English Grammar

The fallacy of Equal Treatment for Equal Performance is that one is not even equal to himself from day to day.



... is that what he is trying to say?

I think Sowell took the quote from one of his lectures about college admissions where "treatment" would refer to how colleges admit students. I believe that the population of black and Hispanic college students has a smaller percentage than black and Hispanic people in the general population. Some take this as an example of unequal treatment. Sowell takes it as an example of unequal performances where Asian and white students have higher representation because they earned it, not because of preferential treatment.

In European law, going back to the Justinian code, the law had different rules for different classes of people. American law has tried to have one code for everybody, and we constantly debate how to apply the law that offers everyone equal protection of the law.

I don't know how Sowell would answer your question, but I believe the debate comes from the meaning of "created equal" in the Declaration of Independence and the meaning of "equal protection of the law" in the Fourteenth Amendment.

I think that Sowell has opposed using race or ethnicity as a basis for college admissions. However, colleges have complicated rules for admitting students that include things that have nothing to do with academic performance. Places like Notre Dame and USC say that want to train leaders, not necessarily the smartest academics. They say, perhaps in jest, that they like A-students because they become professors, but they love C students because they build corporations and endow colleges. They also love students who apply on the last day of the admission period, especially if the college has unfilled admissions positions.

With all that in mind why not add race or ethnicity to the mix? Maybe not because the Fourteenth Amendment forbids it.

Great line to start an essay?

“The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.”

~ Thomas Sowell

I might change it to this.

Racial or ethnic leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions, which damage minorities, and also the rest of us.

I wonder how Sowell feels about Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The grand fallacy of the political left is that evil is localized in some set of 'oppressors' from whom we can be 'liberated.' That is also its great attraction, for it allows people to attribute their dissatisfaction s to other people.”

~ Thomas Sowell

The political left believes in evil oppressors from whom we need liberation. This attracts people because it allows them to attribute [the cause] of their dissatisfaction to other people.

Grammar? Do we measure dissatisfaction or count dissatisfactions?

Or

"The grand fallacy of the political right is that everyone gets the same fair start in life & only hard work makes the difference, so anyone not making it must be lazy or unworthy. That is also its great attraction, for it allows people to feel righteous while shirking moral duty."

~ Tav Assoli

The political right believes that everyone gets a fair start in life, and only hard work makes the difference, so failure comes from sloth or lack of diligence. This allows the right to feel righteous while shirking moral duty.

“Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world.”

~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

I might change one bit of grammar in this. I don't believe that people agree on the meaning of the word, capitalism. My conservative friends like to believe that capitalism has existed since an Australopithecus made a tool and traded it for his lunch. My liberal friends don't call that capitalism because the Australopithecus owned the means to make the tool and provided the labor to make the tool.

With that in mind, I believe that Ms Cortez must have intended to say:

A world in which people who owned the means of production, but have not also provided the labor has not always existed and will not always exist.

That breaks your rule of less is more.

Sometimes it is good to be a little vague so that others may stop to think about what was said.

Like the saying, if you want to be heard - whisper.

I knew someone that always spoke low so that you had to listen carefully. I don't know if it was personality or intentional. But it wasn't out of shyness.

I honestly got lost on this thread,. when the op said, " hello to me! "

twilite, the op never said to hello on this thread.

exactly. I am lost on this thread!

Maybe you ah lost, but ahee betcha you move quickly.

yes, I move to quickly to bathroom. ahh. what a fart, I don't need to go the bathroom anymore.

Yeah, pretty much, and I might even make it longer. For some people, capitalism requires a free market. I suspect that no matter how a government may try, it can't eliminate the market.

In a book The Russians by Hedrick Smith, I found an interesting example of a real estate market in the Soviet Union.

One chapter deals with the way Russians exchanged apartments when people could not own the apartments. The government owned the apartments, but people would meet informally in a park. People with a growing family could exchange a small apartment with people who had a large apartment and no longer needed the space. And vice versa.

It reminds me of the story of how the New York Stock Exchange began with people who met outside at a coffee house on Wall Street.