Social Justice Fallacies, by Thomas Sowell, Chp 3 — Chess Pieces Fallacies

A review of all four fallacies, one by one

In this installment, I discuss the third of Dr. Sowell’s fallacies from his latest book, Social Justice Fallacies. This is the Chess Pieces Fallacy.

“Neither social justice advocates nor anyone else can safely proceed on the assumption that the particular laws and policies they prefer will automatically have the results they expect, without taking into account how the people on whom these laws and policies are imposed will react. Both history and economics show that people are not just inert chess pieces, carrying out someone else’s grand design.”

The idea is that people are not inert. They react to their environment usually in their own best interests. It will always be necessary for us to consider this when creating policy that should aim at helping real flesh and blood dynamic people in dynamic categories, not simply abstract notions of categorical disparity.