Many have blamed the gasoline shortages and long lines at filling stations in 1973 on the Arab Oil embargo of that year. However, the shortages and l… - Thomas Sowell

Before attempting to determine the effect of institutions, it is necessary to consider the inherent circumstances, constraints, and impelling forces at work in the environment within which the institutional mechanisms function.

Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.

External explanations of black-white differences — discrimination or poverty, for example — seem to many to be more amenable to public policy than internal explanations such as culture. Those with this point of view tend to resist cultural explanations but there is yet another reason why some resist understanding the counterproductive effects of an anachronistic culture: Alternative explanations of economic and social lags provide a more satisfying ability to blame all such lags on the sins of others, such as racism or discrimination. Equally important, such external explanations require no painful internal changes in the black population but leave all changes to whites, who are seen as needing to be harangued, threatened, or otherwise forced to change.
In short, prevailing explanations provide an alibi for those who lag — and an alibi is for many an enormously valuable asset that they are unlikely to give up easily.