Sowell, Mises, and the Pain of Going Against the Grain

In the last two days, I have observed that people who possess strong convictions about the way the world is can frequently turn bitter if their worldview substantially differs from popular opinion. The first piece of evidence was a quote by Milton Friedman about Ludwig von Mises:

“The story I remember best happened at the initial Mont Pelerin meeting when he got up and said, “You’re all a bunch of socialists.” We were discussing the distribution of income, and whether you should have progressive income taxes. Some of the people there were expressing the view that there could be a justification for it.
Another occasion which is equally telling: Fritz Machlup was a student of Mises’s, one of his most faithful disciples. At one of the Mont Pelerin meetings, Fritz gave a talk in which I think he questioned the idea of a gold standard; he came out in favor of floating exchange rates. Mises was so mad he wouldn’t speak to him for three years. Some people had to come around and bring them together again. It’s hard to understand; you can get some understanding of it by taking into account how people like Mises were persecuted in their lives.”

A man famous for saying “never give in to evil” is unlikely to compromise when it comes to principles. Mises witnessed the atrocities of socialism and was convinced that the only way to avoid future socialist experiments was by debunking the logical fallacies on which the socialist nations were based. He wrote prolifically to convince others of his conclusions, but found that all but a few dedicated followers actually made an effort to read and understand his work. Similarly, Thomas Sowell has experienced the dangers of ideas, mostly coming from academic intellectuals, regarding the proper “place” of African-Americans and other minorities. Sowell, too, has written prolifically (about a book every year since 1971) and his message, like Mises’, has not changed much over the years. This recent review of Sowell’s new book finds fault in Sowell’s unchanging message.

I am not in the conversion business, but I have changed my mind more than a few times in the forty or so years that I have been putting my views before the public. Reality can do that to you.

But reality can also reinforce your original opinions, as I am guessing has been the case for Sowell. The reality is that many ideas that were bad 40 years ago are still popular among academics. For example, Sowell is featured in several episodes of the 1980 PBS documentary Free to Choose. In the episode titled Created Equal, Friedman and Sowell argue for the primacy of liberty over fairness as a societal objective, in large part because of the unintended consequences of programs aimed at  ”levelling the playing field.” In opposition to Sowell and Friedman is a socialist professor of political science, Frances Fox Piven, who insists that calls for greater equality of outcome came out of the civil rights movement during the 1950’s. Sowell, who has ample evidence to refute her claim, is visibly angered by the woman’s pontifications. There are as many Frances Pivens in University classrooms as there were in 1980. Although socialism in its many forms is no longer taken as seriously as it used to be, Sowell is not finished refuting the ideas which he believes still pose a threat to the dignity and ultimate success of disadvantaged minorities. I have not read Sowell’s most recent book, so I can’t speak to the threat that modern “intellectual” ideas regarding inequality pose. However, having spent 3 years at UC Berkeley, I know that the intellectual climate is still tilted in favor of active government involvement in reducing inequality (see my earlier post on Robert Reich). I also watched a lengthy interview with Sowell on the new book at National Review Online and  he remains far and away the clearest public intellectual on the subject. I hope he hangs in there and keeps doing what he does best: exposing economic fallacies surrounding hot-button social issues.