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Unions Fight For Teachers At The Expense Of Our Children.

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One of the first things we learned about the coronavirus is that it has a near-zero death rate for kids. We also soon found that children are far less likely to transmit the virus than adults.

Considering these facts, one might reasonably expect that schools would be some of the first institutions to reopen amid government-mandated pandemic lockdowns and stay-at-home restrictions. Because there are very few public health risks—and because education and childcare are among the most essential functions of our society—allowing schools to reopen should have been the easy choice.

This, however, is not what has happened. Many schools across the country have remained closed since March, and even those which opened have done so with tremendous unpredictability and usually within a limited framework. Some schools have opened this fall only to be ordered to close once again when a second wave of COVID-19 cases emerged.

Why have our elected officials chosen to shut down schools despite all the evidence?

Contrary to what you may think, it is not primarily because of scientific recommendations made by experts, but rather largely due to deals cut between politicians and teachers’ unions. This is evidenced by a working paper authored by two political science professors that looked at over 10,000 school districts across the country. It found that regardless of the virus’s actual prevalence in local communities, districts with stronger teachers’ unions were less likely to reopen schools for in-person learning.

In New York City, for example, the United Federation of Teachers struck a deal with Mayor Bill de Blasio. They agreed that teachers would only return to the classroom if the mayor promised to re-close schools if the city’s COVID-19 positivity rate—the percentage of tests coming back positive—hit 3 percent. The positivity rate inevitably rose above that low 3 percent bar, and the schools were promptly closed down again.

If science had actually been paramount to this decision, it would be important to note that while the city-wide positivity rate was 3 percent, the positivity rate within schools themselves was only 0.15 percent. There was no actual scientific reason to close schools down again. But far more influential than scientific considerations were raw politics—raw politics at the expense of children’s education.

Unfortunately, these decisions to keep schools closed have had far-reaching consequences, such as increased mental-health challenges, decreased educational quality, and added stress on families that may have no stay-at-home parents. This, however, is evidently of no concern to the leaders of teachers’ unions because it is not their job to represent children, but rather only their dues-paying members.

“Union leaders say the narrative that they’re acting as obstructionists and pushing to keep schools closed is unfair,” EducationWeek reports. “They say they’re only asking for reopenings to be done safely.”

This excuse doesn’t cut it. Studies have consistently shown that school reopenings are not a major contributor to outbreaks of COVID-19. So, if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we never should have underestimated the sheer power of teachers’ unions.

Earlier this year, economist Thomas Sowell released a book titled Charter Schools and Their Enemies. In it, he issues a stunning indictment of the traditional public school system, teachers’ unions, and the politicians who will face political consequences if they defy incumbent powers. He masterfully analyzes the educational outcomes of low-income students who go to charter schools compared to their similarly situated peers in traditional public schools. By the end of the book, the reader is left outraged at the injustice done to ordinary students by those in power.

Sowell points out that while only 10 percent of the traditional public schools he studied had a majority of students passing at the “proficient” level on the mathematics exam, 68 percent of charter schools achieved that level. When it comes to the English test, the numbers are 14 percent and 65 percent respectively.

This is regrettable, because students who are not provided a quality education when they are young may never gain the marketable skills necessary to compete for a well-paying job later in life. Foundational skills in math and English are of crucial importance and the stakes here are high.

The reason charter schools are consistently more successful than comparable traditional public schools is simple: they operate under different incentives and constraints. Charter schools can only remain operational if they are providing a service that is desirable enough to attract students. Traditional public schools, on the other hand, operate as a monopoly where students are given no other choice than to attend that school.

Another key difference is the extent to which teachers are held accountable for the educational outcomes in their classrooms. In New York City, it takes an average of 830 days and $313,000 to fire a single incompetent teacher, largely due to policy negotiated by teachers’ unions. In charter schools, teachers are generally not unionized, and they can be fired for incompetence much more easily.

So, despite its widespread success, teachers’ unions and their political allies consistently fight to block and limit the charter school system. Why, Sowell ponders, is there such hostility toward such a successful system?

“There are millions of reasons,” he writes. “Namely, millions of dollars.”

This points to a fundamental truth: The interests of teachers’ unions seldom align with those of children. This was true prior to the pandemic, and it has only been underscored in recent months.

Of course, that’s not to say that teachers’ unions are inherently evil, but rather that their job is to advance the interests of teachers—not students. The issue arises when the interests of teachers sharply diverge from those of students.

While it is in the best interest of many children to learn in-person, teachers’ unions will advocate for online learning in order to look out for the health and comfort of their members—no matter how low the actual risk may be. While it is in the best interest of children to go to successful charter schools, it is in the interest of teachers to be protected by their union irrespective of performance.

It is because of these political pressures, Sowell explains, that 50,000 kids remain on waitlists to get into charter schools in New York City despite their proven success.

While these were all issues before the pandemic, COVID-19 has solidified the case against the traditional public school monopolies and the immense power of teachers’ unions. Their willingness to put children last and fight to keep schools closed has proven once and for all that teachers’ unions do not, in fact, have kids’ best interests at heart.

Fighting for teachers at the expense of the children they are teaching is the exact opposite of noble. For this reason, we must fight to reign in the influence of teachers’ unions and embrace the emergence of charter schools, private school choice programs, and homeschooling around the country.

 

A Central Issue For Our Times: Education For Children, Not Unions.

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Thomas Sowell is a truth seeker who grew up in Harlem and is one of the wisest men of our times. In his new book, Charter Schools and Their Enemies — published on June 30, 2020, his 90th birthday — he exposes the hypocrisy of our politicians, teachers’ unions, and public school bureaucrats.

To do so, Sowell compares New York City’s charter schools to its public ones. For example, Success Academy (47 New York City schools) and KIPP Academy (15 NYC schools), both public charter schools, have established the best K-12 schools in Harlem and have demonstrated the ability to successfully educate minority students. These charter schools have conclusively proven that minorities and underprivileged students can be educated to the highest standards. This extraordinary success is based on test data from the state of New York and is achieved despite large class sizes of around 30 and fewer financial resources than traditional public schools.

Charter Schools: Educating for Excellence

These charter schools require a high level of discipline from every student and a focus on primary academics, including mathematics, history, science, logic, writing, and thinking skills. Importantly, in these schools there is more time to teach. This means students spend more time on task than those in traditional public schools.

In Harlem, charter schools are often located in the same building as traditional public schools. Sowell compares test data from these schools, which jointly house traditional public school students and charter school students.

In the same building, 7 percent of the public school students pass the math test, while down the hall in the charter school, 100 percent pass the test. Sowell states that peer pressure in Harlem charters is geared toward excellence, while peer pressure in public schools is mostly against academic growth. In these charter schools, with students chosen by lottery, have closed the education gap between minorities and the best schools in the city, based on New York state testing data.

“How can success be so unwelcome?”

Recently the New York Times reported, “The city and state’s political forces have turned decisively against charter schools over the last few years.”

In spite of very high demand by parents to enter these schools, politicians and public school bureaucrats undermine the ability of new charters to open in Harlem. New York state law requires public schools to allow charters to operate in public school buildings if space is available. Currently over 200 public schools have space available, but they will not allow new charters to open. Mayor Bill de Blasio, who hates charter schools, leads the fight against them.

“The only thing standing in the way of student success [in Harlem] is Mayor de Blasio,” says Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Success Academy. Sowell asks the question, “How can success be so unwelcome?”

The public school system has good reason to oppose new charters, since charters are establishing excellent results. These are embarrassing to traditional public schools and their myriad excuses why minorities cannot be well educated.

Sowell points out that the only purpose of schools is to educate and form students, but our society supports teachers’ unions and politicians in lieu of student outcomes.

New York City has over 160,000 students waiting to gain entry into charter schools. But New York City society, the mayor, and the schools’ bureaucrats are fighting to deny any new charter schools. The evidence is clear: protecting the public school system is more important than educating students.

Sowell also writes, “Racially homogenous schools should not be sought as a goal. But where charter schools are located in predominantly black and/or Hispanic neighborhoods, the reality of educational success should not be sacrificed for the rhetoric of ‘integration’ or ‘diversity.’ ”

Success Academy in Harlem has a higher percentage of its students passing the math and English tests than any school in New York state, including the best schools in New York City. Sowell says poverty is not an obstacle to learning.

Focusing on the Student’s Education, Not the Teachers’ Union

Teachers don’t create teachers’ unions, which are established by union organizers whose main objective is growing the unions with more teachers, not educating students.

Sowell points out that for charter schools to succeed, they must please parents by educating students. Charters do not offer tenure to teachers, and therefore leaders and parents can demand high levels of performance from every teacher.

Correct incentives enable charters to succeed, with teachers accountable to the parents and the school. Public schools have perverse incentives because parents often have no choice, regardless of how badly the public schools perform. This is especially true in minority communities in most U.S. inner cities.

Sowell is desperately working to provide fair opportunities for all students. Public education must be redefined, he says. “When it comes to education,” Sowell suggests, “Perhaps the most important of these general principles is that schools exist for the education of children.”

In Charter Schools and Their Enemies, Sowell exposes the fallacies of many traditional public schools and their failure to educate students, especially in the inner cities. His book is a clarion call to give parents educational choices with a total focus on educating the student.

 

(C) The American Spectator. Bob Luddy is President of CaptiveAire.

 

There Are Doctrines And Practices That Make It Rational For Some To Fear The Police “Brand”.

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In economics, branding serves an important purpose. Brands allow people to economize on knowledge, a scarce resource. We make decisions with imperfect information, and brand labeling and trademarks help us navigate these decisions. As Thomas Sowell writes:

When you drive into a town you have never seen before and want to get some gasoline for your car or to eat a hamburger, you have no direct way of knowing what is in the gasoline that some stranger at the filling station is putting into your tank or what is in the hamburger that another stranger is cooking for you to eat at a roadside stand that you have never seen before. But, if the filling station’s sign says Chevron and the restaurant’s sign says McDonald’s, then you don’t worry about it.

He goes on to add that “brand names are substitutes for specific knowledge.”

You don’t know much about the particular bottle of ketchup you may be buying—the quality of the factory it was produced in, the farmer who grew the tomatoes, or the recipe used—but if it says Heinz on the label, you have a good idea of what you’re going to get. The need to economize on knowledge is so important that in the Soviet Union, people began to learn how to read barcodes to know whether or not they were getting products from reliable factories.

In customer service industries, this is also the purpose of a uniform. Customers can quickly identify the person they need to talk to in a retail environment, and the uniform conveys certain expectations. The electronic retailer Best Buy dresses its computer technicians, called the “Geek Squad,” in comically cliché “geek” uniforms—white shirts and black clip-on ties—in an attempt to help customers distinguish the employees with specialized computer knowledge from those who sell televisions.

But brand names, trademarks, and uniforms don’t always convey the information that companies want them to convey. For instance, if a customer had a bad experience with an incompetent Geek Squad agent, they may see the uniform as an indicator of somebody whose computer advice should not be trusted. Similarly, McDonald’s famous golden arches may inform a potential customer about the consistent quality of their hamburgers, as Sowell points out, but some consumers may see this as a sign of where not to eat. People always economize on information, but not necessarily in the way that companies hope.

This is why companies are so protective of their brand and trademarks. Any dilution of their reputation hurts the value of their product in the eyes of the consumer, not because the quality itself is lowered, but because when consumers face greater uncertainty in their economic decisions they are less likely to buy a given product.

As in the customer service industry, a police officer’s uniform conveys information to civilians. In the idealized vision of police, the uniform should convey security. Most of us were taught as children that if we get separated from our parents, we should avoid strangers but find a police officer. Even though the officer is also a stranger, children are taught to see the police uniform as an indicator of trustworthiness in the potentially dangerous uncertainty of human interaction.

This example also illustrates Sowell’s observation that brands are substitutes for specific knowledge. We do not know whether any individual is trustworthy or not, but, ideally, a police uniform should be a consistent marker of trustworthiness. But the converse may also be true. Just as I avoid the McDonald’s arches because I don’t like their food, the information conveyed by a police uniform is not always consistent with the idealized vision of police.

Any given police officer may be a kind, helpful person who only wants to serve and protect, as the police mantra claims, or he may be a scoundrel who enjoys asserting violent authority over others. This is the uncertainty that people face every time they interact with a police officer. But the uniform does convey some consistent, reliable knowledge that helps people know whether to feel safe or threatened.

For instance, thanks to the doctrine of qualified immunity, all police officers are immune from the consequences of excessive and unnecessary force, even in cases that result in the death of unarmed, nonresisting civilians. Certainly not all police take advantage of this immunity. Social media loves heartwarming stories of cops helping people or simply showing kindness. Many cops are not needlessly violent—in fact, it’s likely that the vast majority of them are not. But the uniform does not inform civilians of whether or not a cop will be gracious or abusive; it merely informs us that if they want to commit violence they can do so without fearing the consequences that the rest of us would face.

The result is that, in contradistinction to what we are taught as children, many people rationally feel unsafe interacting with a police officer than they do with a random civilian stranger. I stress the word “rationally” because their feeling of insecurity is not the product of a delusional prejudice or false propaganda, but rather of the reasonable weighing of possibilities in the face of uncertainty. They do not have knowledge of the specific officer’s temperament and character, but they do have knowledge of the legal immunity that will protect the cop if he abuses his authority.

Similarly, practices such as civil asset forfeiture become attached to the police uniform in the minds of civilians. Many cops, I’m sure, would never steal a person’s life savings or confiscate their legally owned property just because the law allows them to do so—but the law does allow them to. In the face of uncertainty, this is the knowledge that people have. If somebody has cash on their person or in their vehicle, as people often do when buying a used car off the internet or conducting a similar legitimate transaction, they don’t know whether a given cop will steal their money—they only know that the officer can.

And just as when a company hurts their brand by consistently providing poor service or a disappointing product, the frequent stories of police brutality and extrajudicial killings re-create the image of police conveyed by the uniform. The lack of accountability in these stories amplifies the effect. The actions of individual officers, even if we accept that they are anecdotal and not representative of the majority, convey information that people rationally attach to the uniform of all cops.

In short, people increasingly feel unsafe around police, because, frankly, it would be irrational to feel otherwise. It is impossible for anybody to know what a given cop will do, but thanks to the perverse incentive structures created by courts and tough-on-crime legislators, as well as the poor behavior of individual officers, who are virtually never brought to justice, people make their judgments of the police based on what officers can do. As long as we live in a world of imperfect information, it would be silly to expect people to make assumptions about police according to any other standard.

 

Chris Calton is an economic historian. He is writer and host of the Historical Controversies podcast. This article first appeared at mises.org.

Dr. Thomas Sowell Champions Individual Justice With Unassailable Facts, Wit and Wisdom

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A wonderful aspect of human life is our ability to discover and add to the library of knowledge built by the Poetic Justice Warriors of the past. For social justice warriors, not so much. Their pleas and methods haven’t changed in over two hundred years. But let’s give credit where its due. We normally associate social justice with remedies for socio-economic class disparities, but this isn’t true. Its much more enterprising than that. Anything that can be associated with “through no fault of their own” is fair game.

Frederic Bastiat alluded to this phenomena with The Candlemaker’s Petition, in 1830, which demanded economic protection from sunlight, but it took economist and Poetic Justice Warrior Dr. Thomas Sowell to expand on this idea, name it, and dedicate a book to it in 1999 – The Quest for Cosmic Justice. Much like economist Friedrich Hayek’s observation that all justice is social, Sowell explains that “rules and standards equally acceptable to all are often deliberately set aside in pursuit of social justice. The two concepts are mutually incompatible.”

The quest for cosmic justice expands the focus to innumerable segments of the population, living and dead, and disregards the interests of the individuals who nevertheless pay the price.

Cosmic Debris

As Sowell explains, “the dangers of errors increase exponentially when we presume to know so many things and the nature of their complex interactions.”

Cosmic justice seeks to make more just the undeserved misfortunes arising from the cosmos, as well as from society. It seeks to produce cosmic justice, going beyond strictly social justice. The only clear-cut winners are those who believe in the vision it projects.

In a complex and changing society, this is hubris. And the cosmic overlords have no skin in the game. Musical satire impresario Frank Zappa describes purveyors of cosmic justice in his song Cosmik Debris, “The mystery man came over. And he said I’m outta sight. He said for a nominal service charge, I could reach nirvana tonight.” Sowell might explain the nominal service charge as “to lose what is attainable in the quest of the unattainable.” Zappa asks, “I said look here brother. Who you jiving with that cosmik debris?”

Not only does “cosmic justice encompass individuals and groups, but also group abstractions extending over generations, or even centuries. How easy it is to go wrong, by huge margins, when presuming to take into account complex historical influences.” For example,

There has been a particularly tragic consequence in the quest for cosmic justice for young black Americans. If the vision presented to them is true, why study and discipline yourself in preparation for the adult world if the deck is stacked against you anyway?

Here Zappa describes the cosmic allure of dependency and victimhood: “With the oil of Aphrodite, and the dust of the Grand Wazoo. He said you might not believe this, little fella. But it will cure your asthma too.” But not only are preference groups damaged, so are the aspirations of those who fall into groups to be sacrificed. Sowell gives specific examples of these effects and generalizes, “Individuals may cease to strive as hard for posts that they are less likely to get or may remove themselves from the whole of society.” Zappa asks the cosmic tribalists, “Now what kind of a guru are you, anyway? Look here brother, don’t waste your time on me.”

From the Modern to The Postmodern Era

Like Frederic Bastiat before him, Dr. Thomas Sowell is renowned for his ability to explain the important principles of contemporary events using plain language. According to economist Donald Boudreaux, “Sowell’s explanation of why traditional justice is better than cosmic justice is second to none. It is vintage Sowell: brilliant, sparkling, and germane.”

When the overlord responds, “But I got the crystal ball, and held it to the light,” Zappa ends the tale, “So I snatched it, all away from him. And I showed him how to do it right.” Sowell then shows us how to do it right starting with,

The greatest opposition to the role of government in the economy was the 19th century. It was also a period of unprecedented growth of private philanthropy. Such efforts had a dramatic effect in reducing crime and other social ills. They were far more effective than the more massive government-run programs that began in the 1960s.

Just as Bastiat anticipated the possibility of the American Civil War by identifying the underlying perversions of law, Sowell did the same thing by anticipating the root cause of 2008’s financial crisis – cosmic justice mortgage lending regulations. In 1993 there was “a jounalistic and political firestorm that showed black applicants for mortgage loans were turned down at a higher rate than white applicants.” As Sowell discovered,

Minority applicants had larger debt burdens, poorer credit histories, and sought loans covering a higher percentage of the value of the property. When relevant variables were held constant, all of the remaining statistical difference could be traced to loan approval rates at one bank. The government did not take legal action. It was a black-owned bank.

Regardless, the Community Reinvestment Act was expanded into more government forced lending and securitization practices. As Sowell reminds us, “A rudimentary knowledge of economics is not a requirement for a career in politics, journalism, or the judiciary.” But his most important discovery here is,

The fundamental problem is the presupposition that social groups would be proportionally represented in various activities, at various income levels, in the absence of bias or discrimination. It is difficult to find any such representation in any country, in any period of history, except where government mandates artificial statistical balance. Even when no plausible case for discrimination can be made.

The same thinking applies to income and wealth distribution in America. Here Sowell makes the stunning observation that “Everyone who is old was once young. The average wealth in older families is higher than in younger families. Most Americans do not stay in the same quintile of income distribution for as long as a decade. The poor are as transient as the rich.” None of this sits well with hubristic social class visionaries who can’t see past their statistics.

The Quest for Traditional Justice

To Aristotle, Cicero, America’s Founders, and Dr. Thomas Sowell, justice applies to individuals. To cosmic overlords, justice is collective, meaning your rights belong to the group you are assigned to, like it or not. As Ayn Rand proved, the fundamental conflict in our postmodern era is individualism vs. collectivism. Traditional justice is based on concrete principles that apply to every individual, cosmic justice is based on the floating concept of group fairness. As Sowell explains, cosmic justice is irreconcilable with personal freedom. It must categorize flesh and blood individuals into abstract categories. Reason, and Sowell tells us,

Non-political approaches do not require the fatal rigidities of law, the vision of helplessness and dependency, the demonization of those who think otherwise, or the polarization of  society. Rather, they take the form of creating economic circumstances in which individuals themselves can find life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As Poetic Justice would have it, Sowell is the most accessbile, quotable and endearing economist in the world. His many books, essays and interviews cover such a wide range of issues that he defies labels. For example, on affirmative action he says it is one of “the few policies that can be said to harm virtually every group in a different way.” His book Knowledge and Decisions was the winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Centre Prize “because of its cogent contribution to our understanding of the differences between the market process and the process of government.”

 

 

 

Beware Of The “Anointed”. To These Self-Appointed Guardians Of Our Collective Morality, You’re An Irredeemable Sinner.

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In his, 1995 book The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell observed that an elite cadre of Americans, without having been appointed by anyone, declared their superior morality and their critical role in correcting society’s wrongs.

Sowell’s description was quite prescient and is still relevant today, more than two decades after the book’s publication. Today’s anointed continue to have the hubris to believe it is their role, with their superior vision and ideas, to rescue the victims of society’s “oppression” by imposing their collective will onto others.

As Sowell explained, the anointed—a loose class consisting of members of elite media institutions, academics, and progressive politicians—believe it is their role to rescue victimized and underprivileged classes. Their default mechanism for correcting perceived injustices is invariably the state.

Monopoly on Morality

Paramount for the anointed is their sheltering of themselves from scrutiny about facts and policy with the veil of “moral certitude,” which likewise makes them heavily resistant to evidence.

For a recent example, witness Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who recently said,

I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right.

Ocasio-Cortez’s statement perfectly demonstrates the anointed’s  tendency to see themselves as “morally on a higher plane.” Sowell said it’s often futile attempting to correct those who embrace such a mindset, since “those who disagree with the prevailing vision are seen not merely as being in error, but in sin.”

Furthermore, the anointed must refuse to accept that their ideological opponents share compassion for marginalized groups. If the anointed acknowledged that compassion and caring are shared by both sides, those emotions would lose their political potency. A monopoly on compassion is the platform upon which they place their moral superiority.

Indeed, the anointed go to great lengths to silence or otherwise ignore reason and evidence, instead focusing on accusations of sinister intentions on behalf of their opponents. “What is remarkable is how few arguments are really engaged in, and how many substitutes for arguments there are,” Sowell observed.

Perhaps most concerning is that the anointed have infested society’s most significant power centers. Sowell described the anointed as the “elite intelligentsia,” including “mass media, mass politics and massive government” that have “great leverage in determining the course taken by a whole society.”

False “Privilege”

Perhaps today’s rhetorical weapon of choice for the anointed is the assignment of blame to “privilege” for people’s station in life.

Yet again, Sowell anticipated this by decades and reduced that argument to rubble.

The anointed’s use of such language suggests that things simply happen to people rather than being caused, at least in part, by their own choices or behavior.

The anointed’s vision requires that the victims’ own behavior, performance, and choices be swept aside and ignored.

In so doing, the anointed reveal their own bigotry. By denying any agency on the part of so-called victims, the anointed show they feel such groups are unworthy of having agency. The anointed rarely view ordinary people as autonomous decision-makers free to decide for themselves the path to their well-being.

The anointed’s vision requires that the victims’ own behavior, performance, and choices be swept aside and ignored as factors contributing to their circumstances.

Sowell noted,

People are often said to lack “access” to various jobs, educational institutions, or credit, when in fact they may not have behaved or performed in a way that would enable them to meet the same standards that others meet.

Moreover, people choose different professions that pay differently. They are in those careers by choice, not because they lack access to those better-paying jobs. There are often non-income factors that help attract people to various career tracks.

Similarly, Sowell cites the example of millions of people (in 1995) with incomes over $50,000 who lack health insurance not because they lack “access” to insurance but because they chose to spend their money on other things.

Sowell wrote,

With these three inconvenient complications out of the picture, results after the fact can then be equated with conditions existing before the fact. Success thus becomes “privilege” and failure “disadvantage” – by definition.

Creating Mascots

The anointed think of victims as helpless pets, inferior to the anointed and as such needing to be adopted as mascots for the anointed to rescue.

The anointed, Sowell wrote, believe their role is “to preempt other people’s decisions for their own good,” and to “define for these citizens what is better” for them, all the while enhancing their own power.

The state is seen by the anointed as the great “equalizer,” the wise and benevolent institution that can right society’s wrongs—through policies drafted and approved by the anointed, of course—with little to no mind of those policies’ potential negative impact on others in society.

As Sowell wrote,

Yet, increasingly, government has come to be seen as a way of benefitting particular groups adopted as mascots, often without much regard for what that does to other groups or to the integrity of the system as a whole.

A Better Path

To the anointed, the aim of “social justice” justifies policies that put citizens at odds with each other, openly advocating for “the rights of particular mascot groups overriding the rights of others.”

But delegating solutions to a third party like the state is highly problematic.

Sowell concluded that,

At the heart of many of these schemes is third-party decision making. Third parties typically know less, even when convinced that they know more, in addition to lacking the incentives of those who directly benefit from being right and suffering from being wrong.

Instead, a free society that radically decentralizes decision-making and charity creates greater social harmony compared to the polarizing intervention of the state. When decisions are made by those who will actually bear the cost or reap the reward from said decisions, more informed decisions are made, and the results tend to generate greater human flourishing.

More localized, voluntary charity for the less fortunate enables givers to not only be better in tune with the needs of their recipients but empowers them with the exercise of their conscience that comes with freely chosen virtuous acts.

Advocates for liberty have no reason to cede the moral high ground to the self-styled anointed.

Freedom, personal responsibility, and voluntary interactions are a far better, and just, means of uplifting the least among us.

Bradley Thomas via fee.org

 

 

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