Pause Awhile
Before you start a social media debate, why not check that what the other person said is the same as what you heard?
"Raging Bull - Wall Street" by Sylvain Leprovost is marked with CC BY 2.0.
Although I come from a very left-wing background, I have worked as a financial journalist for more than 24 years. I have sometimes mentioned on social media that capitalism is by far the best economic system ever invented. This often provokes extreme rage in friends and random acquaintances, who have never heard anyone say something quite so shocking.
The next move in the inevitable social media debate is usually quite predictable. The most common gambit is to react as if I had just defended anarcho-capitalism. My friend will passionately defend the welfare state, market regulations or progressive taxes.
This is quite a strange move. Anarcho-capitalism is a very silly hedgehog-like philosophy. There has never been an anarcho-capitalist society in the whole history of the world and I would bet against one ever existing. Of course, the welfare state, market regulations and progressive taxes make capitalism work better, as does liberal democracy.
A variation of this gambit is for the other person to mention a book by an economist like Ha-Choon Chang. A shabby version of the move will mention a review of a book in The Guardian rather than the book itself.
If you actually sit down and read the book, you will probably find a passionate defence of economic growth as the best way of getting people out of poverty. The book will then discuss reforms to development economics in order to supercharge capitalism. Strangely enough, a passionate defence of capitalism at the heart of the book rarely makes it to the back page or the review in The Guardian.
An alternative opening move is to immediately talk about trickle-down economics. This is a colloquial term for supply-side economic policies, which involves massive tax cuts for the rich in the hope that this might magically help the poor. Supply-side policies are actually a very small and strange subset of a much wider category of business-friendly policies.
Of course, it should be perfectly possible to support a lightly regulated market economy while simultaneously criticising cuts to the welfare state in order to promote tax cuts for the wealthy. Basic services, like state education and a public healthcare system, probably make capitalism work better.
A more sophisticated approach could involve cutting red tape and bureaucracy to make it easier for ordinary people to set up their own businesses. Any tax cuts could then be targeted at ordinary working-class and middle-class families, without cutting basic services.
Another attack is to immediately say that capitalism is destroying the environment. This is actually much stronger than the alternative variants. Unfortunately, dismantling capitalism and returning to the stone ages isn’t a very attractive solution. Trying to encourage our politicians to create incentives for cleantech might be less emotionally satisfying than saying that the whole of society needs to be redrawn from scratch, but is it likely to generate better results.
There is also a more general point. If someone mentions an opinion on social media that seems outrageous to you, please pause. Suspend judgement first. Maybe they aren’t really saying what you think you heard. You can choose your attitude. Why not ask some follow-up questions instead of rushing to defend your worldview from a perceived threat? See you next week!
Further Reading
Economist Deirdre McCloskey’s three-volume defence of capitalism is essential reading for people who like deep non-fiction. Start with Bourgeois Virtues, then Bourgeois Dignity and finally Bourgeois Equality.
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Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.