As for race, Sowell points out that gross comparisons between racial groups are terribly misleading because they ignore significant differences between the groups such as age. He informs us that "[t]he median age of black Americans is five years younger than the median age (35) of the American population as a whole." Since age is one of the strongest determinants of income, with younger people earning less, not controlling for age paints a strongly distorted picture of relative income between blacks and other Americans, reinforcing the stereotype of continuing and pervasive racial discrimination.
 

Colleges, Cities, and Countries

          The three other main chapters in Sowell's book deal with places rather than with groups of people. With regards to colleges, Sowell points out the ways in which such largely non-profit institutions lack the incentives to act in the best interests of their students or in the best interests of the institutions themselves. He notes that "non-profit organizations like colleges receive much money from people whose desires do not count—not only taxpayers, but also deceased donors." Instead, it is the interests of decision-makers like "professors, administrators, trustees, athletic coaches and others" that compete for attention, and all manner of inefficiencies abound.

          In the chapter on cities, Sowell challenges the idea that businesses moving to the suburbs caused the economic breakdown of inner cities, which in turn led to widespread riots in the 1960s. In fact, the riots preceded the hollowing out of the inner cities, and were in fact one cause of that hollowing out. Sowell also points out that the felt need for governments to provide affordable housing is in fact brought about by prior government restrictions on land use.

          Finally, in his chapter on the Third World, Sowell takes on the notion that countries are poor because of exploitation. Instead, Sowell finds explanations for income and wealth disparities between countries in geography (Africa's lack of navigable waterways and beasts of burden); history (the disastrous decision of 17th century Japanese leaders to isolate their people from the rest of the world); institutions (law and order itself being harder to establish in areas that are difficult to patrol, like the mountains of Afghanistan); and yes, culture (having positive dispositions toward things like hard work, saving, and earning interest). The stunning success of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe following World War II and the equally stunning failures of much foreign aid since then point to the importance of these kinds of factors.
 

Why It's So Hard to Change Minds

          Sowell spends some time in his introduction and here and there throughout his book discussing why fallacies endure, even when they fly in the face of mountains of hard evidence. He writes that elected officials "cannot readily admit that some policy or program that they advocated, perhaps with great fanfare, has turned out badly, without risking their whole careers." He continues,
 

Even intellectuals or academics with tenure stand to lose prestige and suffer embarrassment when their notions turn out to be counterproductive. Others who think of themselves as supporters of things that will help the less fortunate would find it painful to confront evidence that they have in fact made the less fortunate worse off than before. In other words, evidence is too dangerous—politically, financially and psychologically—for some people to allow it to become a threat to their interests or to their own sense of themselves.

          This is convincing as far as it goes, but one thing Sowell does not do is address why people become attached to these particular kinds of fallacies in the first place, fallacies that trade on belief in widespread racial and sexual discrimination, and on widespread exploitation. Why are so many people so ready to believe the worst in others, and to reach for top-down, command-and-control "solutions" that only make things worse? Because somewhere along the line, many people absorb a negative view of human nature. And for a further exploration of this topic, I refer you to this month's instalment of my ongoing Illiberal Ideas series: "Everyone is selfish—and that's bad."

          In the meantime, buy this book. Buy it for yourself, and buy another copy for that friend of yours who is not quite convinced about the benefits of free markets. You could even volunteer to read whatever book your friend wants you to read in order to get him or her to read this book. Let's win this battle of ideas, one mind at a time.