Institutions in Economics: The Old and the New Institutionalism Book

Most of this book is just bullshit. Mainly, it's pandering to a political ideology while pointing out weaknesses (some fatal, in his defense) of statistics that are bantered around. However, he moves from "here's a weakness in this study" to "my ideology, which disagrees with this study, is now proven right". However, all this book actually does is show that nobody has real data to support their ideologies- Sowell least of all. To pretend that disproving one hypothesis proves another is the height of misuse of the scientific method.

First of all, in a economics text that's being marketed as at least somewhat impartial, I don't expect to hear lengthy diatribes about constitutionality of particular actions. Right away, that should tip everyone off that this is actually political commentary, not economics.

Second of all, right off the bat he implies that it's absurd to worry about preserving any open or green spaces in urban planning, because 95% of this country is still undeveloped. Well, that's great if you live in Alaska. If you take out Alaska and other land that is uninhabitable (like much of the desert and mountains) that number looks very, very different. Who the hell cares how much green space there is in Maine if you live in the park-free suburbs of some city with no urban planning, and have no place to take your children to play?
Clearly, this is a person who thinks only about numbers and not about how people actually live. That's a method that can sometimes lead to interesting and insightful results, but to pretend that it reflects anything like the real-world is naive. It's the kind of thing I would expect from undergraduates in Freshman Econ 101.

The next fallacy presented as truth in this book is that if you have no regulation on building, everything will be cheaper. As "evidence", he compares the Bay Area of California and Houston, Texas. Houston has no regulation and just builds more roads as people move further and further from the city, and housing is cheaper there. Is conclusion is that regulation makes things more expensive.
There is no doubt that regulation makes life in California expensive. What Sowell fails to take into any kind of account is that regulation isn't the only factor. Sometimes, that regulation can make the standard of living so much higher that competition to live there increases- Econ 101 tells us that that should drive up the price. People are willing to pay more to live in the Bay Area because life there is so rad. Pave the whole thing, make it all suburbs (like Houston) and how much would people be willing to pay? But since the bottom-line price is the ONLY important factor in Sowell-land, I guess that would be a win.
Allow me to let you into a little secret: people who have a lot of money to spend on housing tends to be the well-educated professionals. A disproportionate number of them are liberal. Housing is cheap in most of the south because compared to the coasts, it's largely unfriendly to liberals, ethnic minorities, gays, and science. Perhaps a better question is "with the total lack of many regulations in the south, which should make it very attractive to people, why is housing there still so cheap?"
Also fails to take into any kind of account the physical differences in landscape- Houston is flat and has no restrictions on space, unlike much of the mountainous west coast. Reality is a bitch when it interferes with labeling pretend fallacies.

His chapter on income inequality is also bullshit. A big study just came out showing that women right out of college, with no children, are still getting paid less than their male counterparts (equal in major, age, CV, etc). So the "investing in children, paid less in the workplace" thing doesn't hold much water, either. Also, saying that women get to spend their husband's money, so it doesn't matter if the earn less, is beyond insulting.

Another fallacy presented as fact is that the suburbs are equally environmentally friendly as living in the city. Since everyone creates garbage, more people living in the suburbs means more garbage in the suburbs and less in the city. That's true for some factors, but doesn't take into account things like flooding- also an economic disaster as well as often environmental- is hugely due to all of the paving we've done, which doesn't allow water to be absorbed in a natural way. Just one example of millions Sowell chooses not to address in this cherry-picking book.

By the time I was 1/10 of the way through this travesty of a book, I could tell the theme is "ruin it for everyone, and we can all have a shitty quality of life that comes cheap". Maybe he's taking the Walmart model to it's logical conclusion, I don't know. But it's certainly not a place I want to live.