Intellectuals are not that smart

John Hawkins interviews Thomas Sowell:

why do you think so many intellectuals are so hostile to capitalism, Christianity and conservatism when over time all of those things have proven to work so well in building societies?

They may work well in building societies, but they don’t work well at making intellectuals important. What makes intellectuals important are finding things to complain about and they love to see themselves on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. So they look at all kinds of issues within that context.

Housing is a classic example. A few years ago there was a big to-do with the fact that blacks were turned down for mortgage lines at twice the rates of whites — and they were off and running all across the country and all the media at the universities, et cetera. What they left out is those same statistics would have told them that whites are turned down at nearly twice the rate of Asian-Americans — one of the reasons being that whites have higher credit scores than blacks and Asian-Americans have higher credit scores than whites. So what was presented as a moral melodrama was actually just an elementary case of economics that the lenders lent to people from whom they expected to get their money back.

Comments

[Francis W. Porretto]

Sowell has done what no other commentator to date has done: He's applied the core principle of Public Choice economic analysis -- that individuals will prioritize their own prosperity, prestige, and advancement ahead of all other considerations, regardless of their occupations or stations in life -- to the behavior of the "intellectual class." It's an insight that could save the world, if only people would keep it in mind when being fed Utopian schemes by men who've never even run a lemonade stand profitably.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

Your comment reminds me of Obama and his presidential campaign in 2008. One could easily tell that he was clueless about simple economics and how the world works. His comment about "spreading the wealth" and hiking taxes on the rich for "fairness" even if it resulted in less revenue showcased his idiocy.

But unlike those who voted for him I'm a RACISSS!