The Anointed
The anointed, in Sowell's framework, are the self-appointed moral and intellectual elite who possess a vision of how society should operate and who use their positions in media, academia, government, and cultural institutions to advance that vision. They evaluate policies by intended benefits rather than actual outcomes, treat dissent as moral failure rather than intellectual disagreement, and are structurally insulated from the consequences of the policies they advocate. The anointed are not a conspiracy; they are a social class united by a shared vision (typically unconstrained), shared credentials (elite education), shared vocabulary, and shared immunity from the costs their policies impose on others. Sowell's critique was not that the anointed were stupid or malicious but that the combination of unconstrained-vision assumptions and insulation from consequences produced a predictable pattern of policy failure that the anointed could not recognize as failure because their framework made contrary evidence invisible.
In the AI Story
Sowell identified the anointed by their rhetorical patterns: emphasis on how they feel about issues rather than what the evidence shows; dismissal of trade-offs as defeatism; confidence that their superior knowledge and moral insight justify overriding the preferences of ordinary people; and the treatment of policy failure as evidence of inadequate implementation rather than flawed theory. The anointed's policies—from welfare expansion to criminal justice reform to progressive education—shared a structure: comprehensive intervention designed by experts, imposed from above, producing outcomes opposite to predictions, followed by calls for more funding and broader application of the same approach. The pattern persisted because the anointed did not bear the costs: they did not live in the high-crime neighborhoods their sentencing reforms affected, did not send their children to the failing schools their curricula redesigned, did not lose jobs from the minimum wage increases they championed.
The AI discourse has produced its own class of anointed: the executives, researchers, and public intellectuals who promise that AI will democratize capability, reduce inequality, and expand human potential—without seriously counting the costs the constrained vision identifies. When the Berkeley study documents work intensification, the anointed redefine productivity to celebrate the intensification. When skill atrophy becomes measurable, they prescribe training frameworks rather than questioning the tool's structural effects. When displacement appears in the data, they predict new jobs will emerge—a prediction rather than an observation, yet treated as equivalent to the measured displacement they are answering.
Sowell's most cutting observation about the anointed was that they are sincere. They genuinely believe their policies will help. The problem is not hypocrisy but epistemic closure—the vision makes them unable to see evidence that contradicts it, and their social position insulates them from the feedback that would force revision. The AI executive genuinely believes AI will empower workers even as the incentive structure governing her organization rewards labor-cost reduction. The educator genuinely believes AI will personalize learning even as the tool eliminates the productive friction that builds understanding. The sincerity makes the pattern more dangerous, not less, because sincerity converts policy debate into moral combat—to question the policy is to question the questioner's motives.
Origin
Sowell developed the anointed concept across The Vision of the Anointed (1995) and Intellectuals and Society (2009), documenting how credentialed classes in twentieth-century America consistently advocated policies producing outcomes opposite to predictions while maintaining cultural authority. The term itself echoed William F. Buckley Jr.'s distinction between the "educated" (possessing credentials) and the "intelligent" (possessing judgment), but Sowell's contribution was showing the pattern was structural rather than individual—the anointed's mistakes were not random but systematic, produced by the combination of unconstrained-vision assumptions and social insulation from consequences. The framework predicted that every new domain offering the anointed opportunity to design comprehensive solutions—including AI—would reproduce the same pattern.
Key Ideas
The anointed are defined by vision plus insulation. Unconstrained-vision assumptions combined with structural immunity from consequences—credentials without accountability—produce predictable policy pathologies.
They evaluate by intentions, not outcomes. Policies are judged by the moral worthiness of their goals; empirical failure is blamed on inadequate resources, insufficient commitment, or sabotage by opponents.
Dissent is moralized. Disagreement is attributed to moral deficiency—selfishness, fear, bigotry—rather than engaged as intellectual challenge; the anointed cannot imagine their critics possess legitimate knowledge.
They are sincere. The danger is not cynicism but epistemic closure; the vision plus social position make contrary evidence invisible, preventing learning from failure.
The pattern is self-reinforcing. Each policy failure justifies more intervention (we didn't go far enough); the anointed's authority increases with the scope of the problems their previous policies created.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed (Basic Books, 1995)
- Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society (Basic Books, 2009)
- William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale (Regnery, 1951)—early elite critique
- Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites (Norton, 1995)