Raised in Harlem, Sowell left school at seventeen, served in the Marines and went on to study economics at Harvard, Columbia and Chicago. A Marxist in his youth, he became a leading free-market economist at the Hoover Institution. In dozens of books he argues that good intentions are not enough, and that policies must be judged by their actual results, especially for the poor and minorities.
Core ideas
Every social choice is a trade-off; there are no costless solutions
Knowledge is scattered across millions of people, so markets beat central planners
Policies should be judged by their results, not by the intentions behind them
The tradition: Free-market conservative
Free-market conservatism joins faith in markets with skepticism about grand plans to remake human nature. Sowell is its sharpest empirical voice, grounding his case in data and history.
