His ire with the self-anointed visionaries can detract from his argument a bit but fundamentally an interesting read. His core argument, about which the book is an elaboration, is that there are three irreconcilable positions we can take regarding justice. Our traditional Western Enlightenment view is that one of the critical responsibilities of any organized group of people is the creation of the rule of law.
The rule of law - "a government of laws and not of men" - implies rules known in advance, applied generally, and constraining the rulers as well as the ruled.
Under this approach, justice is served when all are treated equally before the process of law. It is indubitably the case that under this approach, equal process, the individual outcomes attained will vary widely depending on individual talents, circumstances, behaviors and decisions.
The second approach to justice is that tried by many dozens of countries in the 20th century and that is to focus on ensuring the equality of outcomes. This approach has been disastrously unsuccessful.
The third approach attempts to tackle the issue of disparate outcomes by assuming that disparate outcomes are generated by disparate starting points. Consequently under this approach, the effort is to ensure that all have an equal starting position. This approach, under which some third party attempts to take from some to give to others in order to achieve some "fairness" to make up for different initial starting points, Sowell refers to as a search for "cosmic justice."
As Sowell summarizes it,
What is crucial at this point is not whether we agree or disagree with one or the other of these conceptions but that we clearly understand that they are mutually incompatible, that their fundamental contradictions cannot be blended or finessed.
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