Treating People as Livestock

Race, Politics and Lies - Thomas Sowell:

A great one by Sowell. He makes a point that is obvious, but hard to see because of the "boiling frog" effect of our constantly living in the media pot.

When the recorded fatal shooting of a fleeing man in South Carolina brought instant condemnation by whites and blacks alike, and by the most conservative as well as the most liberal commentators, that moment of mutual understanding was very fleeting, as if mutual understanding were something to be avoided, as a threat to a vision of "us against them" that was more popular.

Everyone agreed that shooting a fleeing back man in the back was wrong. Oh, never mind -- the narrative is that whites are racist, can't have THIS story hanging around!

So we move on to Baltimore ... while ignoring the truth of what has happened to black communities over the past 50 years:

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large. 

Non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive lifestyles are treating people as if they were livestock, to be fed and tended by others in a welfare state — and yet expecting them to develop as human beings have developed when facing the challenges of life themselves. 

One key fact that keeps getting ignored is that the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994. Behavior matters and facts matter, more than the prevailing social visions or political empires built on those visions.

Incentives and sanctions matter. The results of policies like those that have been used with blacks in America are universal , treat people like livestock and eventually they begin to act like livestock.

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