Knowledge and Decisions: Difference between revisions

{{Infobox Bookbook | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books -->

| sizecaption = First = 200edition

| country = USAUnited States

| language = [[English language|English]]

| series =

| genre publisher = [[non-fictionBasic Books]]

| publisherpub_date = Basic= Books1980

| release_datemedia_type = 1980Print

| pagesisbn = 448978-0465037360

| isbn dewey = 978-0-465-03738-4302.3 21

| preceded_byfollowed_by =

'''Knowledge and Decisions''' is a non-fiction book by American economist [[Thomas Sowell]]. Sowell explicatesanalyzes social and economic knowledge and how it is transmitted through the many facets of society, and how that transmission affects decisionsdecision mademaking. The book's central theme of [[dispersed knowledge]] is drawn from [[F.A. Hayek]]'s article "[[The Use of Knowledge in Society]]."

Emphatically, Sowell repeatedly rejects the popular tendency to put economic and political decisions and their results in moral terms. Doing so, he argues, ignores the tradeoffs and limitations inherent in every economic system and society. Consistent with his established [[laissez-faire]] viewpoints, Sowell also indicts [[price controls]] (such as [[rent control]], [[minimum wage]], [[price fixing]], and [[subsidies]]) as interfering in the implicit communication between consumers and producers necessary to optimize the choices of each. The fact that some industries or [[government agencies]] seem particularly incompetent or corrupt over many turnovers of their staff, he argues, cannotis benot explained in terms of "bad" people performing thosethe duties, but ratherof rational people acting in their own interests responding to whatever incentives have been established in the system.

The last section of the book deals with [[intellectuals]], those whose profession is the distribution of ideas. Sowell questions the popular unwavering faith in the expert intellectual and "articulated rationality" for "solutions" to economic or political problems. He explains that through intellectuals, government agencies, such as the [[United States Environmental Protection Agency]] and [[National Institutes of Health]], have become more numerous and more powerful. Sowell explains that agencies make more laws than Congress does, onlybut the agencies are insulated from any sort of consequences of their decisions because the officials are not even elected. ThisThat has the effect of creating a larger divide between people who make decisions and those who experience the consequences.

Sowell also dwellstalks onabout the recurrent [[unintended consequences]] of many intellectual decisions. Consequently, Sowell advocates adecentralized decentralizingdecision ofmaking the decisions by allowing people to make economic choices for themselves, rather than assuming that non-elected intellectuals at centralized planning agencies will make better decisions.

* [[Adam Smith]]

* [[ExpertGovernment agency]]

* [[GovernmentSupply and agencydemand]]