A key point in the interview is at the 14:20 mark. Robinson asks Sowell to explain the "vision of contemporary intellectuals" brought up in the book. That vision is one where experts "promote the transfer of decisions from the mass to those with more intellect."
What "decisions"? A society's economy is by nature dynamic and diverse. The interactions of millions upon millions of people require countless decisions on a minute-by-minute basis. What may seem like the simple act of purchasing the "common" everyday staples involves many people making many decisions about how to efficiently and affordably deliver those goods to you.
Consider one good you come to expect will be available, fresh milk for example, and consider the number of people and decisions it requires to provide that good. The dairy farmer extracted the milk from his cows and stored it. A shipping company provided a truck to transport the milk from the farmer to the processing plant. The plant pasteurized it, put it in containers, labeled it, and prepared it for shipping. The transportation company shipped it to your local store. The store puts it on your shelf.
How many people and decisions were involved in this process? Think of a number, then consider all the other people and decisions involved in all the related commercial activity involved in the above process. The farmer requires a lot of feed to keep the cows alive and well, and a lot of equipment to milk the cows. He requires the maintenance of buildings and equipment. Where do all these needs get met? And the transportation company needs a fleet of trucks. How many technicians, mechanics, moving parts, tires, and so on are required just to keep their trucks on the road? And the fuel required for the trucks, how did that get in their tanks. What about the processing plant? And the facilities maintenance of the store?
And on, and on, and on.
And we're only talking about a gallon of milk. How many other goods and services have we come to assume will be available to us on a daily basis? Can we even begin to quantify the number of people involved? It is easy to assume that these millions of people and countless minute-by-minute decisions required to provide us with our daily needs and wants just happen coordinate and happen naturally.
(For an excellent exposition on the complexity of market operations, click here to read Leonard Read's classic I, Pencil)
It is just as easy to assume that "experts" would be better at planning the economy that provides for our standard of living. It is a premise that needs revisited, to assume we the consumers cannot better make the decisions that direct the market and our society, that we need to abdicate that freedom and responsibility to a set of experts.
From a practical standpoint, central planning just does not work. It leads to shortages and a lower standard of living when myriad decisions required to operate society are delegated away from the masses and into the hands of a few. (Look at the standard of living in any socialist country and/or societies with authoritarian central governments.)
From a principle standpoint, central planning is an affront to individual liberty. What is the "private sector"? It is We the People freely pursuing the paths of our lives as We the Consumers. Giving up more and more of our freedoms, decision-making that is, to a group of experts is a very bad thing. (Would you be content to give up your freedom to vote to a group of experts who claim to know better than you?)
In Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman reminds us that maintaining economic liberty is essential to preserving political liberty:
"The kind of economic organization that provides ecomic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economics power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other."F.A. Hayek, in his classic exposition on socialism and economic planning, The Road To Serfdom, poignantly illustrates that power required to plan and control entire economies and societies:
"Most planners who have seriously considered the practical aspects of their task have little doubt that a directed economy must be run on more or less dictatorial lines."It just is not a good thing when the power to control and direct markets and economies is given over to the same people who hold the power to tax and regulate the government. This marks a high concentration of power and a great loss of freedom, a loss no amount of intellectual expertise can compensate for.
Enjoy the interview:
sddf
