Everyone should read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions, Arnold Kling believes, but few will, so he summarizes its key points:
One is that the right thinks that social problems primarily reflect basic constraints, while the left thinks that they reflect the failure of good to triumph over evil.For example, on health care, I will say that as individuals we want unlimited access to medical services without having to pay for them, but that this desire faces the constraint that it is economically unsustainable. On the left, it is an article of faith that the main problem is, as someone once said to me in a Q&A session, a lack of political will.
The other difference is the left’s belief in what Sowell calls the “surrogate decision-maker”:
For the left, “society” should make decisions, and proper experts should make decisions for society. That is why Thaler is happy that the Obama Administration is going to dictate more strictly the types of mortgages people can have.
Those of us on the right think that knowledge is embedded in systems that evolve over time. The experts are not really smarter than markets.The left believes that wise and moral experts could solve problems if not for their evil opponents. The right believes that the so-called experts do not have nearly enough knowledge to be dictating to everyone else. Think of the late William F. Buckley’s remark that he would rather be ruled by a set of people randomly chosen from the Boston phone directory than by the Harvard faculty.
Kling is not optimistic:
From their point of view, it would be immoral for me to secede from their utopia. If Patri Friedman ever creates a seastead, its inhabitants will be imprisoned for tax evasion, treason against the planet, or somesuch.