But what one earth has deciding that incentives rather than goals are more important in determining the way the world works got anything to do with rejecting Marxism or showing that there is something lacking in Marxism.?
Also, why is what Sowell notices inconsistent with considering goals to be more significant than incentives in understanding the world? If the goal of the bureaucracy is to promote its own power and influence, this goal would explain why there is an incentive to promote price and wage controls as these will advance the power and influence of the bureaucracy. Not only do his observations have zilch to do with Marxism, they do not show anything to support his thesis that incentives rather than goals are important in determining how things work. Cheers Ken Hanly "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 1:23 PM Subject: Re: Sowell > >> retaliate against the minimum wage hike. On analogy to> > I am going to say this one more time. Sowell does not say that he started to change his mind because he discovered that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. The whole discussion of minimum wage laws is irrelevant to the point. The point is that when Sowell suggested an empirical test to answer the question, he discovered that the bureaucrats were entirely uninterested in why, as a matter of fact, unemployment was rising, because the bureacracy had an institutional interest in assuming the usefullness of wage and price controls. At that point, it clicked in his mind that incentives, as opposed to goals, are critical in understanding the way the world works. > > David Shemano
