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 âhave spearheaded criticisms of price-coordinated decision making,â or capitalism, and who as far back as polls and voting records have been kept have been âwell to the political left of the general population.â13 The underlying problem is not that these intellectual elitesâwhich include not only academics but also journalists, social activists, and others who produce and disseminate ideasâtend 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: âIt is not so much the bias of âexpertâ intellectuals that is crucial, but the difference between their perceived âobjectiveâ expertise and the reality which makes the political process vulnerable to their influence.â
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. âPublicly recognized special interest groupsâlandlords discussing rent control, oil companies discussing energy, etc.âmay have similar incentives and constraints, but are far less effective in getting their social viewpoints accepted as objective truth,â wrote Sowell. âBut when an academic intellectual appears as an âexpertâ 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 âobjectivelyâ assess in terms of the public interest.â14
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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