomumba6123 Where has free market capitalism worked except at the beginning of a nation? In fact it the big capitalist have all been dragged kicking a screaming into the modern world by the workers in trade unions in the industrial world and nations lead by communist in revolutions against them and the land landowners. The Neoliberals had their chance the same as the old liberal thinkers before World War one after World War two and the 1989 collapse of the Stalinist leadership and what did they do but act like the greedy ruling classes they are. World history show the capitalist unable to even regulate world trade in a productive manner just as they have failed within the United States ttself.
What Riley says, echoing Sowell's steeltrap intellect, makes eminently good sense because it's true (but not the other way around), at least until he gets to Republicans, when it makes you wonder about who's "purging" whom and why anyone should believe the pervasive false narrative erected around Trump.
It would be more honest if we simply define racism is stereotyping of a group based on their color-coding genes.
Let's face it the only thing that makes him significant is that his theories attack capitalist reformism from the viewpoint of a do nothing that doesn't conflict with the conservative capitalist profits come first viewpoint.
I’m highly skeptical tax cuts help income inequality
The title is already close to triggering me. Let's see how this pans out... 😕
What Jason Riley says doesn't make sense. There are numerous economic crises in capitalism. So it will be necessary some state financial support. Not to mention natural disasters that occur quite frequently. Another thing... In Brazil there are no job vacancies available in abundance. How is a poor person going to get a job or be able to live without some kind of help? Well, if the State doesn't help, someone else will. Before the Welfare State, help came from churches and private companies. But this is not secure and permanent. State financial aid exists so that wealth is distributed. Without this distribution, wealth would be in the hands of a few more and more, making it impossible for the smaller classes to advance. Steven Pinker has already defended such economic policy in his book. Why doesn't Michael Shermer quote him?
The problem with Brazil is not capitalism, it is massive corruption. We have a similar problem here in the US too but it is not as widespread as in Brazil or a typical third-world nation.
@@Seekthetruth3000 I didn't say that Brazil's problem was capitalism. I said that there will be economic crises and the state will have to help people who have lost businesses and jobs.
@@professorderoteiro Well, in the US, a good deal of safety and security is already built into the system.
It doesn't make sense? Or you just disagree with him?
Thomas Sowell should have stayed within his expertise…economics. He isn’t taken all that seriously and publishes very little (in any) peer reviewed articles these days (which is even brags about). He is basically a mouthpiece for right wing ideology and spews old, worn out racial tropes that white intellectuals would never get away with.
name the tropes so us "right wingers" can be enlightened by a nobody like you
His economic theories ignore how capitalism developed and why as Lenin wrote "Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism". While capitalism and the new capitalist class began the destruction of feudalism and slavery the slave having an owner and the serf belonging to the land and the landowner it recreated and simplified the class hostility to that of owners of property and those who own nothing but their labor for sale in a market.
Can you point out specifically where the 1619 project says "America is unquely evil"?
Its the central thesis if the argument. Its the entire point.
@@gregkirk1842 The US is merely the nation where the capitalist culture of England developed in a somewhat different way. A booming market for cotton made slavery more profitable than it would otherwise be and kept the pricatice going under unlike what was happening in Europe where peasants were being separated from the land by increasing food productivity. The invention of the cotton gin made the cotton crop for clothing more important than it would otherwise be. Instead the slave owners failed to realize their system was only artificially producing high prices and profits they decided it was of some special and unique value. In essence they asked why are we expected to take a loss on the cost of labor we paid so much in advance for? What the slave owners failed to see is his property did not see things in the same way.
😅you lost me as soon as you started bad mouthing Trump! You both are so wrong, very sad,😢
While slavery is not unique to the US, there’s nothing wrong with considering the history of our country through the lens of slavery as a way to gain new perspective on the well trodden narratives of our past that are either inaccurate or at least incomplete.
"considering the history..." What does that even mean?
@@jaed2630 whenever a history is told it’s done so from a perspective. All historians consider how to tell the facts based on the perspective they want to present. There’s more than one way to tell the history of our country and most people alive today have primarily heard through the lens of patriotic propaganda. One could tell it for example from the indigenous perspective or from another European country’s and will get a different story based on how it effected them. I use the term “consider” in the same way our parents would recommend to consider someone else’s point of view
@@chemquests What is missing is the role of capitalism the change from farming society of slave owners and feudal lords to industrial society of workers and capitalist.
@@kimobrien. in the US it wasn’t sequenced in time; the north and south diverged at the same time. The south stayed agricultural while the north industrialized. You’re correct that capitalism made the north stronger and less dependent on slaves.
Alright so when do we bring in the heterosexual black liberal/progressive speakers who don't have white significant others and actually have lived through the experiences/culture of your average Black American or African immigrant? The parade of the fox news safe black brigade is all well and fine but where are the counter points if we truly are going to tackle discussing issues of race in America. There are a lot of professors at HBCUs that would love to get on here and discuss their latest books and views.
Victimhood suits you 👍
Liberal black speakers are found on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, The NY Times, The Washington Post, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, The BBC, The LA Times, The Boston Globe...............etc.
Jason Rileys life could also be the average Black Americans authentic life experience if only peoople like your proffessors stopped brain washing you into believing your disadvantaged. Thats the point. If you want to hear the same old shit about your victimhood then turn back on CNN and keep your head in the sand. The world is just fine passing you by, while you sit and cry about the typical "black exoerience". No one cares. The rest of us are just getting up, going to work and scratching out a life. Youd do well to tell your proffessors to piss off and listen to people like Sowell.
Very offensive to talk about the ‘safe black brigade’.
Why should people all think alike - or agree with you - just because they are black.
There are other countries besides the US too you know.
If youd do any research you'd be AMAZED TO DISCOVER. that less than a fifth a the black population is in poverty. The narratives you want to cling too just won't hold water to the actually reality of the modern black experience
Nonsense on stilts. LOL
tell us why you "think" so
@@majoroz4876 depending on your context. The OP is quoting Jason Riley