Intellectuals and Entrepreneurs: A Selection from Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society (2012)
“In many fields, it is often the specialist—sometimes the monomaniac—who is most likely to produce the peak achievements. No one expected Babe Ruth or Bobby Fischer to be a Renaissance Man, and anyone who might have would have been very badly disappointed. The judging of people in non-intellectual fields by intellectual criteria will almost inevitably find them unworthy of the rewards they receive—which would be a legitimate conclusion only if non-intellectual endeavors were automatically less worthy than intellectual endeavors. . . .
Another common misconception among the intelligentsia is that individual business entrepreneurs should—or could—be ‘socially responsible’ by taking into account the wider consequences of the entrepreneur’s business decisions. . . . In other words, it is not considered sufficient if a manufacturer of plumbing fixtures produces high-quality faucets, pipes and bathtubs, and sells them at affordable prices, if this entrepreneur does not also take on the role of philosopher-king and try to decide how this business affects ‘the interest of the community,’ however that nebulous notion might be conceived. . . .
Intellectuals may choose to imagine what are the wider social consequences of their own actions, inside or outside their fields of professional competence, but there is little or no consequential feedback when they are wrong, no matter how wrong or for how long. That both business owners and workers usually avoid taking on such a cosmic task suggests that they may have a more realistic assessment of human limitations.
Although businesses produce most of the things that make up the standard of living in a modern society, there is remarkably little interest among the intelligentsia in a causal analysis of the things that promote or inhibit the production of output, on which everyone’s economic well-being ultimately depends. Instead, business issues are often approached as moral melodramas, starring the anointed intelligentsia on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. . . .
The fundamental difference between decision-makers in the market and decision-makers in government is that the former are subject to continuous and consequential feedback which can force them to adjust to what others prefer and are willing to pay for, while those who make decisions in the political arena face no such inescapable feedback to force them to adjust to the reality of other people’s desires and preferences.
A business with red ink on the bottom line knows that this cannot continue indefinitely, and that they have no choice but to change whatever they are doing that produces red ink, for which there is little tolerance even in the short run, and which will be fatal to the whole enterprise in the long run. In short, financial losses are not merely informational feedback but consequential feedback which cannot be ignored, dismissed or spun rhetorically through verbal virtuosity.
In the political arena, however, only the most immediate and most attention-getting disasters—so obvious and unmistakable to the voting public that there is no problem of ‘connecting the dots’—are comparably consequential for political decision-makers. But laws and policies whose consequences take time to unfold are by no means as consequential for those who created those laws and policies, especially if the consequences emerge after the next election. Moreover, there are few things in politics as unmistakable in its implications as red ink on the bottom line is in business. In politics, no matter how disastrous a policy may turn out to be, if the causes of the disaster are not understood by the voting public, those officials responsible for the disaster may escape any accountability, and of course they have every incentive to deny having made mistakes, since admitting mistakes can jeopardize a whole career.”—Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society (2012)
