The Fruits of Injustice
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Thomas Sowell writes a brilliant column titled, "Cheering Immaturity," which is a succinct indictment of injustice for its role in many social ills and for preventing many from seeing how to cure them.
[I]f prices are higher in high-crime neighborhoods, that is often blamed on those who charge those prices, rather than on those who create the higher costs of higher rates of shoplifting, robbery, vandalism and riots, which are passed on to those who shop in those neighborhoods. The prices [are used to] convey a reality that the prices did not create. If these prices represent simply "greed" for higher profits, then why do most profit-seeking businesses avoid high-crime neighborhoods like the plague?How many rabble-rousing "community organizers" out there have fomented anger about such problems as "price gouging" or "under-served" neighborhoods, only to misdirect it against people trying to make an honest living en route to demanding even more of the cause in the form of government-sanctioned theft? Being unable to buy things close to home at reasonable prices is a big problem, especially for the poor.
Blaming the gangsters who cause such problems would be a great start in the direction of actually solving that problem. In addition, helping those who achieve -- despite the setbacks life hands to them -- realize they do deserve the good things they get is also important.
-- CAV
2 comments:
Profound insights to economics like Sowell's are threatening to foes of free markets. Teaching basic economics is apparently rare in most public high school curricula.
Could pithy examples like Sowell's this be one reason?
Teaching children how to think is rare in our public schools. That alone would help enormously.
Were the educational marketplace truly free, few parents would stand for what most children are getting as "education" today.
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