The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Thomas Sowell Drops The ‘F’ Bomb

Posted on | February 9, 2010 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Right there in Real Clear Politics:

Some years ago, for example, there was a big outcry that various mental tests used for college admissions or for employment were biased and “unfair” to many individuals or groups. Fortunately there was one voice of sanity– David Riesman, I believe– who said: “The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results.”If by “fair” you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time. If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense.

A wise Lieutenant was even more succinct 20 years ago: “Fa(ir|re) is what you pay to ride a bus” Pun shown as a regular expression.

People frequently are not using the concept of ‘fairness’ in a statistical sense of a truly random shot at accomplishing X feat in life.

Rather, one often sees ‘fairness’ brought up as a diplomatic delaying tactic; a play-action fake. When someone drops the f-bomb about about how the people in Accounting are treated, as opposed to those in Admin, reasonable people have to stop and consider if there is a basis for the claim. In the meantime, much background scurrying occurs.

Note that this discussion is purely on the INPUT side of life. What expectation of fairness we apply to the secular world as it comes at us should be low low low. We will be right, or pleasantly surprised. Affirmative Action gets beat with both the Iron Law of Bureaucracy and Quinn’s First Law. In defense of Affirmative Action, one could argue that there was a need to kick-start things back in the day. That need had an exponential decay curve associated with it, and that need may have passed its sell-by date. What to do?

Well, be fair! Even though you expect nothing more than an outburst of Kramerism:

Rex Kramer: Do you know what it’s like to fall in the mud and get kicked… in the head… with an iron boot? Of course you don’t, no one does. It never happens. Sorry, Ted, that’s a dumb question… skip that.

Choose to be the opposite. Under-react when other bloggers fail to grasp the sublime brilliance of your post. It is clearly unfair that Instapundit doesn’t link everything with my by-line, but what I can do is offer shouts out to all sorts of other bloggers. And space for other drivers to merge. And patience for that person in the checkout line who Really Needs To Get Their Act Together.

But let the ‘F’ bomb remain profane.

Category: Thomas Sowell

Comments

4 Responses to “Thomas Sowell Drops The ‘F’ Bomb”

  1. Chuck Cross
    February 10th, 2010 @ 1:13 am

    Anytime I hear a politician use the term “fair,” I know it is a program/idea working against me.

    As noted in the post, life is not fair. It’s far from fair, so deal with it.

  2. Chuck Cross
    February 9th, 2010 @ 8:13 pm

    Anytime I hear a politician use the term “fair,” I know it is a program/idea working against me.

    As noted in the post, life is not fair. It’s far from fair, so deal with it.

  3. Ric Locke
    February 10th, 2010 @ 4:13 am

    “Fair” has some actual meanings, you know.

    It’s a technical term in baseball — a “fair” ball goes between first and third bases; all others are “foul”.

    As a verb, it is most often used as a participle; the meaning is “smooth over an irregularity”, esp. as regards fluid flow. The sheet metal smoothing the joint between wing and fuselage of an airplane is a “fairing”.

    As a characterization in a performance review, it is the step between “good” and “poor”; the literal meaning is “we don’t have an excuse to fire you yet, but the year is young.”

    Regards,
    Ric

  4. Ric Locke
    February 9th, 2010 @ 11:13 pm

    “Fair” has some actual meanings, you know.

    It’s a technical term in baseball — a “fair” ball goes between first and third bases; all others are “foul”.

    As a verb, it is most often used as a participle; the meaning is “smooth over an irregularity”, esp. as regards fluid flow. The sheet metal smoothing the joint between wing and fuselage of an airplane is a “fairing”.

    As a characterization in a performance review, it is the step between “good” and “poor”; the literal meaning is “we don’t have an excuse to fire you yet, but the year is young.”

    Regards,
    Ric