Thomas Sowell

But if we look at the position that they're in right now, I mean, my journey on economics and philosophy and politics is very recent.

It's the last four or five years where I've really decided to, you know, read the important text, to read what Locke said, to read what Bastiat said, to read what Milton Friedman says, and then try and understand and link together what these people say and the incentives and More recently, I've spent a lot of time reading Thomas Sowell, and it takes a lot of time to digest this and understand what they're saying.

And how can we expect young people who haven't been taught this to really understand what these people have spoken about, what the history lessons they are trying to teach us? Instead, what we've actually said to these kids is, listen, go to school and work hard.

Go to university, get yourself a degree.

And you stole that country from us.

I want our reparations.

Tom, where are my reparations? I mean, it's just such a dumb idea, but I was listening to a really good interview regarding Thomas Sowell.

He was talking about how the problem that you have with the left is that they are always trying to find their next civil rights movement.

we see many responses to the growing influence of Karl Marx and the insidious advancement of socialist and communist precepts.

The great economist and historian Thomas Sowell wrote this on December 20, 2001, in a Jewish World Review column titled Random Thoughts.

Thomas Sowell wrote, "...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." do we need to keep repeating the same mistakes forever? End quote.

I might ask, will we repeat the same mistakes even now? Some people just don't want to hear any of it and they avoid thinking about it.

Others fear criticism and ostracism and buy into the seductive siren calls of government taking care of our every need cradle to grave, assuming we make it beyond abortion to the cradle and assuming we are not met with forced medical assistance in dying for an early appointment with the grave.

This one, Ed, we've probably said before on the show because we quote this guy all the time, but if there is any lesson in the history of ideas, it is that good intentions tell you nothing about the actual consequences.

Thomas Sowell.

Guy's freaking brilliant.

Again, he's like chewing on nails.

Just go with imagination for a moment because reality is too grim in this area.

Imagine we had a politician who operated on the level of Thomas Sowell, let's say.

Now, that would be something.

But then would that person be able to advocate, let's have laissez-faire medical care? Would that be something they could advocate? Well, they could, but they wouldn't get any votes for it or they get very few votes because the culture is not philosophically ready.

But what I will say is I can appreciate that Nordhaus is an economist.

You might say you already sell a shit, but what I mean is What is it that economists do is, as Thomas Sowell famously says, there's no solutions, only trade-offs, right? Meaning, typically, What distinguishes economists from other types of academics or experts in their various domains is the economists will point out that, yeah, you can put this policy in place to try to pursue this goal, but sometimes it's counterproductive for some reason you hadn't thought of.

And we'll explain why.

Or it causes these other problems over here.

The creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal distribution of misery.

And the problem is, and I love what Thomas Sowell said.

If you have never read his work, you need to read it.

The barbarians are not at the gates.