Here is Thomas Sowell on Econtalk. The discussion is on Sowell’s book, Economic Facts and fallacies. In it (and in the interview) Sowell covers and rejects the many economic fallacies that you hear particularly from leftists in popular discourse.
Sowell is pretty clearly right in most of the matters he covers. They’re sort of low hanging fruit though. Popular liberalism is filled with arguments that sound good, but fall apart after researching it from a more objective, non-liberal accounts. As far as I can tell, nothing that Sowell says would contradict the beliefs of more sound liberals like Matthew Yglesias or Jonathan Haidt. If this kind of liberalism weren’t so popular – if Thomas Sowell were building straw men – then I’d be much more receptive to leftish politics and even the political system as a whole.
But since popular liberalism is not very good, and popular conservatism is no better -- and even the politics of those who don’t fit in that spectrum is not very good, then we should be very suspicious of how well government will perform to whatever extent it performs ideally – that is, listens to voters. This should therefore result in making us all the more libertarian.
