Thomas Sowell's Random Thought

One of my favorite online opinion people is Thomas Sowell. In a recent column entitled Random Thoughts he gives the following

Many people are so preoccupied with the notion that their own knowledge exceeds the average knowledge of millions of other people that they overlook the more important fact that their knowledge is not even one-tenth of the total knowledge of those millions. That is the crucial fallacy behind the repeated failures of central planning and other forms of social engineering which concentrate power in the hands of people with less knowledge and more presumption.

I thought this was especially relevant when you consider the juxtaposition of the recent pro smoking ban post and the anti video game regulation post. We should not let either a minority or a majority of do-gooders use the government to impose their values on the public.