A graduating senior at Hunter College High School in New York gave a speech that brought a standing ovation from his teachers and got his picture in the New York Times. I hope it doesn't go to his head, because what he said was so illogical that it was an indictment of the mush that is being taught at even our elite educational institutions.
Young Justin Hudson, described as "black and Hispanic," opened by saying how much he appreciated reaching his graduation day at this very select public high school. Then he said, "I don't deserve any of this. And neither do you." The reason? He and his classmates were there because of "luck and circumstances."
Since Hunter College High School selects its applicants from the whole city on the basis of their test scores, "luck" seems a strange way to characterize why some students are admitted and many others are not. If you can't tell the difference between luck and performance, what has your education given you, except the rhetoric to conceal your confusion from others and perhaps from yourself?
Young Mr. Hudson's concern, apparently, is about what he referred to as the "demographics" of the school-- 41 percent white and 47 percent Asian, with blacks, Hispanics and others obviously far behind. "I refuse to accept" that "the distribution of intelligence in this city" varies by neighborhood, he said.
Native intelligence may indeed not vary by neighborhood but actual performance-- whether in schools, on the job or elsewhere-- involves far more than native intelligence. Wasted intelligence does nothing for an individual or society.
The reason a surgeon can operate on your heart, while someone of equal intelligence who is not a surgeon cannot, is because of what different people actually did with their intelligence. That has always varied, not only from individual to individual but from group to group-- and not only in this country, but in countries around the world and across the centuries of human history.
One of the biggest fallacies of our time is the notion that, if all groups are not proportionally represented in institutions, professions or income levels, that shows something wrong with society. The very possibility that people make their own choices, and that those choices have consequences-- for themselves and for others-- is ignored. Society is the universal scapegoat.
If "luck" is involved, it is the luck to be born into families and communities whose values and choices turn out to be productive for themselves and for others who benefit from the skills they acquire. Observers who blame tests or other criteria for the demographic imbalances which are the rule-- not the exception-- around the world, are blaming whatever conveys differences for creating those differences.
They blame the messenger who brings bad news.
If test scores are not the same for people from different backgrounds, that is no proof that there is something wrong with the tests. Tests do not exist to show what your potential was when you entered the world but to measure what you have actually accomplished since then, as a guide to what you are likely to continue to do in the future. Tests convey a difference that tests did not create. But the messenger gets blamed for the bad news.
Similarly, if prices are higher in high-crime neighborhoods, that is often blamed on those who charge those prices, rather than on those who create the higher costs of higher rates of shoplifting, robbery, vandalism and riots, which are passed on to those who shop in those neighborhoods. The prices convey a reality that the prices did not create. If these prices represent simply "greed" for higher profits, then why do most profit-seeking businesses avoid high-crime neighborhoods like the plague?
It is painful that people with lower incomes often have to pay higher prices, even though most people are not criminals, even in a high-crime neighborhood. But misconstruing the reasons is not going to help anybody, except race hustlers and politicians.
One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience. A standing ovation for childish remarks may produce "self-esteem" but promoting presumptuousness is unlikely to benefit either this student or society.
Showing posts with label Thomas Sowell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Sowell. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Vintage Thomas Sowell
Enough Money by Thomas Sowell
One of the many shallow statements that sound good-- if you don't stop and think about it-- is that "at some point, you have made enough money."
The key word in this statement, made by President Barack Obama recently, is "you." There is nothing wrong with my deciding how much money is enough for me or your deciding how much money is enough for you, but when politicians think that they should be deciding how much money is enough for other people, that is starting down a very slippery slope.
Politicians with the power to determine each citizen's income are no longer public servants. They are public masters.
Are we really so eaten up with envy, or so mesmerized by rhetoric, that we are willing to sacrifice our own freedom by giving politicians the power to decide how much money anybody can make or keep? Of course, that will start only with "the rich," but surely history tells us that it will not end there.
The French Revolution began arbitrary executions among the hereditary aristocracy, but ended up arbitrarily executing all sorts of other people, including eventually even leaders of the Revolution itself, such as Robespierre.
Very similar patterns appeared in the Bolshevik Revolution, in the rise of the Nazis and in numerous other times and places, where expanded and arbitrary powers were put into the hands of politicians-- and were used against the population as a whole.
Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy-- quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go.
The moral bankruptcy of the notion that third parties can decide when somebody else has "enough" money is matched by its economic illiteracy. The rest of the country is not poorer by the amount of Bill Gates' fortune today and was not poorer by the amount of John D. Rockefeller's fortune a century ago.
Both men were selling a product that others were also selling, but more people chose to buy theirs. Those people would not have voluntarily continued to pay their hard-earned money for Rockefeller's oil or Gates' software if what they received was not worth more to them than what they paid.
The fortunes that the sellers amassed were not a deduction from the buyers' wealth. Buyers and sellers both gained from these transactions or the transactions wouldn't have continued.
Ida Tarbell's famous muckraking book, "History of the Standard Oil Company," said that Rockefeller "should have been satisfied" with the money he had acquired by 1870, implying greed in his continued efforts to increase the size and profitability of Standard Oil. But would the public have been better off or worse off if Rockefeller had retired in 1870?
One of the crucial facts left out of Ida Tarbell's book was that Rockefeller's improvements in the oil industry brought down the price of oil to a fraction of what it had been before.
As just one example, oil was first shipped in barrels, which is why we still measure oil in terms of the number of barrels today, even though oil is seldom-- if ever-- actually shipped in barrels any more. John D. Rockefeller shipped his oil in railroad tank cars, reducing transportation costs, among other costs that he found ways of reducing.
Would the public have been better off if older and more costly methods of producing, processing and shipping oil had continued to be used, leading to prices far higher than necessary?
Apparently Rockefeller himself decided at some point that he had enough money, and then donated enough of it to create a world-class university from day one-- the University of Chicago-- as well as donating to innumerable other philanthropic projects.
But that is wholly different from having politicians make such decisions for other people. Politicians who take on that role stifle economic progress and drain away other people's money, in order to hand out goodies that will help get themselves re-elected. Some people call that "social justice," even when it is anti-social politics.
One of the many shallow statements that sound good-- if you don't stop and think about it-- is that "at some point, you have made enough money."
The key word in this statement, made by President Barack Obama recently, is "you." There is nothing wrong with my deciding how much money is enough for me or your deciding how much money is enough for you, but when politicians think that they should be deciding how much money is enough for other people, that is starting down a very slippery slope.
Politicians with the power to determine each citizen's income are no longer public servants. They are public masters.
Are we really so eaten up with envy, or so mesmerized by rhetoric, that we are willing to sacrifice our own freedom by giving politicians the power to decide how much money anybody can make or keep? Of course, that will start only with "the rich," but surely history tells us that it will not end there.
The French Revolution began arbitrary executions among the hereditary aristocracy, but ended up arbitrarily executing all sorts of other people, including eventually even leaders of the Revolution itself, such as Robespierre.
Very similar patterns appeared in the Bolshevik Revolution, in the rise of the Nazis and in numerous other times and places, where expanded and arbitrary powers were put into the hands of politicians-- and were used against the population as a whole.
Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy-- quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go.
The moral bankruptcy of the notion that third parties can decide when somebody else has "enough" money is matched by its economic illiteracy. The rest of the country is not poorer by the amount of Bill Gates' fortune today and was not poorer by the amount of John D. Rockefeller's fortune a century ago.
Both men were selling a product that others were also selling, but more people chose to buy theirs. Those people would not have voluntarily continued to pay their hard-earned money for Rockefeller's oil or Gates' software if what they received was not worth more to them than what they paid.
The fortunes that the sellers amassed were not a deduction from the buyers' wealth. Buyers and sellers both gained from these transactions or the transactions wouldn't have continued.
Ida Tarbell's famous muckraking book, "History of the Standard Oil Company," said that Rockefeller "should have been satisfied" with the money he had acquired by 1870, implying greed in his continued efforts to increase the size and profitability of Standard Oil. But would the public have been better off or worse off if Rockefeller had retired in 1870?
One of the crucial facts left out of Ida Tarbell's book was that Rockefeller's improvements in the oil industry brought down the price of oil to a fraction of what it had been before.
As just one example, oil was first shipped in barrels, which is why we still measure oil in terms of the number of barrels today, even though oil is seldom-- if ever-- actually shipped in barrels any more. John D. Rockefeller shipped his oil in railroad tank cars, reducing transportation costs, among other costs that he found ways of reducing.
Would the public have been better off if older and more costly methods of producing, processing and shipping oil had continued to be used, leading to prices far higher than necessary?
Apparently Rockefeller himself decided at some point that he had enough money, and then donated enough of it to create a world-class university from day one-- the University of Chicago-- as well as donating to innumerable other philanthropic projects.
But that is wholly different from having politicians make such decisions for other people. Politicians who take on that role stifle economic progress and drain away other people's money, in order to hand out goodies that will help get themselves re-elected. Some people call that "social justice," even when it is anti-social politics.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Favorites of Mine
Thomas Sowell, once again explains why solution for inequities do not necessarily have the intended effect.Liz Cheney may run for office. Besides good looks, she has many of the qualifications missing in the curriculum vitae of another Republican famous female politician: A Law Degree from the University of Chicago, and a significant career at the State Department. If she inherited her father's toughness and her mother's brains she has got my vote.
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