Reality based public policy

About ten days ago I had a debate with a guy who left a comment on my blog. I don't want to repeat his name because I'm sure he has a Google Alert to tell him who is talking about him on the web. I don't want to open that debate again. However, his last debate mentioned he was reading a book by Thomas Sowell. I looked Sowell up in Wikipedia and read the entire article. It's a long one and took a while.

Much to my surprise, Sowell is not a toe-the-line conservative, as that prior debate had led me to suspect. He doesn't much like liberals and does like smaller government, but he is skeptical of the typical conservative as well. Here are some of the major points of Sowell's writing. Please note you are reading my summary, which is based on the Wikipedia article and that is a summary of Sowell's writing, not done by him. One hopes that with cloud-sourcing the errors have been caught and the article reasonably accurately portrays Sowell's major points.

Too often liberals (well, conservatives too) do not base their social policies on actual empirical evidence -- what works and what processes and methods actually bring about the stated goal. This lack of evidence is most striking around issues of race. Instead, a great deal of government policy is based on what the advocates wish were true. Many times the policy produces the opposite of the stated goal, leaving the intended beneficiary worse off. All of this is based on the assumption that the advocate knows better than the actual beneficiary what is needed. In addition, the advocate is rarely held responsible if his ideas are wrong. This is the central complaint against "elite liberals."

Put another way -- the liberal's compassion for the disadvantaged is admirable (much better than the conservative's disdain). But is a particular policy actually helping that poor person to become a more functioning member of society? We don't have a way of finding out. The liberal has his interpretation of the way the poor live (perhaps even has claims of how the liberal is specially qualified to be the expert) and constructs policy around it without going back to see the effects of the policy and taking his lumps if that grand interpretation was actually boneheaded. The one on the receiving end of the policy sees the elite imposing values, not allowing the beneficiary to make his own choices.

All-purpose explanations of racism and sexism are wrong. There are too many other factors that influence a person's eventual education and income levels in this country or any other. Faulty explanations include genetic superiority, remains of colonialism, and inherent culture.

Sowell describes many ways in which blacks were better off before the rise of welfare and affirmative action. Compared to current conditions, black families were more stable with more fathers at home, black communities had less crime and made progress in reducing poverty, and many black schools were as excellent as nearby white schools. Welfare was supposed to be a way to pull blacks out of poverty and did just the opposite. This description of Sowell's writing doesn't say whether the "welfare fix" the GOP pushed through under Clinton is any better at achieving the desired goal.

As for affirmative action, the beneficiary is rarely the poor black person. Instead, the benefit goes to the rich black (who don't really need it) or to other ethnic minorities, who need it even less. The poor black person is worse off than before.

While I am a progressive interested in making sure the disadvantaged are able to fully join into the opportunities of society I agree with Sowell that policies to make that happen need to be grounded in reality, that a policy must achieve its goal or be changed. Though my descriptions above (and much of this description of Sowell's work) focuses on the failings of liberal policy, I don't see much conservative policy as doing any better. Does No Child Left Behind actually improve understanding in students? Do GOP tax cuts for the rich boost the economy? Does the lack of bank regulation help the poor? This list is surely as long as the list of sins against liberals. At least liberals have compassion, even if their efforts are as misguided.