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Comment by zucker42 | Hacker News Reader

Every discussion of Sowell online seems to attract fans of his declaring how brilliant he is. It's a bit strange the sort of hero worship he attracts. Personally, I've never seen it; while he seems like a reasonably smart person, his ideas are simply a mix of standard conservatism and condemnation of the intellectual establishment as he sees it. His views on immigration are uninspiring, the reasons he believes the U.S. is declining are unconvincing to me, and he vocally refuses to believe that climate change in an issue (in my opinion mostly because he is ideologically opposed to proposals to fight climate change).

I think part of the reason a lot of conservatives love him is that his haughty and confident attitude, especially when speaking about other intellectuals, is quite seductive. It's convenient and attractive to think that many of the worlds problems are because of people (mostly liberals) who think they are smarter than they are.

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Just a thought: it might be that what you consider to be “standard conservatism” is in part what it is due to Sowell’s work and influence for the past 50 years. He basically won against competitive thought leaders and shaped parts of the conservative movement.

Maybe a better example of my thought: if you listen to Dawkins today talking about evolutionary biology, you might arrive to the conclusion that what he says is just a repetition of the consensus and isn’t that interesting, but that’s missing the fact that he’s the reason we reached the modern consensus in the first place. It’s just that his arguments/ideas won the game and seem to be banal and common knowledge

Yes, this very well could be true. I suppose when I wrote "standard" I meant to convey that the ideas can be attacked in standard ways from both libertarian and liberal/progressive directions more than that his ideas were unoriginal.

If you focus on his politics especially in a right-left context that makes sense, but his work touches on many social subjects and has considerable depth. I strongly recommend his book Migrations and Cultures where he documents how migrations tend to involve whole social groups and preserve networks.

His conservative confidence seems to be his weakest spot. He is fond of claiming that any attempt to help the poor or discriminated against ends up harming them yet universal basic income trials have all had dramatically positive results. Extremists can bring up interesting arguments and information but tend to fail when it comes to realism, balance, and most important of all getting things done in order to make positive change.

I don't think I ever received a check from one of those trials, so they might not have been as "universal" as the name implied.

I don’t remember if he’s ever said anything publicly about UBI.

Milton Friedman was on the record saying UBI is far superior to current welfare because it forces personal responsibility and choice while completely eliminating the massive welfare bureaucratic overhead.

A column or collection of random quotes will never adequately summarize a thinker - however his books "Knowledge and Decisions" and "A Conflict of Visions" both rank as masterpieces.

I've not read any of his books, but I have watched quite a few long form interviews with him, to give you a sense how I've developed this impression of him.

I highly recommend Basic Economics. It's an excellent overview of the field of economics for the common citizen.

Every thread I’ve seen on him has a comment such as yours to complement the the fanboy comments.

This is common. Discussions of almost any author here draw the same set of responses.

Thinking about it, almost all discussions online have the same pattern. People who feel strongly about something comment on it, and then people respond to those initial comments.

>his ideas are simply a mix of standard conservatism and condemnation of the intellectual establishment as he sees it.

I had this opinion of Sowell based on reading his public commentary/watching interviews. But I will say that, having just finished 'Conflict of Visions' some of his written work is quite excellent. I picked it up based on Steve Pinker's review and was not disappointed.

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