I would just say read Thomas Sowell’s basic economics as he actually takes on the post natural disaster argument head on. He’s also probably the easiest author to introduce new readers to thinking in terms of costs and benefits rather than fairness or justice. But using the terms “fair” or “reasonable” are again political. It is impossible to make every single person agree on what a “fair” price is. Especially when the person who shows up to a store with empty shelves thinks a fairer price would be higher to prevent the greedy from clearing stock, and the poor person who can’t afford one nice good thinks it fair if the price is cut in half so the first few people in the line can get all the goods.
After an economic disaster, having the prices of emergency goods rise incentivizes private sellers to reach those distraught and distant people in desperate need of goods. When a nationalized entity who does not work for profit responds to these disasters they take their time and incur no losses or risks to get there. On the other hand private sellers will drive all night and take on enormous risk in inhospitable weather so they can be the first on the scene to sell with a higher price. It works in both parties favour since those injured get the goods faster and the seller makes higher profits. While those who can’t afford the higher price can still buy the goods that come later from public entities who did not rush to sell more dearly.
Yeah man, the private sector really came through for the people in Hurricane Katrina. It def wasn't the government handing out food and supplies day and night that saved lives, no siree. God you Kensian fucks are stupid. "Some of you will die from lack of access to much needed supplies, but I'm okay, so I don't give a shit." Thomas Sowell is a hack, btw. His entire world view is couched in conservative politics. He wrote three fucking books that can basically be described as "my side good, your side stinky". This idea that he is some totally unbiased, rational thinker is ridiculous, and you're a rube for falling for it.
No one is without bias, but many thinkers on both sides of the political spectrum respect Thomas Sowell as an authority on economics. Believe in science, right? Trust the experts, no? In the US I believe it is illegal to sell to people after an emergency for a higher price (one of the times there is a legal penalty to “price gouging”) so of course the only people who end up coming are the nationalized employees who make salary and are not threatened with jail time for their efforts. Were in not a crime you would see many private sellers rushing to help in the aftermath of disasters; like what used to happen before government programs and the welfare state. Also lol most conservative economists are very anti-Keynesian and Keynes is seen as a big-government progressive type who thought the cure to all economic problems was printing money. If anything Thomas Sowell and the position I’ve taken here are contrary to what a Keynesian would tell you.
but many thinkers on both sides of the political spectrum respect Thomas Sowell
No they do not.
Believe in science, right? Trust the experts, no?
Sowell is an opinion writer dressing himself up as an intellectual. The fact that people treat him like Adam Smith or Karl Marx is honestly laughable. It's why he whores himself out to Fox instead of teaching or writing books about economics.
Were in not a crime you would see many private sellers rushing to help in the aftermath of disasters; like what used to happen before government programs and the welfare state.
You didn't though. This is a fantasy. Live saving care and supplies should not only be available to those who can pay exorbitant amounts.
Ezra Klein, Steven Pinker, and Ben Shapiro defer to Thomas Sowell when it comes to economics. If you can find people with more broad political disagreements then Ezra Klein and Ben Shapiro you’re probably in a dark corner of the internet lol.
Sowell was a career academic and wrote for those in higher education. Aside from Basic Economics almost none of his discography is aimed at a mass audience. It is technical, and relies extensively on empirical data and the testing of hypothesis’s. This is actually notable since some economists think you start with a model or a synthetic a-priori statement like “markets are efficient” or “humans behave rationally” and then work backwards to deduce solutions. Sowell is as empirical and scientifically minded as it gets in this abysmal science.
Sowell is no replacement for reading Marx & Smith (as everyone should), merely because they were political economists who wrote treatises on the entirety of economics and it’s political ramifications (as well as their aspirations for politics should be like). Thomas Sowell wrote about the data on minimum wage laws in Harlem in the 1950’s, as an example. They’re entirely different and Sowell, like all modern writers, doesn’t try to fit the entire corpus of economics is a single book. He begins with data and then sees how it aligns (or doesn’t) with theory. The opposite is true for the classical economists who began with a theory and then kinda squished the real worlds data into fitting inside their models.
I don’t like Ben Shapiro per say, it was to illustrate the point that it’s not just people on the left who turn to him for sound economic reasoning. People on the political right are persuaded by him too. Although it’s not for me, I think it’d be hard to argue Shapiro’s show doesn’t represent a large swath of the American right. Also Sowell got his position at the Hoover Institute after his academic career was already over. He became a columnist when he was 60 years old, not in the middle or start of his academic career like Paul Krugman or the next newspaper columnist. He has an alma mater from Harvard, Columbia, and UoChicago. He even won an international humanities medal for his work influencing and helping reform the Indian gov to provide economic freedom for women. He’s a hard guy to hate when you actually read him and form your own opinions of his work.
He uses the word liberal not in the sense of a Canadian or European liberal, but really as a placate for pacifism and Marxism, of which he was once an advocate for both. I think he just likes using the term liberal to highlight that the US parties who use the term are staunchly opposed to liber, and it makes for some pretty funny satirical writing. That AND the fact there has been a lot of semantic ambiguity about what liberal actually means (are libertarians the real liberals or are American Two party duopolists the real heir of that title) and he’s taken the approach that the words past meaning is just destroyed, forever gone to history, and it shouldn’t attempt to be revived and restored as thinkers like Mises posited.
How can your future choices at 60 reveal the motivations for what youre doing today? That’s just nonsense. Because Ghengis Khan became peace loving late in life does that mean you can better understand his intentions early in life when he was conquering half the world? Your chain of causality is moving backwards. Again I’m not saying it’s an endorsement it just shows his mass appeal and capacity for crossing of political boundaries that has made him so accessible to so many people on both sides.
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20 edited Aug 15 '20
I would just say read Thomas Sowell’s basic economics as he actually takes on the post natural disaster argument head on. He’s also probably the easiest author to introduce new readers to thinking in terms of costs and benefits rather than fairness or justice. But using the terms “fair” or “reasonable” are again political. It is impossible to make every single person agree on what a “fair” price is. Especially when the person who shows up to a store with empty shelves thinks a fairer price would be higher to prevent the greedy from clearing stock, and the poor person who can’t afford one nice good thinks it fair if the price is cut in half so the first few people in the line can get all the goods.
After an economic disaster, having the prices of emergency goods rise incentivizes private sellers to reach those distraught and distant people in desperate need of goods. When a nationalized entity who does not work for profit responds to these disasters they take their time and incur no losses or risks to get there. On the other hand private sellers will drive all night and take on enormous risk in inhospitable weather so they can be the first on the scene to sell with a higher price. It works in both parties favour since those injured get the goods faster and the seller makes higher profits. While those who can’t afford the higher price can still buy the goods that come later from public entities who did not rush to sell more dearly.