Maverick; A Biography of Thomas Sowell by Jason L. Riley

Author:Jason L. Riley
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2021-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

THESE TRENDS, HE ARGUED, HAVE BEEN EXACERBATED BY the rise in prominence and power of intellectuals, who “have spearheaded criticisms of price-coordinated decision making,” or capitalism, and who as far back as polls and voting records have been kept have been “well to the political left of the general population.”13 The underlying problem is not that these intellectual elites—which include not only academics but also journalists, social activists, and others who produce and disseminate ideas—tend to be more liberal than the surrounding society. Rather, the problem is that they are uncritically accepted as independent authorities offering disinterested advice on this or that issue: “It is not so much the bias of ‘expert’ intellectuals that is crucial, but the difference between their perceived ‘objective’ expertise and the reality which makes the political process vulnerable to their influence.”

Ideally, intellectuals would be viewed as just another special interest group that competes with others in the process of reaching a decision. Yet the ability of the intellectual class to present itself as a nonideological servant of the public good has given it outsized and unwarranted influence. “Publicly recognized special interest groups—landlords discussing rent control, oil companies discussing energy, etc.—may have similar incentives and constraints, but are far less effective in getting their social viewpoints accepted as objective truth,” wrote Sowell. “But when an academic intellectual appears as an ‘expert’ witness before a congressional committee, no one ever asks if he has been a recipient of large research grants or lucrative consulting fees from the very agency whose programs he is about to ‘objectively’ assess in terms of the public interest.”14

In later books, including The Vision of the Anointed, The Quest for Cosmic Justice, and Intellectuals and Society, Sowell would tackle the history and merits of specific policies promoted by public intellectuals. Here, his primary concern was the expanding role of experts in politics. Intellectuals tend to favor less reliance on the market and more reliance on centralized government, which translates into less efficient applications of knowledge and a larger gap between the people who make decisions and those who have to live with the consequences. Sowell stressed that intellectuals stay relevant to the decision-making process by convincing nonintellectuals that their own knowledge is inadequate:

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