View source for One of Thomas Sowell's best ideas is one conservatives/libertarians never use. And neither does he.

<!-- you can have any number of categories here -->
[[Category:jnshhh (pseudonym)]]
[[Category:Underpants Gnomes]]
[[Category:Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy]]
[[Category:Thomas Sowell]]
<!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.-->
{{URL | url = https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughLibertarianSpam/comments/8u1eue/one_of_thomas_sowells_best_ideas_is_one/}}
<!-- {{Other URL | url = }} -->
<!-- {{Old URL | url = }} -->
{{End URL}}
{{DES | des = Sowell and most other libertarians and economic conservatives are guilty of not considering second and third stage consequences of their preferred policies.  (Or at least not publicly considering them since they might not be popular.) | show=}}
<!-- insert wiki page text here -->
<!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them.  Use these explicit workarounds. -->
<!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}}  -->
{{List|title=One of Thomas Sowell's best ideas is one conservatives/libertarians never use. And neither does he.|links=true}}
{{Quotations|title=One of Thomas Sowell's best ideas is one conservatives/libertarians never use. And neither does he.|quotes=true}}

{{Text |
From his book Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
“When I was an undergraduate studying economics under Professor Arthur Smithies of Harvard, he asked me in class one day what policy I favored on a particular issue of the times. Since I had strong feelings on that issue, I proceeded to answer him with enthusiasm, explaining what beneficial consequences I expected from the policy I advocated.
“And then what will happen?” he asked.
The question caught me off guard. However, as I thought about it, it became clear that the situation I described would lead to other economic consequences, which I then began to consider and to spell out. “And what will happen after that?” Professor Smithies asked.
As I analyzed how the further economic reactions to the policy would unfold, I began to realize that these reactions would lead to consequences much less desirable than those at the first stage, and I began to waver somewhat.
“And then what will happen?” Smithies persisted.
By now I was beginning to see that the economic reverberations of the policy I advocated were likely to be pretty disastrous— and, in fact, much worse than the initial situation that it was designed to improve. Simple as this little exercise might seem, it went further than most economic discussions about policies on a wide range of issues. Most thinking stops at stage one.”
That conversation sounds like something that could've happened during the Bush administration that he loved so much. This is a man that supported the disastrous neoconservative economic and foreign policy of that era, after all. Both crises could have easily been averted by looking at stage two but weren't. But apparently the conversation happened ages ago when he was a college student.
Today Republicans basically do victory laps after lowering taxes or cutting regulations. Regulations that they don't even discuss other than "I cut X number regulations!" And judge everything by immediate responses in the stock market and not the long term consequences when they are out of office or nearing the end of the term. In the eighties, the savings and loan scandal cost taxpayers 130 billion dollars. Good old fiscal conservatism.
In libertarianism basically what you see is pure theory and no real world thinking. But the problem is the same. They have an idea and it solves the issue in one fell swoop. For instance, privatizing the roads would mean less taxes. More money for me. Woo! But no thought is put into what then happens at stage two when they have to pay tolls and how this affects the economy at large. Or what new power this gives road companies that surround your property.
Or take something like bitcoin... it's awesome because it is not gubmint fiat currency. But no thought to how it scales (it doesn't) or how it would actually work if it replaced the dollar (it can't). No thought about energy costs or really anything in the stage two phase. It's awesome because I can get drugs now. And I will be rich if I start sooner rather than later.
Or what about the NAP. Where it is used to denounce public government, but leads to private restrictive covenants which can set any rules they want including setting arbitrary limits on market and individual activity that they hated when public democratic government was doing it. In the short term it means no moar taxes, no moar age of consent, no moar driver's licenses. Long term is just private tyranny and much lower levels of personal freedom.
Stage two, if it is invoked at all, is limited only to conspiratorial thinking or active imagination. Like Affordable Care Act leading to death panels. Or Net Neutrality leading to bans on conservative websites. Gun control leading to Hitler.
In libertarianism it is things like driver's licenses leading to "needing a license to use my friggin' toaster!" Or fiat currency leading to hyperinflation and the biblical-style end times (Ron Paul tried to warn you!). Or public services or civil rights leading to literal slavery.
Problem is there is no thought to how step one leads to step two. Nor do counterexamples register. The algorithm goes:
Do a thing.
???
Problem.
So this is basically applicable to anything that ever happens. It moves from X causes Y to X precedes Y. And even then only hypothetically. Which is not at all compelling or logical as an argument. But it is simply better rhetorically to people on the right-wing.
All in all, Sowell's most compelling book idea is one he doesn't even use himself. Nor do his fanbois in libertarianism and the Republican party.
}}