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Two of Sowell's columns that give some perspective:


The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

Think about the things that have improved our lives the most over the past century -- medical advances, the transportation revolution, huge increases in consumer goods, dramatic improvements in housing, the computer revolution. The people who created these things -- the doers -- are not popular heroes. Our heroes are the talkers who complain about the doers.

Those who have created nothing have maintained a constant barrage of criticism of those who created something, because that something was considered to be not good enough or the benefits turned out to have costs.

Every time I get on my bicycle and go pedalling down the road, I remember from my childhood that old geezers in their 70s didn't go biking in those days. They sat around on the porch in their rocking chairs.

Partly that was the style of the times but partly it was because old people did not have the energy and vigor that they have today. Much of that has been due to medical advances that not only added years to our lives but life to our years.

Doctors and hospitals have helped but much of the improvement in our health has been due to pharmaceutical drugs that keep us from having to go to hospitals, and have enabled doctors to head off many serious medical problems with prescriptions.

Yet the people who produce pharmaceutical drugs have been under heated political attack for years -- attacks which often do not let the facts get in their way.

During the anthrax scare of 2001, for example, the maker of the leading antidote for anthrax was accused of making "obscene profits" even though (1) the total cost of treatment with their drug was just $50 and (2) the company actually operated at a loss while they were being denounced for obscene profits.

People who know nothing about advertising, nothing about pharmaceuticals, and nothing about economics have been loudly proclaiming that the drug companies spend too much on advertising -- and demanding that the government pass laws based on their ignorance.

Today, we take the automobile so much for granted that it is hard to realize what an expansion of the life of ordinary people it represented. There was a time when most people lived and died within a 50-mile radius of where they were born.

The automobile opened a whole new world to these people. It also enabled those living in overcrowded cities to spread out into suburbs and get some elbow room. Trucks got goods to people more cheaply and ambulances got people to hospitals to save their lives.

Yet who among the people who did this are today regarded as being as big a hero as Ralph Nader, who put himself on the map with complaints about cars in general and the Corvair in particular? Hard data on automobile safety and tests conducted on the Corvair both undermined Nader's claims. But he will always be a hero to the talkers. So will those who complain about commerce and industry that have raised our standard of living to levels that our grandparents would not have dreamed of.

Home-ownership is far more widespread among ordinary people today than in the past because of entrepreneurs who have figured out how to produce more, bigger and better houses at prices that more and more people could afford. But can you name any of those entrepreneurs who have been celebrated for their contributions to their fellow human beings?

Probably not. In California, anyone in the business of producing housing is more likely to be demonized as a "developer," a word that causes hostile reactions among Californians conditioned to respond negatively -- and automatically, like Pavlov's dog.

As for computers, no one made them more usable by more people around the world than Microsoft. And no one has been hit with more or bigger lawsuits as a result.

Why can't the talkers leave the doers alone? Perhaps it is because that would leave the talkers on the sidelines, with their uselessness being painfully obvious to all, instead of being in the limelight and "making a difference" -- even if that difference is usually negative.

The fact that benefits have costs means that those who create these benefits are tempting targets for accusations from those who know how to dramatize the costs. This means that the doers are constantly on the defensive when attacked by the talkers.

These attacks are especially effective in a society where most people have not been taught to weigh costs against benefits or to subject hot rhetoric to cold logic.

"Safety" issues are ideal for talkers because nothing is absolutely safe. A vaccine may save the lives of 10,000 children but, if five children die from the vaccine itself, that can set off loud denunciations of "corporate irresponsibility" and "greed" on the part of the companies that produced the vaccine.

Some people die from reactions to peanut butter. If the government banned every food from which some people can die, we would all die of starvation. If they banned every vaccine or drug from which people die, more people would die from diseases.

More than sloppy thinking and runaway rhetoric enables the talkers to harass the doers. The ever-growing jungle of laws and regulations provides a virtually unlimited number of grounds for lawsuits.

The talkers are in their natural habitat in courts where judges allow junk science to be used as evidence and juries are gullible enough to be impressed by glib and clever lawyers. The low cost of attacks and the high cost of defense tilts the system in favor of the talkers, especially since the talkers need pay no price for having made totally unfounded accusations.

Both the talkers and the doers know this. That is why the doers so often settle out of court, rather than be tied up in endless litigation. This is then taken as proof of guilt.

Anyone who wants to build anything can be hit with costly delays by environmental activists demanding environmental impact reports. It doesn't matter what the facts are, the talkers can always demand more information and object to the analysis.

All this takes time -- and more time adds to the costs of borrowed money, on which interest must be paid, no matter whether the building for which it was borrowed is being built or the machines and workers are idled while speculative complaints are being investigated by bureaucrats who are in no hurry.

Not only the legal system and the regulatory bureaucrats enable talkers to impose high costs on the doers at low costs to themselves. So does the talkers' ready access to the media.

Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty. Moreover, they can stage demonstrations that the media will not only broadcast but give free air time for the talkers to make their accusations.

Jesse Jackson has made a science -- and a lucrative occupation -- out of accusations of "racism" against businesses. There is no way to prove that you are not a racist, so the doer's choice is to pay off the talker or face losses of customers from either the bad publicity or an organized boycott.

These kinds of incentives and constraints help explain a strange anomaly that many have noticed -- big corporations contributing much more to left-wing causes than to conservative or libertarian causes.

"For every $1.00 major corporations gave to conservative and free-market groups, they gave $4.61 to organizations seeking more government," according to a study by the Capital Research Center, a Washington think tank.

Why? According to the Capital Research Center: "Many advocacy groups win corporate funding by threatening lawsuits and boycotts and by petitioning government regulatory bodies. Regulatory policies, in particular, give corporations a built-in incentive to pay-off left-wing activists."

Talkers cultivate an aura of morally lofty goals, while depicting doers as mere selfish money-grubbers. But professional talkers are pretty good at collecting big bucks, some through legalized extortion and others by creating huge windfall gains as their building restrictions cause housing prices to skyrocket.

The talkers' admirers include people struggling to pay inflated apartment rents and make huge monthly mortgage payments. Even their victims often admire the talkers more than the doers.

This is a great post Jolly. I would like to emphasize the fact that people do not understand the true cost of product development. If you can successfully bring a product to market, you have overcome tremendous barriers and in many cases have put yourself at great financial risk. For that, the successful entrepreneur is entitled to the fruits of that labor.

Using my 8 person company as an example, here are a couple of points:

1. Our monthly payroll is about $60k, with the benefits. Most terms on industrial contracts are 30 days net, but some companies will float that for 60 or even 90 days. That means that from the time I pay my employees, to the time I get reimbursed, I can incur $180k in payroll liabilities. To cover this, we use a revolving line of credit. My partner and I each must place a personal guarantee on every borrowed penny from the bank. I am at tremendous financial risk just on a cash-flow timing basis, never mind profit and loss.

2. With a company of 8 people, calculating profits is not an easy task. It is surely harder with a large company (such as a pharmaceutical company). Prices are generally set to keep a corporate component in the black. The bean counters at higher levels try to ensure that the company as a whole remains profitable. It's like waiting for ballots in an election though...until all the results are in, you can't be sure how you will do. This is why there are street estimates and surprise announcments. It's not like the average individual that has a set take home pay of $x and fixed bills of $y, leaving the difference as discretionary income or savings. A company has multiple streams of variable income, multiple streams of variable expenses and only a few fixed costs. The fact that these incomes and expenses, while accounted today, may not even hit for 3 months further complicates things.

3. We recently moved into a new facility and had to eat $10k in attorney fees (1 attorney) for negotiating a lease. It was a complicated issue involving indemnification for a former Superfund site. I've been involved with dispute resolutions where there are 10 attorneys sitting around the table billing at $300+/hour, each. (that is about $150k for the week, plus travel expenses). These expenses must get built into the pricing. Legal work is expensive. The more global litigation that occurs, the more a company must try to protect themself from it up front. I'd rather pay $10k now than $10M later.

My company has been in business since 1997...we are just now turning the corner to product releases. You can be certain that I feel entitled to price my product to maximize my profit. The market will determine that price. If the consumer thinks my price is too high, their option is to not buy it in the hopes that competition will emerge. My goal is not to make sure that everybody who wants my widget can get it...it is to make sure that at the end of the year, I've made as much profit on my widget as possible. That is the difference between an employee and employer mentality.

Both posts are excellent. There's nothing like having a buck in the bank, 5 bucks due in next week, and needing to give someone 3 bucks today, is there? Ah, but any other way, and it wouldn't be LIVING!!!

Just remember, NY....

Adrenelin is your friend......

By the way...I got Sowell's book yesterday and am well into chapter 2. Good stuff!

It's the constant quivering that has my doctor concerned

For someone who claims to be a doer, not a talker, he sure is long winded.

Maybe his "doing" is just to sit at a computer and comment on those who actually "do."

A bit about Mr. Sowell:


Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. As with many others in his neighborhood, he left home early and did not finish high school. The next few years were difficult ones, but eventually he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Sowell entered Harvard University, worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics.

After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958), he went on to receive his master's in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968).

In the early '60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1965, at Cornell University, he began the first of many professorships. His other teaching assignments include Rutgers University, Amherst University, Brandeis University and the University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught in the early '70s and also from 1984 to 1989.

Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college. Moreover, much of his writing is considered ground-breaking -- work that will outlive the great majority of scholarship done today.

Though Sowell had been a regular contributor to newspapers in the late '70s and early '80s, he did not begin his career as a newspaper columnist until 1984. George F. Will's writing, says Sowell, proved to him that someone could say something of substance in so short a space (750 words). And besides, writing for the general public enables him to address the heart of issues without the smoke and mirrors that so often accompany academic writing.

In 1990, he won the prestigious Francis Boyer Award, presented by The American Enterprise Institute.

Currently Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute in Stanford, Calif.

Hay, in my career I've been involved with 16 businesses, built seven from the ground up, I'm involved with four right now and am planning on building a fifth.

I rarely post more than two paragraphs at a time.

If a short explanation will require 10 clarifications, perhaps it wasn't so short afterall. I personally would feel pleased if all the stone-throwers could critique is the length of text.

remember, we aren't human doings. we are human beings. this is all a matter of values and personal ethics. if you share the values of the first post, you think that's progress and it is great. other people value other things. in my experience, a happy life is one where one does as little as possible.

of what merit is all this running around and doing things if one isn't deeply acquainted with one's inner self and the beauty of the world around you? it can easily become a pathology, a way to still prove one's worth to daddy or mommy. we are a nation of approval junkies. my life is a whole lot better since i kicked the habit.

personally, i don't care for adrenaline as a steady diet. been there, done that, have the t-shirt.

Very true pique...it is a balancing act with family, friends and a company. I'm 34 and enjoy every minute of life...but I have to admit that it has been within the past year that I've re-evaluated my emphasis on the future in favor of living in the present.

I could agree with that if I weren't married to one who believes the exact opposite, i.e., busy-ness is happiness. We both are well acquainted with our inner beings and know that happiness can only emerge if we have those inner beings complement one another.

good for you, ny1911!

dt, maybe your spouse should take a page from your book sometimes. i learned this from my husband, the lump, as i used to refer to him-- until some of his philosophy rubbed off on me a bit and i found that i liked it!

That post resonates with me. The day I quit a high pressure job two years ago this week, I stopped the pendulums on the mantle clock and the grandfather clock, threw the watch in the drawer and threw away the calendar. I'd always had the philosophy of doing a job as well as I knew it could be done, always using creativity to give far more delivered than asked, and sometimes, surprising even myself. In the end, no amount of praise or approval means anything at all if you're doing, however well, things that matter to others but not to yourself. This time applying those same standards of effort to only the things I want to do has been so much more satisfying. Especially when well balanced with days where the goal is to do nothing at all. Happiness is about being, not a goal reached by ticks of the clock and actions over time. Until you stop and take a breath, you just can't see that.

Happiness is about being, not a goal reached by ticks of the clock and actions over time. Until you stop and take a breath, you just can't see that.

I don't entirely agree with that. Happiness, just like most anything, is determined by the one trying to be happy. Happiness to me is a challenge, a chance to build something, to use my back or my brain, whichever is needed, to create something. Happiness is also "being", spending time with friends, experiencing all the "Kodak moments" of life, the little things. It's seeing another person elevate the quality of their life because of something I started, something that gave them an opportunity to apply themselves and achieve.

It doesn't take a lot to make me happy. But I get my happiness from a lot of things. Sitting down and just "being" is not exactly one of them. I get up every day looking for doors. If I can't find the one I want, I make one. That makes me happy.

I kind of disagree with you, dear pique. It's fun to do stuff--it's fun to play at business or biking or music or sailing or whatever.

I would say that one of the really great occupations in this world is that of the dilettante. There are so many interesting experiences and things one can do out there, most pretty nice and some maybe not so nice, but there's a whole world that God gave us to explore and I believe we should.

Now of course, high pressure jobs and deadlines and all that are difficult to maintain for long periods of time, but they should be experienced in one's life. It's fun to experience winning. I did that kind of stuff for a while myself and thought it was kind of fun. I retired and thought that was fun for a couple of years, now I'm back at it--though more part time. It's fun to create little situations and watch them take on lives for themselves.

Another thing is that once one has kids your own interests are no longer paramount. You may still do things, but I have to admit the overall enthusiasm for my own pursuits has dimmed somewhat in light of my kids interests. Maybe that's just me. I've taken up playing piano somewhat late in life and my interest in it is much less than the interest I have in my daughters piano playing. Just is.

On the other hand I got into this biker thing lately and that's been fun for the old lady and myself--(and you should see the chopper I'm having built--another month or two!) We get to go out to places that don't just serve pizza. It's fun. Just interesting stuff the world has to offer.

I believe one should die with calluses on one's hands.

No, you miss the point of my words but have the same idea. We agree even if we don't understand each other perfectly. Nobody here is just sitting around. The point is to be at the end of your own agenda, not someone else's. Choosing the challenges that entertain/enlighten your soul are the point. For me right now, that's piano. Or doing a nice job reupholstering a chair. Or nicely refinishing the oak floors. Or finding Comet Neat in the telescope. And not spending every last minute and the first and last ounce of constructive energy enhancing someone else's corporate profitability. For someone else, though, that might be the most fun game there is. They're welcome to it and I see no need to criticize them for that choice.

I especially agree with the attitude about the doors. I love building things. If I can't find what I want, I build it and enjoy the whole process. My garage is a virtual lumber yard full of bubinga, mahogany, and oak.

We all have eternity to literally "do nothing" when our time comes.
:t:

P.S. RE: Your quote: "It's seeing another person elevate the quality of their life because of something I started, something that gave them an opportunity to apply themselves and achieve."--It's my perspective on just that kind of satisfaction that kept me in the high-pressure workaday world far longer than mere hunger for material accrual would have. The satisfaction that comes from the heartfelt thanks from many for whom you made a better life possible can keep you going long after you're tired but no longer hungry.

Now you are getting into my area of expertise. Tom you are right. Pique is also right.

There are those who are called to be high-powered business tycoons. They thrive on it. They are good at it. They become better people for it.
They need to do this.

Then there are those who are called to simpler, more tranquil, more introspective lives. Perhaps monks in a monastery are the best example of this. They too thrive on their lifestyle, are very good at it and become better people for it.

Most of us are somewhere in between.

I spend my day "coaching" people to develop lives which are satisfying, fulfilling and make them better as human beings. Most of the people who I work with are in their late 30's to early-50's. They are people who find their lives empty or at least unsatisfying. For the most part, they are people who have created a life based on other's expectations and few of their own. When they did this, they did not know themselves well, but started down a path that was not meant for them and now they feel trapped.

My job is to help them find what it is that would make their lives satisfying and give it purpose -- within the confines of the responsibilities they must meet (spouses and life partners, family, children, supporting themselves, etc).

What is surprising to so many of those I work with is how easy it is to accomplish what they seek to accomplish -- as long as they take a good and very honest and open look at themselves and are willing to take some risks in order to get what they say they want.

Seldom does it take throwing away all of what they have and starting new. In almost every situation it is holding on to what they need and enjoy, getting rid of what they do not want or need not do and replacing those things with something that feeds their soul, feeds who they truly are -- not who they have been told they must be.