America’s Real Problem Isn’t Failure. It’s No Consequences

I was listening to a talk by Thomas Sowell yesterday. He noted that when businesses make poor quality or useless products that no one wants, they lose money and either learn something or go out of business. But when a government program fails, no lessons get learned. It isn't their money, it's the taxpayers. Instead, they ask for more money and do more of the same. 

One of the saddest failures today is our American education system. For years we've seen articles about the decline of education, including not only outcomes but expectations and standards as well.  

Here's just one example of how far we've fallen, a 2024 article in The Atlantic titled "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," by Rose Horowitch. The subtitle sinks home her message: "To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school."

Horowitch examines how many students at elite colleges (e.g., Columbia, UVA) arrive unprepared to read full books—often due to high school practices favoring short excerpts, standardized testing, smartphones, and shorter attention spans. Professors note students struggling with long-form reading, getting overwhelmed by novels or multiple books per semester, and sometimes shutting down when facing unfamiliar or challenging ideas.

This feels shocking to me. I remember reading Dickens freshman year (A Tale of Two Cities) and having an "Aha!" moment my sophomore year while reading Cyrano de Bergerac. I have a hard time imagining an education without reading being a fundmental practice. 

Over the past decade, according to Idress Kahloon, staff writer for The Atlantic, American students’ academic skills have sharply declined, regressing to levels not seen in 25 years. Test scores have fallen to record lows, while the percentage of students reading at a “below basic” level has reached record highs. As staff writer Rose Horowitch has reported, a shocking number of American college students say they didn’t read an entire book in middle or high school. What exactly went wrong?

Some believe Covid is partly to blame, along with smartphones. But Kahloon believes there is aother factor a play: low expectations.“Schools have demanded less and less from students,” he writes, “who have responded, predictably, by giving less and less.”

When I read this I wondered if this is one of a primary issue is our country today: low expectations. When people fail to find a job, or simply make poor decisions, we

When I read this I wondered if this is one of the primary issues in our country today: low expectations. When people fail to find a job, or simply make poor decisions, we look for someone or something else to blame. The system. The economy. The curriculum.  

But rarely do we ask: What was expected? And was it enough?

Expectations shape behavior. When standards are high, people stretch. When standards fall, people settle. That’s not cruelty—it’s human nature. 

In my case it was expected that I would get good grades and I got them. My parents also expected me to go to college. In short, they set me on a trajectory. (There was also an incentive when I was in grade school. I'd get a dime for every A and yes, incentives matter.

Somewhere along the way, society began confusing compassion with the removal of standards. We didn’t want students to feel discouraged, so we made the work easier. We didn’t want failure to sting, so we softened the consequences. We didn’t want anyone left behind, so we lowered the bar.

But lowering the bar doesn’t lift people up. It simply changes what “success” means.

And over time, that redefinition spreads. If a student can graduate without reading a book, what else can be bypassed? If effort is optional, what happens to discipline? If discomfort is avoided, what happens to growth? Failure is painful, but it's also a prod that goads us to figure out the why. 

I once knew a publisher who had previously been a high school football coach in Texas. If you know Texas, football was a big deal for small towns there. He was recruited to coach a team in another town that had never won a game in several years, and frequently they were spanked quite badly. When he arrived, he quickly saw the problem. There were kids with talent, and heart, who loved playing foorball. But they were in the wrong division. It would be like college kids playing the Seattle Seahawks. By spearheading the division change, his team was suddenly competitive.  

The point here: failure is an opportunity to learn. And sometimes the solution involves thinking outside the box.

This is not just an education problem. It’s a cultural one. Thomas Sowell’s point lingers here. In the private sector, failure teaches. In public systems, failure can be absorbed, explained away, or funded again. The feedback loop breaks. And when that happens, decline can continue for a long time before anyone is forced to reckon with it.

The irony is that most people—especially young people—are capable of far more than we ask of them. The question is whether we still believe that. Because if we don’t expect much, we shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t get much.

Is Reality Optional? Thomas Sowell’s Sharp Warning Against Wishful Thinking

My copy, purchased in 1994

When it comes to thinking clearly and speaking pointedly about contemporary issues, there are few better minds than that of Thomas Sowell, an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's widely regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers of the past half-century for his clear-eyed, data-driven critiques of liberal social policies and his emphasis on empirical reality over ideological wishful thinking.

In 1993, Sowell published a short but powerful collection of essays titled Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays. Don’t let the title fool you — this isn’t some abstract philosophy book. It’s a no-nonsense straight-talking takedown of the idea that we can simply ignore reality when it doesn’t fit our favorite theories.

If you step off the roof of your house there will be consequences, whether you believe in the law of gravity or not. So, too, there are laws of economics, which we ignore to our own peril.

Sowell’s central argument is blunt: too many intellectuals, activists, and politicians treat reality as optional. They believe that with enough good intentions, clever policies, or bold social engineering, we can reshape human nature, fix complex problems, and create a better world — even if the evidence says otherwise.
He contrasts two very different ways of looking at the world. One vision (which he calls the “unconstrained” or visionary view) sees humans as highly malleable. If society has problems, it must be because of bad institutions or not enough compassion. The solution? Big government programs and new theories to remake everything.
The other view (the “constrained” or tragic vision) is more realistic. It says human nature has built-in limits — scarcity, self-interest, imperfect knowledge, and trade-offs. Good policy, Sowell argues, must work with these limits instead of pretending they don’t exist.
A quote on the back cover (of my copy) captures the problem perfectly:

““Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area—crime, education, housing, race relations—the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.” (EdNote: This was more than three decades ago, and the trend has continued unabated.) 

Sowell points to real-world examples in crime, education, welfare, housing, and race relations. Again and again, “bright new ideas” were tried, problems got worse, and yet the people pushing those ideas rarely faced any consequences. 
He repeatedly warns against what he calls “intellectual hubris” — the dangerous belief that experts know better than millions of ordinary people making decisions in their own lives. Sowell stresses the importance of empirical evidence and common sense (which, as they say, is as rare as the dodo). Start with observable facts and historical results, not beautiful-sounding theories.
At just 192 pages, Is Reality Optional? is short, readable, and often contrarian. Sowell writes like a man tired of watching the same mistakes get repeated while reality keeps sending the bill.
In a world full of grand ideological promises, Sowell reminds us of a simple truth: reality is not optional. You can ignore scarcity, incentives, trade-offs, and human nature for a while — but eventually, they push back.
Here are a few quotes that will give you the flavor of Sowell's ideas.

On Economics vs. Politics

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

On Faith Masquerading as Science

“Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as ‘science.’”

On Forgiveness and Being Right

“People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right—especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.”

A few more notable quotes from the book:

--“Ordinary people, lacking that gift [of ignoring reality], are forced to face reality.”

--“The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.”

--“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”  

Recommended: Thomas Sowell, who was born in 1930, is still alive and kicking. YouTube has a treasure trove of videos that will give you an opportunity to engage directly with Sowell's ideas. His brain is stuffed with truckloads of facts from a lifetime of research, facts that often remain buried because they fail to fit the Progressive narrative.

A Conflict of World Views

I'm currently reading Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed, and it packs a punch. Last weekend I mentioned my attraction to contrarians, not for the sake of being contrary, but for the very reasons highlighted in this book. In chapter one Sowell lays out his case:

Different visions, of course, have different assumptions, so it is not uncommon for people who follow different visions to find themselves in opposition to one another across a vast spectrum of unrelated issues, in such disparate fields as law, foreign policy, the environment, racial policy, military defense, education, and many others. To a remarkable extent, however, empirical evidence is neither sought beforehand nor consulted after a policy has been instituted. Facts may be marshalled for a position already taken, but that is very different from systematically testing opposing theories by evidence. Momentous questions are dealt with essentially as conflicts of visions.

The focus here will be on one particular vision—the vision prevailing among the intellectual and political elite of our time. What is important about that vision are not only its particular assumptions and their corollaries, but also the fact that it is a prevailing vision--which means that its assumptions are so much taken for granted by so many people, including so-called "thinking people," that neither those assumptions nor their corollaries are generally confronted with demands for empirical evidence. Indeed, empirical evidence itself may be viewed as suspect, insofar as it is inconsistent with that vision.

For those unfamiliar with Thomas Sowell, he was born in 1930 and raised in Harlem. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War and later earned degrees from Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, where he studied under Milton Friedman. An American economist, political thinker, and author, his work spans economics, history, education, race, and social policy. He became a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and wrote more than 40 books, including Basic Economics, A Conflict of Visions, and The Vision of the Anointed. His work emphasizes trade-offs, incentives, and empirical analysis in public policy.

Bottom Line: Reality and Truth are more important than intentions and pipe dreams.

* * *

A little further on Sowell cites examples of various issues in the public square where conflicting visions compete with regard to government policies. 

What all these highly disparate crusades have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their very different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of government. Despite the great variety of issues in a series of crusading movements among the intelligentsia during the twentieth century, several key elements have been common to most of them:

1. Assertions of a great danger to the whole society, a danger to which the masses of people are oblivious.

2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe.

3. A need for government to drastically curtail the dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.

4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes.

How many times have we seen this show through the years. Same script, different issues, same game.  As Dylan put it "When you gonna wake up?"

Sowell’s warning is simple but bracing. When visions replace evidence, intentions replace results, and elites exempt their assumptions from scrutiny, society drifts from reality. Policies must be judged by outcomes, not moral fervor. Truth is not decided by consensus, urgency, or status—but by facts.