The Wrong Lesson

Eighteenth century Scottish Presbyterians, denied a voice in Westminster, poured their energies into commerce and education - producing Adam Smith, David Hume, and James Watt, and making Edinburgh and Glasgow intellectual centers of the world. Nineteenth and early twentieth century Jewish and Chinese Americans, systematically excluded from political advancement, similarly concentrated on markets and learning, and advanced materially far faster than groups who sought progress through political means. In his book, Migrations and Cultures (1996), economist Thomas Sowell documented this pattern across cultures and centuries: the overseas Chinese, Lebanese Christians in West Africa, Gujarati Indians in East Africa - diaspora communities whose political exclusion forced them into the productive parts of the economy.

Those who had to rely on markets and education were, in a grim irony, forced into the more productive path. Markets reward productivity. Politics rewards coalition-building, favor-trading, and the ability to extract value from others.

The Wrong Path

Ending Jim Crow required legislation. Laws designed to favor one group over another can be changed only through the exercise of political power. The Civil Rights movement was politics doing legitimate and necessary work: removing politically constructed barriers so that equal rules could apply. That’s the proper role of government in a just society - not to deliver advancement directly, but to clear the path so that individual effort and merit can do their work.

Unfortunately, the wrong lesson was drawn from the success. Having watched coordinated civic mobilization dismantle oppressive laws, many concluded that politics was the primary engine of advancement, and that the way forward lay in continued political organization, group advocacy, and the pursuit of government programs and preferential treatment.

But dismantling a barrier and building prosperity are different. The Civil Rights movement succeeded because it had a clear, concrete, and legitimate objective: equal treatment under the law. Once that objective was achieved, the political coalition faced a choice - declare victory and redirect energy toward the economic and educational paths that had led so many others to prosperity or maintain the political organization and turn it toward the pursuit of redistribution and preference. The second path, Sowell argues, was the wrong turn.

Creation vs. Extraction

Political advancement is necessarily redistributive - it moves wealth and advantage from one group to another rather than creating new wealth. The recipients receive, at best, a share of what already exists. Market and educational advancement, by contrast, create new wealth. The successful entrepreneur, professional, or skilled tradesperson adds value rather than redistributing it, and their success need not come at anyone else's expense. Nor is it limited to what others can spare from their produce.

Groups that concentrated on the creative path tended not only to advance more rapidly but to build more durable foundations - skills, institutions, habits of mind, and networks that persisted across generations and survived changes in the political climate. Political gains, by contrast, are contingent on continued political power, and political power is always subject to reversal.

None of this means that politics is never the right instrument. When laws are discriminatory, fixing them requires legislative remedy, and that work is not only legitimate but necessary. The question is what comes after. The answer is that creation is a far more reliable path to prosperity than redistribution.