He's kind of been writing the same book over and over again for years, so yeah if he didn't update this one to keep it fresh I'm not sure what the value add is.
For what it's worth, I think that's a good, proper, review. It describes the good bits and the not so good, and contextualises it within the career of the writer. Editors are weird.
Sorry you've been unwell and hoping you're soon entirely bright-eyed etc. etc.
Congratulations on your becoming increasingly notable in media reporting.
On Sowell--very glad you weren't worshipful but incisive here. New publications from the aged and already well-published rarely please as much as earlier works may have. I've found this painfully true when adding a final book to my collection of an author's work.
There's such a human hunger for heroes that few people have the guts to be honest about them. Anyone can be wrong about some things while being quite perceptive--even perhaps groundbreaking--about others. Everyone has biases that will color their conclusions or even what they're willing to examine lest they find something nasty under the rock or even in plain view.
But it's always useful to learn sooner rather than later the temperament of editors/managers at publications/institutions one may have an interest in writing or working for. He who pays the piper 'n all that. Few of us can afford to be complete masters of our own destiny when food and rent are necessary expenditures, but it helps to know where one must use the freedom of one's own imprint and when it's not entirely craven to accept a commission or paycheck.
I had similar criticisms for this book, there was definitely a fair amount of recycled material, so it did feel like redundant for me. That said, I, like you, have already read most of his work, so that does skew our perspective a bit. I think perhaps the value this book has is for people who haven't read or don't even know who Thomas Sowell is. The book isn't too long and I think he was able to condense his recycled material in a very succinct way that can get his point across to a new audience.
Inevitable consequence of being long in the tooth in a particular field. He was plenty of people's gateway drug to this stuff, and stuck to the formula even though times have moved on.
That, or he's old and just wanted to get the last of his thoughts out onto paper, both as a summary and, perhaps, as a little cushion to ease the financial burden of retirement.
Glad you're back on Substack. I was frantic wondering what had happened to you. Sorry about your losing the bet re: President Gay, but I want you to know that her resignation date -- January 2nd -- was close enough, just a few hours really, to the New Year, that it absolutely MADE my New Year 2024 worth celebrating! Thank you for that;-)
I found the Sowell book you reviewed to be persuasive in large part, amply footnoted, plainly written and worth the money to buy it and the afternoon to read it. It didn't matter to me if many of the ideas were reprised (much popularization of scholarly work is just that, but the points can be made again). As to your review, if I may review it, for free, you could have excised half the verbiage and rearranged what was left - the core nubs -- into a through-line of argument. I found I had to re-read it several times to follow what seemed to be contradictory sentiments and idea-paragraphs that did not follow. There is an art to book review writing but most assuredly it is not to simply laud the laurels of the writer, not if it is to be an honest and frank review, for then it is just an advertisement. David Pryce-Jones is perhaps my favorite reviewer (among many good ones): always an interesting perspective (just as yours in this review was), to the point, with a clarity that brings home to the reader the work reviewed with a unique voice that at the same time doesn't insert itself personally.
I like the fact that you had a reaction that went against the grain of the paradigm!
Sowell strikes me as sociology’s answer to the Pope. Everybody (well, everybody Catholic) gives enormous weight to his words… then ignores them and uses a condom anyway. Sowell is reminiscent in that he’s incredibly quoted and quotes are really good… so long as you don’t read the rest of what he said. He’s kind of like the astrology of sociology - the stuff he says could work in reference to a lot of arguments. So you looking at his work with fresh eyes is, I’d argue, more valuable than the assignment itself. After all, as Thomas Sowell said:
“One of the most pathetic- and dangerous - signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.”
I agree with most of the criticisms here, except for two things:
1. The prevailing interest rates for payday loans are “fair” levels given the loss rates and the known return requirements given credit risks and alternative investments. You either view the poor as sentient autonomous adults who are free to borrow at those market (not exploitative) rates, or you see the poor as children who are not allowed to take on that borrowing. If you’re in this latter camp, then you are not merely advocating for the same regulations that are required in any credit arrangements (no fraud, adequate disclosure, resort to courts, etc.) but for more than that (ie, no caps or prohibitions). And if you think the latter, then perhaps you also believe the poor shouldn’t be able to have kids or vote. I’m not sure where you fall, but you describe Sowell’s position (which obviously is the former) in such scant terms that it’s impossible to understand your criticism—making it less helpful than his thoughts on the subject.
2. It’s odd to lead off by criticizing Sowell as being trite. If we believe that the cultural norms that undergird the free enterprise economy and freedom-heavy political arrangement of America are being eroded by cultural neomarxists and deep state fascists, then the solution is to win hearts and minds to win back the nation’s original promise. Accomplishing this requires not novelty (saying something new) but wisdom (saying what’s true), not timely allusions (Kendi and Tucker) but timeless sources (Smith and Hayek). If the reference to the contradiction that is allowing merit in the NBA but not in the math dept of MIT is well or overly worn, but remains a powerful didactic example, then who cares if it’s well worn? When we discuss the best way for humans to organize society to maximize their self actualization, we are not examining issues that change by the season; rather, the discussion requires a relatively static analysis from wise men and women of all seasons. And those voices are never in or out of style, for they transcend style or fashion and thus afford us a world in which we are free to pursue things of lesser importance, like style, since the granite support beneath or endeavors (that guarantee our freedom to pursue them) remains fixed. So the wise know that this wisdom is timeless and thus a fixed star, but they also know how bright it shines and thus would never call it trite. While no one confused Sowell’s literary gifts with Aesop’s or Twain’s, the content of his words nonetheless ring equally true.
"The prevailing interest rates for payday loans are “fair” levels given the loss rates and the known return requirements given credit risks and alternative investments"
Frankly, I think the most interesting question in this debate is whether this is actually true. Are payday lenders actually following the market rates and earning reasonable levels of profit on investment? Or are they making money hand over fist in a market that turns out to be non-rational / non-smooth for whatever reason? I haven't really looked into it but I would be interested to know if there's any research on this topic.
That work has been done repeatedly. The entry barriers to supply these loans is very low, and so market rates easily prevail. If you look at the loan loss rates, which are astronomical, the conclusion is that the rates charged are actually too low. Folks posit that this is analogous to work showing star athletes should take an even larger lion’s share of team payroll but do not for the sake of equanimity. Payday lenders know that there will always be economics illiterates like Liz Warren so they accept lower returns (but not bankrupting ones) to deal with this political risk. You can go read up on the topic if you like, but it accords with what one would expect.
The real fallacy of the modern social justice movement is that it purports to seek equity, while in practice it seeks no such thing. The racial composition of the NBA is a salient point because in the eyes of the social justice movement, having any organization that is "majority minority" such as the NBA is, does not represent a problem. Imbalances in racial or gender representation are only a problem when the imbalance is in favor of some "non-oppressed" group.
The modern social justice system is in many cases used as a lever to create rank inequity, such as when men are allowed to compete in women's sports. As any rational person will admit, men are simply bigger, stronger and faster than women in the aggregate. The mediocrities barging their way onto the playing field with women know this all too well. Can't beat the guys, go play against the women. It is notable that the one and only sport where men don't seem to want to identify as women is in the field of gymnastics. Why would that be? Perhaps it is because that is one of the few fields where men simply cannot win against women. Women's gymnastics requires balance and grace that men simply cannot replicate, no matter how many hormones you shoot them full of.
So at bottom, the modern social justice system has nothing to do with equity. Rather, it is about promoting certain "aggrieved" constituencies and punishing other "non-aggrieved" constituencies. This is where the mask is pulled off, and the movement is revealed as nothing but a rehash of Marxist identitarian philosophy and Leninist "who/whom" moralism. There is your fallacy.
Christopher, I too am a Sowell fan boy. His fearless willingness to tackle race issues is an inspiration and an oddity in today's PC culture.
Regarding your concerns regarding Sowell's blind spot when it comes to the role of genetics, I do believe genetics plays a role statistically. As an Ashkenazi Jew (98%) I question the origins of my own gift in mathematics. But then, none of my close jewish friends were gifted. As a child I would try to teach them quite unsuccessfully. I suspect genetics plays its largest role in the width of the IQ bell curve among different races and sexes, not in its horizontal offset. I think genetics also plays a role in how fast we learn and, via its influence on behavior, how much our IQ grows over the years. There is IMHO support for these kinds of generic influences.
I believe it is well known that women have a more narrow IQ bell curve than men - thus you find statistically both more low IQ and more high IQ men than women. And women generally mature faster than men. With Ashkenazi Jews perhaps the curve is wider. This would explain my own observations. In Jewish families I see more high IQ people but also more fools. Hence the abundance of words in Yiddish for fool, loser, etc. I see the same pattern with my Asian friends.
Of course, I have no data to back up my words. But wouldn't it be nice if there was someone with the cajones and intellectual integrity to address this issue? I suspect your frustration with Thomas Sowell is justified. I can only hope another Sowell-like anomily will emerge to fill this gap.
Congratulations on being bequeathed a MILF!
It is something every young male spends many a night dreaming of.
He's kind of been writing the same book over and over again for years, so yeah if he didn't update this one to keep it fresh I'm not sure what the value add is.
For what it's worth, I think that's a good, proper, review. It describes the good bits and the not so good, and contextualises it within the career of the writer. Editors are weird.
This is a great read. Your candor and pragmatic honesty are admirable. Cheers!
I certainly hope they paid you the $200 whether they liked your review or not. That would be the integrity thing to do.
Sorry you've been unwell and hoping you're soon entirely bright-eyed etc. etc.
Congratulations on your becoming increasingly notable in media reporting.
On Sowell--very glad you weren't worshipful but incisive here. New publications from the aged and already well-published rarely please as much as earlier works may have. I've found this painfully true when adding a final book to my collection of an author's work.
There's such a human hunger for heroes that few people have the guts to be honest about them. Anyone can be wrong about some things while being quite perceptive--even perhaps groundbreaking--about others. Everyone has biases that will color their conclusions or even what they're willing to examine lest they find something nasty under the rock or even in plain view.
But it's always useful to learn sooner rather than later the temperament of editors/managers at publications/institutions one may have an interest in writing or working for. He who pays the piper 'n all that. Few of us can afford to be complete masters of our own destiny when food and rent are necessary expenditures, but it helps to know where one must use the freedom of one's own imprint and when it's not entirely craven to accept a commission or paycheck.
You went there.
Good for you!
Keep pushing.
I had similar criticisms for this book, there was definitely a fair amount of recycled material, so it did feel like redundant for me. That said, I, like you, have already read most of his work, so that does skew our perspective a bit. I think perhaps the value this book has is for people who haven't read or don't even know who Thomas Sowell is. The book isn't too long and I think he was able to condense his recycled material in a very succinct way that can get his point across to a new audience.
Inevitable consequence of being long in the tooth in a particular field. He was plenty of people's gateway drug to this stuff, and stuck to the formula even though times have moved on.
That, or he's old and just wanted to get the last of his thoughts out onto paper, both as a summary and, perhaps, as a little cushion to ease the financial burden of retirement.
Glad you're back on Substack. I was frantic wondering what had happened to you. Sorry about your losing the bet re: President Gay, but I want you to know that her resignation date -- January 2nd -- was close enough, just a few hours really, to the New Year, that it absolutely MADE my New Year 2024 worth celebrating! Thank you for that;-)
I found the Sowell book you reviewed to be persuasive in large part, amply footnoted, plainly written and worth the money to buy it and the afternoon to read it. It didn't matter to me if many of the ideas were reprised (much popularization of scholarly work is just that, but the points can be made again). As to your review, if I may review it, for free, you could have excised half the verbiage and rearranged what was left - the core nubs -- into a through-line of argument. I found I had to re-read it several times to follow what seemed to be contradictory sentiments and idea-paragraphs that did not follow. There is an art to book review writing but most assuredly it is not to simply laud the laurels of the writer, not if it is to be an honest and frank review, for then it is just an advertisement. David Pryce-Jones is perhaps my favorite reviewer (among many good ones): always an interesting perspective (just as yours in this review was), to the point, with a clarity that brings home to the reader the work reviewed with a unique voice that at the same time doesn't insert itself personally.
I have covid now it's pretty brutal. I'm surprised because I got it a few times but never like this.
I like the fact that you had a reaction that went against the grain of the paradigm!
Sowell strikes me as sociology’s answer to the Pope. Everybody (well, everybody Catholic) gives enormous weight to his words… then ignores them and uses a condom anyway. Sowell is reminiscent in that he’s incredibly quoted and quotes are really good… so long as you don’t read the rest of what he said. He’s kind of like the astrology of sociology - the stuff he says could work in reference to a lot of arguments. So you looking at his work with fresh eyes is, I’d argue, more valuable than the assignment itself. After all, as Thomas Sowell said:
“One of the most pathetic- and dangerous - signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.”
I agree with most of the criticisms here, except for two things:
1. The prevailing interest rates for payday loans are “fair” levels given the loss rates and the known return requirements given credit risks and alternative investments. You either view the poor as sentient autonomous adults who are free to borrow at those market (not exploitative) rates, or you see the poor as children who are not allowed to take on that borrowing. If you’re in this latter camp, then you are not merely advocating for the same regulations that are required in any credit arrangements (no fraud, adequate disclosure, resort to courts, etc.) but for more than that (ie, no caps or prohibitions). And if you think the latter, then perhaps you also believe the poor shouldn’t be able to have kids or vote. I’m not sure where you fall, but you describe Sowell’s position (which obviously is the former) in such scant terms that it’s impossible to understand your criticism—making it less helpful than his thoughts on the subject.
2. It’s odd to lead off by criticizing Sowell as being trite. If we believe that the cultural norms that undergird the free enterprise economy and freedom-heavy political arrangement of America are being eroded by cultural neomarxists and deep state fascists, then the solution is to win hearts and minds to win back the nation’s original promise. Accomplishing this requires not novelty (saying something new) but wisdom (saying what’s true), not timely allusions (Kendi and Tucker) but timeless sources (Smith and Hayek). If the reference to the contradiction that is allowing merit in the NBA but not in the math dept of MIT is well or overly worn, but remains a powerful didactic example, then who cares if it’s well worn? When we discuss the best way for humans to organize society to maximize their self actualization, we are not examining issues that change by the season; rather, the discussion requires a relatively static analysis from wise men and women of all seasons. And those voices are never in or out of style, for they transcend style or fashion and thus afford us a world in which we are free to pursue things of lesser importance, like style, since the granite support beneath or endeavors (that guarantee our freedom to pursue them) remains fixed. So the wise know that this wisdom is timeless and thus a fixed star, but they also know how bright it shines and thus would never call it trite. While no one confused Sowell’s literary gifts with Aesop’s or Twain’s, the content of his words nonetheless ring equally true.
"The prevailing interest rates for payday loans are “fair” levels given the loss rates and the known return requirements given credit risks and alternative investments"
Frankly, I think the most interesting question in this debate is whether this is actually true. Are payday lenders actually following the market rates and earning reasonable levels of profit on investment? Or are they making money hand over fist in a market that turns out to be non-rational / non-smooth for whatever reason? I haven't really looked into it but I would be interested to know if there's any research on this topic.
That work has been done repeatedly. The entry barriers to supply these loans is very low, and so market rates easily prevail. If you look at the loan loss rates, which are astronomical, the conclusion is that the rates charged are actually too low. Folks posit that this is analogous to work showing star athletes should take an even larger lion’s share of team payroll but do not for the sake of equanimity. Payday lenders know that there will always be economics illiterates like Liz Warren so they accept lower returns (but not bankrupting ones) to deal with this political risk. You can go read up on the topic if you like, but it accords with what one would expect.
Ok, fair enough.
The real fallacy of the modern social justice movement is that it purports to seek equity, while in practice it seeks no such thing. The racial composition of the NBA is a salient point because in the eyes of the social justice movement, having any organization that is "majority minority" such as the NBA is, does not represent a problem. Imbalances in racial or gender representation are only a problem when the imbalance is in favor of some "non-oppressed" group.
The modern social justice system is in many cases used as a lever to create rank inequity, such as when men are allowed to compete in women's sports. As any rational person will admit, men are simply bigger, stronger and faster than women in the aggregate. The mediocrities barging their way onto the playing field with women know this all too well. Can't beat the guys, go play against the women. It is notable that the one and only sport where men don't seem to want to identify as women is in the field of gymnastics. Why would that be? Perhaps it is because that is one of the few fields where men simply cannot win against women. Women's gymnastics requires balance and grace that men simply cannot replicate, no matter how many hormones you shoot them full of.
So at bottom, the modern social justice system has nothing to do with equity. Rather, it is about promoting certain "aggrieved" constituencies and punishing other "non-aggrieved" constituencies. This is where the mask is pulled off, and the movement is revealed as nothing but a rehash of Marxist identitarian philosophy and Leninist "who/whom" moralism. There is your fallacy.
Christopher, I too am a Sowell fan boy. His fearless willingness to tackle race issues is an inspiration and an oddity in today's PC culture.
Regarding your concerns regarding Sowell's blind spot when it comes to the role of genetics, I do believe genetics plays a role statistically. As an Ashkenazi Jew (98%) I question the origins of my own gift in mathematics. But then, none of my close jewish friends were gifted. As a child I would try to teach them quite unsuccessfully. I suspect genetics plays its largest role in the width of the IQ bell curve among different races and sexes, not in its horizontal offset. I think genetics also plays a role in how fast we learn and, via its influence on behavior, how much our IQ grows over the years. There is IMHO support for these kinds of generic influences.
I believe it is well known that women have a more narrow IQ bell curve than men - thus you find statistically both more low IQ and more high IQ men than women. And women generally mature faster than men. With Ashkenazi Jews perhaps the curve is wider. This would explain my own observations. In Jewish families I see more high IQ people but also more fools. Hence the abundance of words in Yiddish for fool, loser, etc. I see the same pattern with my Asian friends.
Of course, I have no data to back up my words. But wouldn't it be nice if there was someone with the cajones and intellectual integrity to address this issue? I suspect your frustration with Thomas Sowell is justified. I can only hope another Sowell-like anomily will emerge to fill this gap.