Sowell On Intellectuals 'Over The Edge'

Intellectuals Step 'Off The Cliff,' Drag Rest Of Us Down: Sowell
By DAVID HOGBERG, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 02/26/2010 07:15 PM

Smart people should make smart decisions. So why do the best and the brightest always seem to create more problems than they solve? This is not just an academic question, precisely because academics dominate the Obama administration and its approach to such key issues as health care and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Renowned economist Thomas Sowell argues that intellectuals have strong incentives to step out of their area of expertise and "off a cliff." Ultimately, everyday people pay the price when intellectuals and abstract concepts trump real-world specifics. Sowell explores these topics and more in a wide-ranging IBD interview regarding his latest book, "Intellectuals and Society."

*IBD:* How do you define intellectuals?*Sowell:* I define intellectuals as persons whose occupations begin and end with ideas. I distinguish between intellectuals and other people who may have ideas but whose ideas end up producing some good or service, something that whether it's working or not working can be determined by third parties.With intellectuals, one of the crucial factors is their work is largely judged by peer consensus, so it doesn't matter if their ideas work in the real world.

*IBD:* What incentives and constraints do intellectuals face?*Sowell:* One of the incentives is that, to the extent that intellectuals stay in their specialty, they have little to gain in terms of either prestige or influence on events. Say, an authority in ancient Mayan civilization just writes about ancient Mayan civilization, then only other specialists in ancient Mayan civilization will know what he is talking about or even be aware of him. So intellectuals have every incentive to go beyond their area of expertise and competence. But stepping beyond your area of competence is like stepping off a cliff — you may be a genius within that area, but an idiot outside it.

As far as the constraints, since their main constraint is peer consensus — that's a very weak constraint on the profession as a whole. Because what the peers believe as a group becomes the test of any new idea that comes along as to whether it's plausible or not.

*IBD:* You say that most intellectuals believe in the "Vision of the Anointed." What does that mean? *Sowell:* It's the theory that there is an elite group of people who are very knowledgeable and their knowledge should be used to guide the decisions of society. So they are not simply an elite in the sense that sinecurists might be an elite, but they are elite with an anointed role in the world. To put it uncharitably, as someone once said, "Born booted and spurred to ride mankind." Examples of that would not be hard to find in Washington, D.C.

*IBD:* Why shouldn't intellectuals make decisions for the rest of us?*Sowell:* Because they don't know as much as the rest of us. It's one of those non sequiturs. They have more average knowledge than the average person in the limited sense in which knowledge is usually spoken of by intellectuals. But the knowledge that has consequences in the world includes vast amounts of knowledge that I call mundane knowledge and probably no one on earth has 1% of that knowledge. Yet that knowledge is consequential, and it includes knowledge that is in no way intellectually challenging but is nevertheless crucial.

In the book, I mention the example of a pilot coming in for a landing and the control tower notices he hasn't let his landing gear down. I happen to have been on such a plane once. And as we came into land, I noticed the pilot suddenly gunned the motor, took off again, circled back around and this time let down the landing gear. So whenever I'm on a plane and I hear the landing gear go down, I'm very pleased.

*IBD:* You have a lot of examples of intellectuals "in action" in your book. Does any one stand out more than the others? *Sowell:* The one that stands out more in my mind is the promotion of disarmament during the 1930s while Hitler and Japan were arming themselves to the teeth. Disarmament is one of those things that probably no illiterate farmer would believe in. But some of the leading intellectuals, if not most of the leading intellectuals, of the Western democracies pushed that idea throughout the 1930s.

*IBD:* What do you think of the Obama administration when viewing it through the many concepts laid out in your book? *Sowell:* It's very hard to answer that without using language that is totally inappropriate in polite society. But it is quite clear that they believe it is their job to take decisions out of the hands of the voting public. And there are any number of ways they can do that, including rushing through huge bills faster than anybody can possibly read them, including the congressmen who vote on them.They made statements during the campaign that are totally the opposite of what they will actually do.

One of the more recent examples being the notion that unlike previous administrations they'd be transparent and broadcast the hearings on C-SPAN. In fact, all of the big decisions are made behind closed doors, in one case locked doors, more so than in previous administrations. They want to supersede the public and put into operation what the anointed think should be done.

*IBD:* You say that intellectuals during Hitler's rise subordinated the mundane specifics of the nature of the German government to abstract principles about abstract nations, by which you meant the idea espoused at the time that "nations should be equal" and thus Germany had a right to rearm. Does that description apply to the Obama administration's approach to Iran?*Sowell:* I hadn't thought of it, but it certainly does. In fact, there are other people who have said, "Some countries have nuclear weapons, why shouldn't other countries have nuclear weapons?" And they say it with an utter disregard for the nature of the countries and what those countries have been demonstrably doing for years and show every intention of doing in the future.

*IBD:* Do you think also that the Obama administration has abstract notions that you can negotiate with Iran the same way you can negotiate with, say, Australia? *Sowell:* Oh, yes. And the question is not whether you should negotiate. We negotiate with all kinds of countries. The question is whether we think negotiations will be at all effective in carrying out what we want to do. Reagan, after all, negotiated a disarmament treaty with Gorbachev, but he did so only after making it clear in their first meeting that he was not about to even consider Gorbachev's nonsensical proposal.

There was this marvelous scene, which I cite briefly in the book, where they are in Iceland when Gorbachev shows him this proviso at the eleventh hour. Reagan simply says, "The meeting is over, let's go, George (Schultz, the secretary of state), we're leaving."That was utterly unthinkable to the intellectuals and utterly unprecedented in 20th-century democratic nations negotiating with totalitarian regimes.

*IBD:* Let me read some quotes and you tell me what you think. First, from Michelle Obama: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. ... That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed." *Sowell:* This is bringing meaning from the top down into the unwashed masses. This is a very old idea among the intelligentsia, that they must bring meaning into the lives of "lesser folks," as if those lesser folks don't have enough meaning in their lives by their standards and by the things that matter most to them.

*IBD:* Next, from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman: "There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today."One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."

*Sowell:* Apparently they made a big mistake at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. If only Thomas Friedman had been there, he would have put them on the right path, I suppose. Democracy has prerequisites, and not all circumstances meet those prerequisites. As to whether or not China is better off the way it is than under an alternative system such as the one that governs the same race of people in Taiwan, is another question entirely.

*IBD:* The next is from Jacob Hacker, a political science professor at Yale who has spent his entire career in academia. Here's the title from one of his recent papers: "How to Structure Public Health Insurance Plan Choice to Ensure Risk-Sharing, Cost Control, and Quality Improvement." *Sowell:* Third parties will structure how millions of people adjust to millions of different circumstances. In a sense, it is childish to imagine they can do this. But central planning has been tried for a very long time in many countries around the world. Fortunately, most countries have discovered from bad experience — even socialist and communist countries have jettisoned it in most cases.

*IBD:* Would you say his knowledge of political science is seeping into another area where he has no experience? *Sowell:* Not seeping, charging. Charging into another area. Or as I would put it, stepping off a very high cliff.

*IBD:* Now, while you note in the book that intellectuals believe that their superior knowledge in one area can be generalized to other areas, you state that chess grandmasters, musical prodigies and others who are remarkable within their respective specialties seldom make that mistake. But why do so many celebrities these days pop off on matters of foreign policy or domestic policy? The usual incentives faced by intellectuals wouldn't seem to apply. *Sowell:* To some extent they face the same incentives, but also the same lack of serious constraints. So Rosie O'Donnell can pop off and it won't really affect her ability to get her next job. There is no constraint on that. Further, fame is fleeting. And so it's not as though you can become famous at age 25, and you will still be famous at age 50 without lifting finger. Fame has to be constantly fed. And when the means of feeding that fame have no restrictions that are seriously placed on it, then you get all kinds of people popping off.

*IBD:* How about those who argue that we can use government to move society in a more conservative direction, like compassionate conservatism? Do they suffer from the vision of the anointed?

*Sowell:* To some extent, yes. Compassionate conservatism meant that Republicans added to the housing problems created by the Democrats rather than mitigating them. George W. Bush, for example, was for a law that allowed the Federal Housing Administration to do away with nuisances like down payments on houses. And even his father was for the notion that the federal government should intervene if there were statistical differences among groups in housing or mortgage approvals. These are people who seem to think that the way to be clever politically is to accept some of the premises of Democrats but reach different conclusions. But if you accept the premises, in many cases you've accepted the conclusions.