Jung and Thomas Sowell

I think I also understand why Thomas Sowell is such a libertarian. After surveying so much of history and seeing the same mistakes repeated without much distinction upon one side and then another, arising again and again and again from causes that conceive themselves so differently, it’s hard not to arrive at a certain kind of skepticism about all such claims and theories. Everything people do to try to fix the world and balance the scales and do good has a massive potential for doing exactly the opposite. So what then, if all morally and intellectually utopia theories seem to end in equal hells?

The problem is, you can’t compel equally good outcomes for everyone. You can’t force it. You can’t, like God, balance the scales of the world and banish all its injustices without also eradicating all the individuality and choice and difference among different people, places, and societies. You’re fighting the whole shape of the world and human nature. So if you’re going to fix the outcomes, you’re going to have to bring the whole nature of nature and humanity under your boot and stamp out its inequities. Efforts at enforcing equality breed inequality. Efforts at enforcing justice (in a cosmic sense) result in injustice. Kindness leads to cruelty, reason to madness, civilization to barbarity. The historical examples Sowell provides in his work, and that are available to those willing to look with oeob eyes, are so numerous as to be quite terrifying and disheartening.

So Sowell advocates for a system that works with instead of in denial of or in spite of this aspect of the world and humanity, it’s essential inconsistency. You can’t deprive people of the chance to do well, of the chance to excel and reap the rewards of success without impoverishing the species itself. At the same time, you can’t deny people the chance to fail and do poorly and reap the rewards of that as well. Unless you wish to deny the world its variable nature and deny humanity its variable nature, you have to accept those two stances as axiomatic.

Now, you may put limits and structures in place to mitigate the effects of extreme examples of both success and failure, to redistribute some of the products of both for the sake of the general populace, to give the average bulk of humanity a slightly greater chance at avoiding) bunting the unintended effects of chance, add extra chances for people to learn and grow, and maintain a greater level of general wellbeing and thus more chances at productivity and innovation.

I think there are good arguments to support this approach, and on some level Sowell might as well. But since the primary problem of life, and the primary one humans are actually able to take a hand in solving by their own agency, is not the distribution of wealth but it’s production, our first priority should be to protect the production of that capacity (rather than worry about the results). Wealth of spirit, wealth of character (what the ancients would call virtue), are what he would probably consider most important, whether an individual by chance succeeds or fails at translating that essential wealth into material wealth. Essential wealth can manage to produce wealth even under very difficult circumstances of place, time, and society. And a lack of essential wealth can waste and degrade and rob a person of material wealth no matter how much good fortune is heaped upon them.

I think he’s all for equality of opportunity, but the key to his argument seems to be that he insists that inequality of results is just as important to protect as equality of opportunity. The problem with interfering with inequality of results, I seem to understand from Sowell, is that however positively motivated they may be, however just and kind they may seem, whatever you create from them inevitably be less just, less desirable, and less condusive to the production of actual good results than not doing so would be (in the long run).

To put it another way, protecting people from the earned consequences of their own actions, whether good or bad, doesn’t help them in the long run. It just screws up the system of production by refusing to let it work and refusing to let it do its job in the production of natural results and the education and improvement of humanity by giving us that valuable feedback. We need to let people succeed so we can know what produces success and pursue it ourselves. And we need to let people fail so we can know what produces poverty and avoid it ourselves. Misaligning essential wealth and material wealth by any artifice (altristic or selfish) only impoverishes everyone by obscuring the means one leads to another, denying us the opportunity to learn to pursue one and denying us the other (in the long run) by eroding our capacity for discovering the former.

Misaligning essential wealth and material wealth by any artifice (altristic or selfish) only impoverishes everyone by obscuring the means one leads to another, denying us the opportunity to learn to pursue one and denying us the other (in the long run) by eroding our capacity for discovering the former.

So, looking at the history and believing in the centrality of human capital and the pragmatic value of essential wealth, it’s easy to see how you could arrive at a libertarian perspective.

There is some sense to this perspective. I can see that many people would worry that such an approach would lack mercy. But I think his argument would be, compared to what? If life is, in its own way, merciless, there is some sense in the idea that onyo by approaching it as such can we develop the skills to overcome it and eliminate the actions that cause us to be overcome.

The crux of the problem, as I take it, is our ineffectiveness at playing God, at having either the power or the insight to level out the inconsistencies in the world and in people without making terrible mistakes one way or another. We’re very bad at judging the hearts and just deserts of others. It’s hard for us to judge who deserves to be brought down and who deserves to be lifted up, and how and how much, without falling into a new form of injustice or harming the means by which essential wealth is produced or degraded. We don’t make very good judges of the hearts of all men and women. Our eternal justice and righting of the cosmic scales (which tend to be super complex and in order to avoid mistakes would require intimate detailed knowledge of the secrets of every human heart) tends to be pretty haphazard and inconsistent and often ends badly for everyone concerned. In fact most of our greatest catastrophes have resulted from just such attempts to deal out our particular idea of cosmic justice

We don’t make very good judges of the hearts of all men and women. Our eternal justice and righting of the cosmic scales (which tend to be super complex and in order to avoid mistakes would require intimate detailed knowledge of the secrets of every human heart) tends to be pretty haphazard and inconsistent and often ends badly for everyone concerned. In fact most of our greatest catastrophes have resulted from just such attempts to deal out our particular idea of cosmic justice

So Sowell, as I understand it, thinks we should just let the cards fall where they do so we can learn from them. There are two major objections that spring to mind. The first is that such an approach could easily be used as a justification for wrecking what we think to be just deserts upon others without mercy, since that’s what they deserve. I’m not sure how he would argue against this in detail. I think he would argue that that goes against the liberal part of libertarianism. In a libertarian society, you attempt to put the minimum amount of restrictions possible on people that is necessary to allow them to pursue their own results in life without unduly affecting the lives and results of others. You try to let each reap what he or she sows. In this state, you have freedom to do as you think best, but not to force others to do what you think best. Any attempt at sizing the reins for the righting or dealing out of cosmic justice other than producing their effects by your efforts in your own life is siezing a privilege you don’t and shouldn’t have.

In a libertarian society, you attempt to put the minimum amount of restrictions possible on people that is necessary to allow them to pursue their own results in life without unduly affecting the lives and results of others. You try to let each reap what he or she sows. In this state, you have freedom to do as you think best, but not to force others to do what you think best. Any attempt at sizing the reins for the righting or dealing out of cosmic justice other than producing their effects by your efforts in your own life is siezing a privilege you don’t and shouldn’t have.

The second objection is that the world isn’t entirely free from chance circumstances for which we do not bear responsibility, and so it would be unmerciful not to try to correct for this element of chance as much as possible by seeking to level out the effect of different conditions upon human life. I think this is actually the harder half of the argument to swallow and solve. Even taking into account the lessons from history that show that such attempts often end up causing as big of problems as they propose to fix. And the fact that such inequities of circumstance may not be something we can eliminate. The argument, as I take it, is that these inequities are part of the fabric of the world, and as such our best practical option for overcoming them is learning to expect them and accept them and find ways to develop essential wealth, human capital, within them. That will actually give us the best chance of overcoming them.

On the other hand, where is that line drawn, if our essential wealth produces material wealth that overcomes our circumstantial difficulties (as the cleverness of the Sumerians found a way to make a productive paradise in the desert)? Won’t the attaining of that wealth, mitigating our difficult circumstances, inevitably weaken us?

I think this is actually the harder half of the argument to swallow and solve. Even taking into account the lessons from history that show that such attempts often end up causing as big of problems as they propose to fix. And the fact that such inequities of circumstance may not be something we can eliminate. The argument, as I take it, is that these inequities are part of the fabric of the world, and as such our best practical option for overcoming them is learning to expect them and accept them and find ways to develop essential wealth, human capital, within them. That will actually give us the best chance of overcoming them.

On the other hand, where is that line drawn, if our essential wealth produces material wealth that overcomes our circumstantial difficulties (as the cleverness of the Sumerians found a way to make a productive paradise in the desert)? Won’t the attaining of that wealth, mitigating our difficult circumstances, inevitably weaken us?

Isn’t this the immigrant’s dilemma? A hardworking immigrant comes to a new country to seek opportunity. They work very hard, undergo mcuh suffering, but their hard work and determination of character causes them to succeed and attain material security. Their children, however, not having had to make those same sacrifices and develop those same capacities, grow up in a much easier life, taking their security and wealth for granted. The children squander the wealth and opportunities their parents provided them with, their essential wealth erodes as consequence of the material wealth caused by their parents’ essential wealth. And over time their material wealth fades as their capacity to produce it fades. This is also the parent’s dilemma. To what degree should you help and provide for your children? What should you actually pass on to them? What is most valuable to inherit? Wealth?

The children squander the wealth and opportunities their parents provided them with, their essential wealth erodes as consequence of the material wealth caused by their parents’ essential wealth. And over time their material wealth fades as their capacity to produce it fades. This is also the parent’s dilemma. To what degree should you help and provide for your children? What should you actually pass on to them? What is most valuable to inherit? Wealth?

I’m not saying this is a universal problem, in fact some families and some cultures seem very adept at passing on their essential wealth (with a decent amount of success). But it’s a common enough problem that people have been complaining of it for a couple thousand years, from the time of Plato down to today. People have long known that virtue was the essential wealth of humankind and have been concerned with the problem of how to pass it on. And they’ve also bee aware for a long time that the fruits of virtue can oftentimes make the passing of virtue harder rather than easier.

I’m still not convinced that Sowell is entirely right about how correct libertarianism is. I do see the arguments. I see the problems that arise outside of it, almost inevitably. How our own desire for mercy often ends up being less merciful than letting nature take its course. Benevolent non-interference, interfering neither positively nor negatively (because we can’t be sure which we’re really achieving) seems to be his recommendation. The invisible hand of the market.

My primary objection heretofore has been that the market is amoral, and no better than the agents that make it up, and messy, and slow, and allows for terrible events to take their course to learn their lessons. But in a way I see that its amorality, its lack of prejudice, could be one of its strengths, since our attempts at moral restructuring of the world, rather than our own lives and hearts, often cause the greatest human damage.

But then, our own avariciousness and cruelty and pigheaded destructiveness and selfishness and pettiness are also large factors in human action. We’re not all concerned with productivity, nor do we all have the same healthy idea of what it is or should be. I’m not sure Sowell’s theory fully accounts for the problems inherent in “the market” that arise due to the stupidity and wickedness of the humans that compose it. I suppose the argument for it is little different than the arguments for natural selection. It’s not pretty, but whatever can and should survive by necessity will.

I don’t think you can really disagree that the action of the market is going to be ugly, destructive, and leave a litter of pain and suffering and abuse behind it. And that’s fundamentally a terrible thing to contemplate. But I still find much to overcome in Sowell’s response, its unmerciful and unjust compared to what? What are the actual alternatives and what are their costs? Is there really a better option? In the long run. How is it really worse?

I think hope has to come in the form of a negotiated middle ground. A delicate balance. Because our goal, after all, is the greatest chance at the greatest productivity of good results. So there is some value in trying to mitigate the effects of chance so factors of deliberate effort are pushed to the fore. Nevertheless, because the world is uneven, we need to foster the capacity to deal with that unevenness by making our absolute first and highest priority and hope the development essential wealth, not the distribution of material wealth.

And that, perhaps, is where mankind so often goes most wrong. We locate the center in the wrong place. It’s not that there isn’t a place for mitigating the random factors that affect our world and lives. But we cannot put our central hope in it. We cannot make that our strategy without actually risking working against our goal. Our goal, our center, our continually refocused hope and agency must always be directed first and foremost upon the value and development of essential wealth. On virtue.

In our lives, we are likely to face terrible circumstances far beyond our control, as well as fortunate circumstances far beyond our dessert. And either one of these could destroy us and erode our capacity to develop essential wealth. The only way to avoid the corrupting influences of both is to keep our eye fixed on the true center in both circumstances.