Yes, he’s smart, but the blinders of liberal ideology are clear.

Liberals consider “fairness”, defined as equitable outcomes, a virtue in an of itself.

The UN’s “point system” to evaluate various quality of life statistics puts such a premium on “equitable distribution” that under the UN guidelines the US rating would improve through the simple expedient of shooting those at the high end.

Part of this is built in. In psychological tests, where one person is given money to divide 2 ways, and the second can either accept, or decline, in which case neither gets anything, people will rather have nothing than an “unfair” share, even though it’s illogical. The Liberal mindset is stuck at this level: given a range of outcomes, medical or otherwise, let’s call them 1-10 for convenience, they would prefer a standard outcome of 4 for everyone*, rather than a distribution in which the average is 7, but some people get 1′s.

*Everyone including high income/high profile liberals, that is. THEY will still get preference in any distribution. Roman Polanski is the case in point- if you’re a 19 year old white male in college, it’s rape if you didn’t have explicitly indicated permission. If you’re a famous artist, it wasn’t “rape rape”.

The real sad part is this: Under ANY system of distribution, market or otherwise, some people will get better outcomes. Rich people have better doctors, better lawyers, better access to better job opportunities, in a capitalist system. In Liberal Utopia, more popular, better connected people get these advantages. If we are stuck between Scyllia and Charybdis, I think, in the long run, it’s better to equate enhanced outcomes to wealth generation than to political influence, because political influence really is zero sum, while wealth generation is not.