Social Justice: the mirage of decisions by an abstract concept come to life, otherwise known as “society”

The Texas Schoolhouse Test: A to F

Elizabeth Warren's Class Warfare Argument: Upon Further Review.....

Elizabeth Warren made the following statement in September, 2011:

  “Nobody in this country got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there good for you, but I want to be clear, you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because the police forces and the fire forces the rest of us paid for….because of the work the rest of us did”.

Before considering Warren’s statement, please review the following:

“The notion of civil liberty which we have inherited is that of a status created for the individual by laws and institutions, the effect of which is that each man is guaranteed the use of all his own powers exclusively for his own welfare.

…. Hence, liberty for labor and security for earnings are the ends for which civil institutions exist, not means which may be employed for ulterior ends“.

“An immoral political system is created whenever there are privileged classes - that is, classes who have arrogated to themselves rights while throwing the duties upon others.

….the real danger of democracy is, that the classes which have the power under it will assume all the rights and reject all the duties - that is, that they will use the political power to plunder those-who-have.

….[democracy] must oppose the same cold resistance to any claims for favor on the ground of poverty, as on the ground of birth and rank.

….It [democracy] must put down schemes for making “the rich” pay for whatever “the poor” want, just as it tramples on the old theories that only the rich are fit to regulate society.”

“A free man in a free democracy has no duty whatever toward other men of the same rank and standing, except respect, courtesy, and good-will. We cannot say that there are no classes, when we are speaking politically, and then say that there are classes, when we are telling A what it is his duty to do for B. In a free state every man is held and expected to take care of himself and his family, to make no trouble for his neighbor, and to contribute his full share to public interests and common necessities. If he fails in this he throws burdens on others. He does not thereby acquire rights against others. On the contrary, he only accumulates obligations toward them; and if he is allowed to make his deficiencies a ground of the new claims, he passes over into the position of a privileged or petted person-emancipated from duties, endowed with claims. This is the inevitable result of the combining democratic political theories with humanitarian social theories.”

Pages 26-29, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, William Graham Sumner, 1883

Now consider this:

“There is an old ecclesiastical prejudice in favor of the poor and against the rich. In days when men acted by ecclesiastical rules these prejudices produced waste of capital, and helped mightily to replunge Europe into barbarism“.

“We all agree that he is a good member of society who works his way up from poverty to wealth, but as soon as he has worked his way up we begin to regard him with suspicion, as a dangerous member of society. A newspaper starts the silly fallacy that “the rich are rich because the poor are industrious”, and its copied from one end of the country to the other as if it were a brilliant apothegm”.

Page 32, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, William Graham Sumner, 1883


Please note that William Graham Sumner is writing in the year 1883 and he is drawing on circa 1883 political arguments as well as prior/past arguments in history occurring before 1883. That is to say the same class warfare arguments have been made for centuries on end. Hence Ms. Warren’s argument is absolutely and positively a centuries old class warfare argument.


Upon further review….

One must examine the debate strategy of Warren framing her notional political argument into three classes: “we”, “ you” and “them” with the implicit assumption that “we” and “you” are the same whereas “them“ is an outside group/class diametrically opposed to the group/class “we-you“. Sumner explains above that the only class that actually exists in a democracy based upon freedom of the individual is in fact “you”. There is no such thing as “we” and “them”. However, as a purposeful debate point Warren merely creates classes in a classless society them divides the classes as opposing forces.

The next notional political concept framed by Warren is that goods are moved to market on roads paid for by the class “we-you”, workers are educated by the class “we-you” and that somehow, someway the class “them” uses the roads and educated worker for their exclusive use. What Warren purposely leaves out is the concept of “public goods”. Public goods are those items collectively provided by all the “you(s)” for the collective benefit of all the “you(s)”. That the movement from the ancient concept of many small protective societies to one state is partially based on all the “you(s)” collectively empowering the state to provide limited government, of which one function of limited government is to provide public goods such as infrastructure financing and educational financing. That is to say, all the “you(s)” collectively finance a limited amount of public goods that all the “you(s)” benefit from collectively (collectively benefit from the existence of such public goods). (1)

Police forces and fire forces are yet another public good, of which, is a function of the limited government of the state to provide through the financing of/by the single class “you(s)” for the benefit of all “you(s)”. The idea that some “you(s) provide police and fire for the fictional class “them” for their exclusive use is fallacious. (2)

The next item Warren implicitly employs in the perfect vs. the known. Warren creates the perfect [her perfect] world and contrasts it against the real world. That the real world is not her perfect world and hence she rejects the real world in favor of her perfect world skipping by the fact that “perfect” does not exist.

Another implicit assumption put forth by Warren is the “me” vs. “them” argument of transposing the political and economic power purveyor. Stated alternatively, who ever “them” might be, what ever political and economic power “them” might have, should be given to “me” [Warren] as with the power moved from “them” to “me” allows “me” to pursue the notional world of “me” as exclusive power has been transferred to “me”. That exclusive power transferred to Warren to shape her world is better than diffused power which results in Warren not being able to pursue her perfect world.

All and all, Warren’s argument is merely the classic debate position as outlined by Thomas Sowell: a notional proposition is put forth as fact, the notional proposition is then argued to be an empirical fact, the notional proposition is delivered through verbal virtuosity, and the notional proposition ends merely in one [Warren] painting the world in one’s own self image [the self image of Warren]. (3)

If James and Jane Goodfellow feel that politicians dupe them, James and Jane really need to look further into notional propositions put forth as fact.

Notes:

(1) (2) Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick

(3) Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell

Occupy: The 1883 Response.

The excerpts below are from the "forward" of the 1883 book by William Graham Sumner entitled What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. Take special note of the second paragraph below.


“Who are those who assume to put hard questions to other people and to demand a solution of them? How did they acquire the right to demand that others should solve their world-problems for them? Who are they who are held to consider and solve all questions, and how did they fall under this duty?

So far as I can find out what the classes are who are respectively endowed with the rights and duties of posing and solving social problems, they are as follows: Those who are bound to solve the problems are the rich, comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable, educated, and healthy; those whose right it is to set the problems are those who have been less fortunate or less successful in the struggle for existence. The problem itself seems to be, How shall the latter be made as comfortable as the former? To solve this problem, and make us all equally well off, is assumed to be the duty of the former class; the penalty, if they fail of this, is to be bloodshed and destruction. If they cannot make everybody else as well off as themselves, they are to be brought down to the same misery as others“.


“The little group of public servants who, as I have said, constitute the State, when the State determines on anything, could not do much for themselves or anybody else by their own force. If they do anything, they must dispose of men, as in an army, or of capital, as in a treasury. But the army, or police, or posse comitatus, is more or less All-of-us, and the capital in the treasury is the product of the labor and saving of All-of-us. Therefore, when the State means power-to-do it means All-of-us, as brute force or as industrial force.

If anybody is to benefit from the action of the State it must be Some-of-us. If, then, the question is raised, What ought the State to do for labor, for trade, for manufactures, for the poor, for the learned professions? etc., etc. - that is, for a class or an interest - it is really the question, What ought All-of-us to do for Some-of-us? But Some-of-us are included in All-of-us, and, so far as they get the benefit of their own efforts, it is the same as if they worked for themselves, and they may be cancelled out of All-of-us. Then the question which remains is, What ought Some-of-us to do for Others-of-us? or, What do social classes owe to each other?

I now propose to try to find out whether there is any class in society which lies under the duty and burden of fighting the battles of life for any other class, or of solving social problems for the satisfaction of any other class; also, whether there is any class which has the right to formulate demands on "society" - that is, on other classes; also, whether there is anything but a fallacy and a superstition in the notion that "the State" owes anything to anybody except peace, order, and the guarantees of rights“.

A "Some People" System?

"The fundamental principle of socialism is that its is appropriate to use force to organize society, to take from some and give to others. The government has nothing to give. The government is simply a mechanism which has the power to take from some to give to others. It is a way in which some people can spend other peoples' money for the benefit of a third party - and not so incidentally themselves". - Milton Friedman (1)

Hence "use force to organize society" is in essence the idea that freedom is put aside for the benefit of the state. That your free actions need removed as the state knows what is really in your best interest. The question arises in that "who" makes those decisions? The decisions are made by state: "...government is simply a mechanism which has the power to take from some to give to others". Who makes up this state that makes these decisions? Answer: "It is a way in which some people.....".

Who are these "some people"? Next, is the relinquishment of freedom of the masses to these "some people" a good idea? These "some people" are strictly benevolent? These "some people" are equipped to take from one group to give to another group? That these "some people" can mold a economic-politic that creates a "greater good"? Finally, are not these "some people" merely "the state"? In the final analysis is not the "state" merely a collection of these "some people"?

Who wants to become these "some people" and why? Are they better than James and Jane Goodfellow? Are they smarter than James and Jane Goodfellow? Do they hold some special power greater than James and Jane Goodfellow? -Or- do those who want to become these "some people" merely want the power, resources, and fame that accompany being "some people"?

Those who want to become these "some people", do they vilify the captains of industry, the champions of freedom, the philosophers of spontaneous order merely to switch places? Stated alternatively, do those who want to become these "some people", do they merely vilify the free enterprise system and the players within the system, as they in essence want to supplant the system and the players within the system? Stated in yet another alternative fashion, do these "some people" put forth an alternate system in order to gain the power previously held by others in another system [free enterprise system]?

Maybe a better view is this: did circa 1776, a free individual in a free enterprise system supplant a previous non-free individual in a "some people" system?

Notes:

(1) The Invisible Hand in Economics and Politics, Milton Friedman, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1981, p11.

Firms have social responsibility? Firms spending someone else's money for social responsibility?

“So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not” - Milton Friedman

The above is an often quoted line by Milton Friedman. Few go further to determine what Friedman was meaning. Social Justice advocates use the quote to show the supposedly crassness of  the private enterprise system. That equality of outcome requires social responsibility/social justice.

Friedman stated: ' The discussions of the "social responsibili­ties of business" are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor.' That observation may well come from Friedman studying F.A. Hayek. Hayek spent an entire decade studying "social justice". Hayek's conclusion was that social justice does not exist as its advocates never come forth with a definition [Friedman's: "... their analytical looseness and lack of rigor"]. (1)

Social justice comes from the concept "fair". That is, what is fair. Thomas Sowell has explained that "fair" is a concept that has little meaning except to the user of the term in a particular context. That is to say, "fair" is what you are doing and the other guy is not doing. (2) (3)

Further, firms are artificial entities. How can an artificial entity have a responsibility? Or as stated by Friedman: "Only people can have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but "business" as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense. The first step toward clarity in examining the doctrine of the social responsibility of business is to ask precisely what it implies for whom". Friedman makes a grand point which has been pointed out by Harold Demsetz on multiple occasions that firms are merely a collection of households. (4)

Going back to the quote above that began this essay, what did Milton Friedman mean? Likely much of the the answer can be found in the following 1970 essay by Friedman.

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits - by Milton Friedman


When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system," I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free en­terprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing em­ployment, eliminating discrimination, avoid­ing pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of re­formers. In fact they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preach­ing pure and unadulterated socialism. Busi­nessmen who talk this way are unwitting pup­pets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.


The discussions of the "social responsibili­ties of business" are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it mean to say that "business" has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but "business" as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense. The first step toward clarity in examining the doctrine of the social responsibility of business is to ask precisely what it implies for whom.

Presumably, the individuals who are to be responsible are businessmen, which means in­dividual proprietors or corporate executives. Most of the discussion of social responsibility is directed at corporations, so in what follows I shall mostly neglect the individual proprietors and speak of corporate executives.

In a free-enterprise, private-property sys­tem, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct re­sponsibility to his employers. That responsi­bility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while con­forming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. Of course, in some cases his employers may have a different objective. A group of persons might establish a corporation for an eleemosynary purpose–for exam­ple, a hospital or a school. The manager of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objective but the rendering of certain services.

In either case, the key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation or establish the eleemosynary institution, and his primary responsibility is to them.

Needless to say, this does not mean that it is easy to judge how well he is performing his task. But at least the criterion of performance is straightforward, and the persons among whom a voluntary contractual arrangement exists are clearly defined.

Of course, the corporate executive is also a person in his own right. As a person, he may have many other responsibilities that he rec­ognizes or assumes voluntarily–to his family, his conscience, his feelings of charity, his church, his clubs, his city, his country. He may feel impelled by these responsibilities to de­vote part of his income to causes he regards as worthy, to refuse to work for particular corpo­rations, even to leave his job, for example, to join his country's armed forces. If we wish, we may refer to some of these responsibilities as "social responsibilities." But in these respects he is acting as a principal, not an agent; he is spending his own money or time or energy, not the money of his employers or the time or energy he has contracted to devote to their purposes. If these are "social responsibili­ties," they are the social responsibilities of in­dividuals, not of business.

What does it mean to say that the corpo­rate executive has a "social responsibility" in his capacity as businessman? If this statement is not pure rhetoric, it must mean that he is to act in some way that is not in the interest of his employers. For example, that he is to refrain from increasing the price of the product in order to contribute to the social objective of preventing inflation, even though a price increase would be in the best interests of the corporation. Or that he is to make expendi­tures on reducing pollution beyond the amount that is in the best interests of the cor­poration or that is required by law in order to contribute to the social objective of improving the environment. Or that, at the expense of corporate profits, he is to hire "hardcore" un­employed instead of better qualified available workmen to contribute to the social objective of reducing poverty.

In each of these cases, the corporate exec­utive would be spending someone else's money for a general social interest. Insofar as his actions in accord with his "social responsi­bility" reduce returns to stockholders, he is spending their money. Insofar as his actions raise the price to customers, he is spending the customers' money. Insofar as his actions lower the wages of some employees, he is spending their money.

The stockholders or the customers or the employees could separately spend their own money on the particular action if they wished to do so. The executive is exercising a distinct "social responsibility," rather than serving as an agent of the stockholders or the customers or the employees, only if he spends the money in a different way than they would have spent it.

But if he does this, he is in effect imposing taxes, on the one hand, and deciding how the tax proceeds shall be spent, on the other.

This process raises political questions on two levels: principle and consequences. On the level of political principle, the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of tax proceeds are gov­ernmental functions. We have established elab­orate constitutional, parliamentary and judicial provisions to control these functions, to assure that taxes are imposed so far as possible in ac­cordance with the preferences and desires of the public–after all, "taxation without repre­sentation" was one of the battle cries of the American Revolution. We have a system of checks and balances to separate the legisla­tive function of imposing taxes and enacting expenditures from the executive function of collecting taxes and administering expendi­ture programs and from the judicial function of mediating disputes and interpreting the law.

Here the businessman–self-selected or appointed directly or indirectly by stockhold­ers–is to be simultaneously legislator, execu­tive and, jurist. He is to decide whom to tax by how much and for what purpose, and he is to spend the proceeds–all this guided only by general exhortations from on high to restrain inflation, improve the environment, fight poverty and so on and on.

The whole justification for permitting the corporate executive to be selected by the stockholders is that the executive is an agent serving the interests of his principal. This jus­tification disappears when the corporate ex­ecutive imposes taxes and spends the pro­ceeds for "social" purposes. He becomes in effect a public employee, a civil servant, even though he remains in name an employee of a private enterprise. On grounds of political principle, it is intolerable that such civil ser­vants–insofar as their actions in the name of social responsibility are real and not just win­dow-dressing–should be selected as they are now. If they are to be civil servants, then they must be elected through a political process. If they are to impose taxes and make expendi­tures to foster "social" objectives, then politi­cal machinery must be set up to make the as­sessment of taxes and to determine through a political process the objectives to be served.

This is the basic reason why the doctrine of "social responsibility" involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scarce re­sources to alternative uses.

On the grounds of consequences, can the corporate executive in fact discharge his al­leged "social responsibilities?" On the other hand, suppose he could get away with spending the stockholders' or customers' or employees' money. How is he to know how to spend it? He is told that he must contribute to fighting inflation. How is he to know what ac­tion of his will contribute to that end? He is presumably an expert in running his company–in producing a product or selling it or financing it. But nothing about his selection makes him an expert on inflation. Will his hold­ing down the price of his product reduce infla­tionary pressure? Or, by leaving more spending power in the hands of his customers, simply divert it elsewhere? Or, by forcing him to produce less because of the lower price, will it simply contribute to shortages? Even if he could an­swer these questions, how much cost is he justi­fied in imposing on his stockholders, customers and employees for this social purpose? What is his appropriate share and what is the appropri­ate share of others?

And, whether he wants to or not, can he get away with spending his stockholders', cus­tomers' or employees' money? Will not the stockholders fire him? (Either the present ones or those who take over when his actions in the name of social responsibility have re­duced the corporation's profits and the price of its stock.) His customers and his employees can desert him for other producers and em­ployers less scrupulous in exercising their so­cial responsibilities.

This facet of "social responsibility" doc­trine is brought into sharp relief when the doctrine is used to justify wage restraint by trade unions. The conflict of interest is naked and clear when union officials are asked to subordinate the interest of their members to some more general purpose. If the union offi­cials try to enforce wage restraint, the consequence is likely to be wildcat strikes, rank­-and-file revolts and the emergence of strong competitors for their jobs. We thus have the ironic phenomenon that union leaders–at least in the U.S.–have objected to Govern­ment interference with the market far more consistently and courageously than have business leaders.

The difficulty of exercising "social responsibility" illustrates, of course, the great virtue of private competitive enterprise–it forces people to be responsible for their own actions and makes it difficult for them to "exploit" other people for either selfish or unselfish purposes. They can do good–but only at their own expense.

Many a reader who has followed the argu­ment this far may be tempted to remonstrate that it is all well and good to speak of Government's having the responsibility to im­pose taxes and determine expenditures for such "social" purposes as controlling pollu­tion or training the hard-core unemployed, but that the problems are too urgent to wait on the slow course of political processes, that the exercise of social responsibility by busi­nessmen is a quicker and surer way to solve pressing current problems.

Aside from the question of fact–I share Adam Smith's skepticism about the benefits that can be expected from "those who affected to trade for the public good"–this argument must be rejected on grounds of principle. What it amounts to is an assertion that those who favor the taxes and expenditures in question have failed to persuade a majority of their fellow citizens to be of like mind and that they are seeking to attain by undemocratic procedures what they cannot attain by democratic proce­dures. In a free society, it is hard for "evil" people to do "evil," especially since one man's good is another's evil.

I have, for simplicity, concentrated on the special case of the corporate executive, ex­cept only for the brief digression on trade unions. But precisely the same argument ap­plies to the newer phenomenon of calling upon stockholders to require corporations to exercise social responsibility (the recent G.M crusade for example). In most of these cases, what is in effect involved is some stockholders trying to get other stockholders (or customers or employees) to contribute against their will to "social" causes favored by the activists. In­sofar as they succeed, they are again imposing taxes and spending the proceeds.

The situation of the individual proprietor is somewhat different. If he acts to reduce the returns of his enterprise in order to exercise his "social responsibility," he is spending his own money, not someone else's. If he wishes to spend his money on such purposes, that is his right, and I cannot see that there is any ob­jection to his doing so. In the process, he, too, may impose costs on employees and cus­tomers. However, because he is far less likely than a large corporation or union to have mo­nopolistic power, any such side effects will tend to be minor.

Of course, in practice the doctrine of social responsibility is frequently a cloak for actions that are justified on other grounds rather than a reason for those actions.

To illustrate, it may well be in the long run interest of a corporation that is a major employer in a small community to devote resources to providing amenities to that community or to improving its government. That may make it easier to attract desirable employees, it may reduce the wage bill or lessen losses from pilferage and sabotage or have other worthwhile effects. Or it may be that, given the laws about the deductibility of corporate charitable contributions, the stockholders can contribute more to chari­ties they favor by having the corporation make the gift than by doing it themselves, since they can in that way contribute an amount that would otherwise have been paid as corporate taxes.

In each of these–and many similar–cases, there is a strong temptation to rationalize these actions as an exercise of "social responsibility." In the present climate of opinion, with its wide spread aversion to "capitalism," "profits," the "soulless corporation" and so on, this is one way for a corporation to generate goodwill as a by-product of expenditures that are entirely justified in its own self-interest.

It would be inconsistent of me to call on corporate executives to refrain from this hyp­ocritical window-dressing because it harms the foundations of a free society. That would be to call on them to exercise a "social re­sponsibility"! If our institutions, and the atti­tudes of the public make it in their self-inter­est to cloak their actions in this way, I cannot summon much indignation to denounce them. At the same time, I can express admiration for those individual proprietors or owners of closely held corporations or stockholders of more broadly held corporations who disdain such tactics as approaching fraud.

Whether blameworthy or not, the use of the cloak of social responsibility, and the nonsense spoken in its name by influential and presti­gious businessmen, does clearly harm the foun­dations of a free society. I have been impressed time and again by the schizophrenic character of many businessmen. They are capable of being extremely farsighted and clearheaded in matters that are internal to their businesses. They are incredibly shortsighted and muddle­headed in matters that are outside their businesses but affect the possible survival of busi­ness in general. This shortsightedness is strikingly exemplified in the calls from many businessmen for wage and price guidelines or controls or income policies. There is nothing that could do more in a brief period to destroy a market system and replace it by a centrally con­trolled system than effective governmental con­trol of prices and wages.

The shortsightedness is also exemplified in speeches by businessmen on social respon­sibility. This may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the pursuit of profits is wicked and immoral and must be curbed and controlled by external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of Government bureaucrats. Here, as with price and wage controls, businessmen seem to me to reveal a suicidal impulse.

The political principle that underlies the market mechanism is unanimity. In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all coopera­tion is voluntary, all parties to such coopera­tion benefit or they need not participate. There are no values, no "social" responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form.

The political principle that underlies the political mechanism is conformity. The indi­vidual must serve a more general social inter­est–whether that be determined by a church or a dictator or a majority. The individual may have a vote and say in what is to be done, but if he is overruled, he must conform. It is appropriate for some to require others to contribute to a general social purpose whether they wish to or not.

Unfortunately, unanimity is not always feasi­ble. There are some respects in which conformity appears unavoidable, so I do not see how one can avoid the use of the political mecha­nism altogether.

But the doctrine of "social responsibility" taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book Capitalism and Freedom, I have called it a "fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that in such a society, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." (5)

Notes:

(1) Hayek, his contribution to the political and economic thought of our time, Eamonn Butler.

(2) Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell.

(3) A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell.

(4) From Economic Man to Economic System, Harold Demsetz.

(5) The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970