We are witnessing many riots and demonstrations all over the country now. The advocates of these activities, and many participants, claim that violent actions aim to dismantle systemic racism. They use catchy names such as Black Lives Matter. We are witnessing a clear example of mixing private problems and systemic problems.
Individual or private problems happen on the individual level. When two people have a fight, this is an individual problem. You may have many examples of this problem happening between different individuals, but that doesn’t make the problem systematic. Systemic problems are caused by a systemic cohesive force that cause one group of people to consistently harm another group.
Jim Crow laws are clear examples of systemic problems. These were laws passed by state legislatures and target the black people. All of these laws were repealed or struck down by courts in the 1960s. Going back to the police violence and black lives matter example, I am sure that there are some police officers who overuse violence. I am also sure that there are many criminals in every race. When we look for incidents of officers using violence, we can easily find the examples of them using violence against certain racial group. We cannot extrapolate from that the existence of a systemic problem unless we can demonstrate police officers are explicitly ordered or trained to target a certain group.
Thomas Sowell demonstrated in his great book Discrimination and Disparities that differences in the economic outcomes between groups or cultures are not always results from discrimination. You have to compare and contrast the choices and behaviors of members of different groups to find out the actual reasons for the different economic outcomes. And the way to remove the disparities is always to help change these choices and behaviors. The reader can get an overview of Dr. Sowell’s ideas in this interview.
Unfortunately, politics is all about claiming the existence of artificial systemic problems by selecting examples of individual problems and then coming up with government programs to “fix” these problems. Our country has so many systemic problems that are ignored by our political leaders. A few examples worth noting:
- The US military operations and activities all over the world, none of which actually defend the US borders. Military interventions satisfy the political agendas of few activists in the permanent positions of power and benefit a large body of suppliers, contractors, politicians. These military interventions create enemies overseas and divert talent and resources from useful economic activities.
- The large number of laws and regulations that hamper economic development and leave so may people in need. The sheer amount of laws and regulations makes their uniform application impossible and opens the door for selective enforcement based on the preferences of the individual enforcers. Racist officers will target the race they despise for traffic or drug crimes. Activist IRC agents will audit and harass the political groups they don’t agree with.
- The manipulation of the financial system by the federal reserve to inflate the stock market. This manipulation always helps the existing big players and make them even bigger and artificially more attractive to employees and investors. This in turn give these companies an oversized market power and make it harder to new entrants challenge these dominant players.
Government is the largest source of coercion in the society so its actions always cause systemic problems. Large companies or trade groups or unions can also cause systemic problems in their fields if they have enough power to exclude competition. We don’t expect arsons to put down their fires, we shouldn’t also expect cohesive powers to solve systemic problems.