Posted on 07/26/2010 4:52:26 PM PDT by Kaslin
Many of the wonderful-sounding ideas that have been tried as government policies have failed disastrously. Because so few people bother to study history, often the same ideas and policies have been tried again, either in another country or in the same country at a later time — and with the same disastrous results.
One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control and plan economic and social policies so there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things being allowed to take their own course.
It sounds so logical and plausible that demanding hard evidence would seem almost like nit-picking.
In one form or another, this idea goes back at least as far as the French Revolution in the 18th century. As J.A. Schumpeter later wrote of that era, "general well-being ought to have been the consequence," but "instead we find misery, shame and, at the end of it all, a stream of blood."
The same could be said of the Bolshevik Revolution and other revolutions of the 20th century.
The idea that the wise and knowledgeable few need to take control of the less wise and less knowledgeable many has taken milder forms — and repeatedly with bad results as well.
One of the most easily documented examples has been economic central planning, which was tried in countries around the world at various times during the 20th century, among people of differing races and cultures, and under government ranging from democracies to dictatorships.
The people who ran central planning agencies usually had more advanced education than the population at large, and probably higher IQs as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Ping
The dirty little secret is, the elites are no smarter than anyone else. They just think they are.
Rule By Elites Has Been Tried — And Failed
The storming of the Bastille had something to do with that
That is for sure
Yeah, but now we have the right people to do it this time. /s
Nothing would ever get done. No laws passed, no new regulations enacted. And there'd be nothing wrong with this.
There is no device that government can employ that is as sensitive, and ready and able to respond, to changes in a free market as individuals in a free system who are motivated by profit. Centralized command and control works on a micro scale, such as Adam Smith’s famous pin factory, where production of a single product is the objective, but identifying and responding to need on a macro scale is too overwhelming and complex. Bureaucracies are ponderous and slow by nature, and can’t even agree on what’s being observed, let alone how to act on it.
Has Libertarian rule ever been tried?
Precisely. Sowell has pointed up the difference in perception of human nature in his book “A Conflict of Visions”.
IIRC, he pointed out that those raised with Biblical perceptions, generally conservatives, believe mankind is a fallen race, and has been since the Garden of Eden eviction. The nature of mankind is seen by those people as brutish, sensual, selfish and manipulative. Therefore, government is simply an aggregation of brutish, sensual, selfish and manipulative people with the raw power of government dictates to achieve their evil ends.
The non-Biblical, liberal types see man as evolving physically, intellectually and morally in the scheme of Charles Darwin and that, therefore, each generation is better, smarter, wiser than the generations which came before. This means that history has no lessons to teach their “new generation” because they are literally a different, improved species from those illustrated in the times past.
The sixties generation started a lot of this and explains why so many were willing to let an obscure, inexperienced younger man represent the Democratic Party in the 2008 election anmd why they were so susceptible to the “We are the ones we have been waiting for” schlock.
“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” — Thomas Paine
“The issue is never the issue. The issue is control.”
Note the tagline ...
Every time I see the words “Thomas Sowell,” I read the article with great expectations, and I am never disappointed.
One of the best indicators of his intelligence, is that he doesn’t flim-flam you with insider jargon and pretentious language. He is clear and understandable: like a drink of cool clear water in this age of fakery and mud.
Therefore, government is simply an aggregation of THE MOST brutish, sensual, selfish and manipulative people with the raw power of government dictates to achieve their evil ends.
Fixed it.
Sowell bump
The Rangel Angle......”Paying Taxes is ONLY for Republicans”!
Problem. They have been ‘fixing’ something that wasn’t broken for two hundred years. The Constitution.
I agree with your assessment. Reading Sowell means you arent going to get bogged down in the political mumbo jumbo of some hack trying to impress you with wordplay.
Dr Sowell just lays it down in plain English with deadly accuracy.
Are you a Sowell-mate? I am!
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