Capitalisn’t: The Breaking Point of Democracy

Gary Saul Morson: When I was first traveling to the Soviet Union, I was shocked by somebody who said, “Of course, we have complete free speech here. We just don’t allow people to lie.” Well, you can say that now, and nobody finds it funny.

Bethany: I’m Bethany McLean.

Phil Donahue: Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed’s a good idea?

Luigi: And I’m Luigi Zingales.

Bernie Sanders: We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.

Bethany: And this is Capitalisn’t, a podcast about what is working in capitalism.

Milton Friedman: First of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed?

Luigi: And, most importantly, what isn’t.

Warren Buffett: We ought to do better by the people who get left behind. I don’t think we should kill the capitalist system in the process.

Luigi: Hi, Bethany. Happy anniversary!

Bethany: Thank you, Luigi. Happy anniversary to you, too.

Luigi: Do you know what anniversary this is?

Bethany: I do, actually. We have been doing this podcast now for a year, which is actually just shocking. I mean, that’s a happy thing, but the year has just disappeared, hasn’t it? As it has for so many of us in this strange time.

Luigi: Yeah. I don’t know whether it is the pandemic or the age, but these years fly faster and faster every year. But I’m sorry. I should have said it was so fantastic to work with you all the time. That time flew!

Bethany: Yeah, me too. I guess I could have led with that as well. But, no, seriously. Being able to debate really interesting and discuss really interesting topics with you actually has been a highlight of this year, and I hope our listeners have enjoyed it as much as we have.

Luigi: Speaking of, when we started, I think we had a very ambitious program, which was not only to discuss capitalism, but also to discuss what I consider and I think you consider a fundamental building block of capitalism, which is to have an underlying democracy.

Bethany: So, we’re always looking for a way to explore the link between capitalism and democracy. That’s why we were drawn to a new book by Northwestern professors Morton Schapiro and Saul Morson. Their new book is called Minds Wide Shut, and what they put forward in this book is that open debate is key to democracy. Without open debate, we can’t actually have a democracy. So, their book is basically a plea, in most ways, for freedom of speech.

Luigi: This is very important, because not only do they bring their professorial knowledge, but Morty has also been president of Northwestern for many years, and so he brings his experience as a president of a university. And universities are at the center of this debate in this moment.

Bethany: I thought one of the incredibly important things that you two did in this book was define what fundamentalism is and what it isn’t. And so, I thought a good place to start would be for you to explain how you mean the word and then how it has been misused over time. Maybe, Morty, we can start with you and maybe turn to Saul to talk about how it’s been misused over time.

Morton Schapiro: For me, when I think about fundamentalism, I think back to the great philosopher of science from Cambridge, Karl Popper, who said that if there is no evidence at all that anybody could present to you that would make you change your mind, then you’re a fundamentalist in that thinking. It’s important for everyone to realize that there are certain things they believe that make them fundamentalist. If you don’t have any of those, then, as one reviewer said, you want to keep your minds wide open but not so wide open that your brain falls out.

There are certain things that I believe, that Saul believes, Luigi, you believe, I’m sure, Bethany, you believe, that make us fundamentalist. But if it’s most of what we believe, that it’s not falsifiable, you have a problem, and I think democracy has a problem. But Saul?

Gary Saul Morson: You can use a key word like that in many ways as long as you use it consistently. What I found out with most of the people who write about it, they start out with one concept and then, when they want to denounce something else, somehow, they call that fundamentalist, too, without realizing they’ve changed their definitions in the process. That’s just sloppy thinking.

I’m a Russian specialist, and Lenin is a perfect example of it. That the truth is perspicuous. Perfectly evident when you look at it. What do you mean, all this stuff that we may not know the world? That our minds may shape what we see? That’s nonsense! The world is exactly the way we see it. Anyone who doesn’t see it that way is trying to enslave the working class. That kind of argument.

If the truth is absolutely clear, then there’s no room for honest disagreement. The concept of opinion in any meaningful sense disappears. There’s no two opinions about the Pythagorean Theorem and there’s no different opinions about socialism. That would be the kind . . . or about God. That would be the kind of thinking. Once you have that notion, everything that democracy depends on disappears. It depends on respect for people with different opinions. Power changes hands. You have to have a notion that you might be wrong. What you believe strongly is simply an opinion. God didn’t reveal himself to you directly. Democracy depends on that notion of humility about what you know. The very opposite of fundamentalist thinking.

Bethany: Friends of mine and I talk about, with the rise or the secular society, the remnants of religion are leaking into our society. I sometimes wonder if some of what we’re talking about is almost inevitable in an increasingly secular society, in that people are craving the certainty that used to be offered by God in other forms of belief. I was thinking back to The Brothers Karamazov and the famous line, “Well, if there is no God, then what?” I wonder how you see that, Saul. Is it inevitable that, in an increasingly secular world, other forms of fundamentalism are going to rise as a replacement?

Gary Saul Morson: That’s a great question. I would give two answers to that. One is, one of my favorite lines of G. K. Chesterton is that the problem with atheists is not that they believe nothing, but that they will believe anything. If they have God, it limits them, but if they don’t, they find something. But the other is that America was founded by religious zealots. That spirit continues to exist in America. The puritanical spirit, if you want, or other religions. Even after belief in religion goes, that is part of the American spirit, so Americans tend to this sort of strong moralism. That’s how we had Prohibition at one point. It’s taken on other forms. So, there’s always been a tension in America between the ideals of freedom from the Enlightenment and the ideals of certainty in one form or another.

Bethany: You detail in your book this move toward what you call Leninist thinking, and it includes a culture of denunciation in order to ensure one’s purity in one’s own group, but I was thinking as I read that, how is that different than cancel culture today? Would you say that cancel culture is part of a move toward Leninist thinking?

Gary Saul Morson: Well, cancel culture hasn’t gone remotely as far as Leninist thinking. It goes in that direction, but it’s a long way. It’s a danger. We’re not there. One of Lenin’s key arguments was you do not address the other person’s arguments. You bloody his face. Don’t address the arguments. You insult the person. You humiliate the person. You make it so that he can’t show his face. That’s how you answer. You never address arguments. And that’s, of course, the way some of the cancel culture people, not all of them, work. You—

Morton Schapiro: I would just add, you know, they’re not sending us to the gulags yet. I haven’t checked my email yet today. But there are aspects that remind me a little bit more of China. The Cultural Revolution. The public shaming. Wearing your dunce cap.

Luigi: Morty, they don’t send you to China, but they start to make you fear for your life. As you know, when I invited Steve Bannon to debate a colleague on campus, I had people putting on my backyard, writing “fascist.” They had threats. I feared for my life and the life of my family. So, I don’t think we are that far off, but I think that intolerance, in my view, arises from fear. Because you fear losing out. You fear not having a good argument. You fear the confrontation.

One of the things I learned from the experience of trying to get Bannon on campus . . . Number one, that eventually he didn’t come, because he actually feared debating with us. At least that’s my interpretation. But the other part is that, when I spoke with the students, one of the students at Chicago said, “Wait a second. What about if we lose the debate?” I said, “Kids, if we lose the debate, don’t you want to know and try to get better arguments? Don’t you want to know in advance rather than shut down?” My fear is that we are raising a generation of people who are too fearful to even entertain some of the fundamental ideas or debate those fundamental ideas.

Gary Saul Morson: But there’s another interpretation other than fear. This would be the Leninism. Lenin was not afraid of anybody. The idea that you’re interested in finding out the better arguments and the truth presupposes that you do not already know the absolute truth. But if you do, the only relevant thing is what gives you more power. They’re not worried about being proven wrong. They’re worried about what will give them less power.

Morton Schapiro: Luigi, I’d just add one thing here. You described the unfortunate ramifications for you and your family because of what happened a couple years ago. Can you imagine being 20 years old and living in a dorm after you’ve been canceled?

Bethany: I was thinking as you were talking that fear takes lots of forms. Using fear as a blanket word can often be misleading, because there’s fear of being thrown out of the group, fear of losing power, but there’s also fear of loss of certainty. And so, that goes to the core of your book. That loss of certainty is a really scary thing and what you’re advocating, in some ways, is a loss of certainty.

Morton Schapiro: A very good point.

Luigi: Gary, if I may say, I love your clarification because I think you’re right. I spend too much time around academia, where at least you assume that people don’t think they know the truth, but they are searching for the truth, and you hope that they are not only single-mindedly focusing on power.

In the real world, I think there is that second category. But I am shocked that, even in the world of academia, where we should be raised saying that the truth doesn’t exist . . . It’s something that you try to achieve, but it is always changing. As you said, if you study history, you know how many times the consensus of the time was absolutely wrong. One of the most depressing experiences I had during this pandemic is looking at social media. How a lot of distinguished academics, not only in economics but in epidemiology, et cetera, were insulting each other as certain truths were proven wrong the next day and so forth. I thought that that was really a big problem that we need to address.

Gary Saul Morson: In another age, if you wanted to claim that you can’t be wrong, you claimed, “God spoke to me.” In our age, you claim, “This is science and science is absolutely settled!” The fact is, if you say that, you don’t understand science. Because science is not a solid block of dogma. Some things are better established, and some things are less established. Anyone who treats it as a solid block, where everything is equally certain, can’t explain how science progresses. It progresses because some of the things that are on the frontier are less certain.

People, including scientists, have abused the claim of science in the last year. First, we were told only fanatics could possibly even entertain the possibility that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab, and you were racist if you think so. Now, it turns out, gee, that may be the case. People were thrown off Facebook for . . . And it was said in the name of science.

I couldn’t believe it when, just as the pandemic was beginning, Dr. Fauci said, “Masks don’t help. Don’t wear masks. It doesn’t matter,” and then a month later, he said, “I only said that because there was a shortage of masks and I didn’t want people to use them up.” If the chief spokesman said he deliberately lied, why would anybody believe him after that?

Bethany: I wanted to come back to your . . . because I started thinking as I read this book. You’re an economist. Luigi’s an economist. I loved, of course, when I got to the chapter on market fundamentalism. I started to wonder, as I read that chapter, is part of the loss of belief in capitalism and the questioning of capitalism the fault of market fundamentalism? That it was supposed to be absolute and an answer for everything, and because it’s not and because we’ve refused to acknowledge that it’s not, that’s caused a lack of faith in capitalism, in the same way that not allowing questions about science has caused a questioning about belief in science?

Morton Schapiro: I think there’s some truth to that, Bethany, but just like the negative fundamentalism in the academy with deconstructionists—there’s no such thing as great literature—I think there’s a broader distrust of capitalism that really worries me among Generation Z. If there’s anything I ever thought was put to bed with the end of the Cold War, it was this idea that private ownership of the means to production might not be the best way to lead to growth and prosperity.

And maybe I’m a fundamentalist in that sense. I mean, I just can’t envision any alternative to capitalism. I don’t think it’s because the far right misunderstood Adam Smith. I mean, I think it’s just the rise of this anti-market fundamentalism. Complete distrust of capitalism on certain faculties and certain fields. A larger percentage of Gen Z than previous generations . . . and I think that’s actually the scariest thing. I really do.

I even hear other presidents of colleges and universities, when we get into arguments . . . I’m big on Pell Grants and all these things and opening our doors to talented lower-income kids from all over the world. They say, “Oh, no.” One of them said to me recently, “Morty, you don’t understand. You’re just so liberal. It’s capitalism. Until we get rid of capitalism, we’re always going to have no dialogue and incredible unrest and all that.” And I’m like, “And replace it with what?”

It’s like democracy. The old joke. It’s far from perfect, but what’s better? It’s the same about capitalism. You can have enlightened capitalism. But this distrust, particularly on the far left, about private ownership of the means of the production, I find is terrifying as an economist.

There is a consensus, I think, among most economists, at least 95 percent of us, about where the minimum wage should be, how you deal with climate change, healthcare, and on and on and on. Not about the wealth tax. There are some things we legitimately disagree about, but mostly, I think we know a lot of answers to policies and people on . . . I don’t worry on the right. I worry on the far left. That they just don’t believe our numbers and don’t believe our data. They don’t believe incentives matter. A living wage should be $25 an hour. We know that would wreak havoc for low-income people back from studies from the great Alan Krueger. Stop being ideologues and just look at the damn data.

Bethany: As one of the noneconomists in this conversation, the English major in me is popping up, and what I really liked was this line in this chapter that you wrote: “There is all the difference in the world between thinking that markets generally work and ruling out exceptions on principle.”

I think that’s what I mean by market fundamentalism. That’s where I think economists and market people generally go wrong, is that they refuse to rule out the exceptions. And I think that does a great deal of damage in the same way that this belief that science is this hard, fast rock does damage. Because it refuses to allow for the places where it doesn’t work, and then it causes a deeper skepticism on the part of people who say, “But wait, that didn’t work as you promised.”

Morton Schapiro: That point is well taken, but I would just add the whole question, Luigi, about trade-offs, which is what economics is about. If you say . . . What’s the great line, Saul? That Latin line? It’s better to die than make a trade-off—

Gary Saul Morson: Let justice reign though the world perish is the Latin.

Morton Schapiro: Yeah, well, economics is not letting the world perish because justice abstractly is supposed to reign. It’s about, depending on whether it’s the greatest good for the greatest number, whatever you could define what our objective function looks like. The idea that trade-offs are moral, that you have to go all-in on environmental protections even if it means a massive loss in efficiency and well-being is, for an economist, ludicrous.

Luigi: Let’s look at the other side. Because we interviewed, for the second episode on meritocracy, Michael Sandel. I think he had an excellent point, which is that the meritocratic society tends to delegate to experts even political choices. Everything becomes a technocratic choice, but in the end, there are a lot of political choices behind the technocracy.

I think that the example that Gary presented, of Fauci, is the most blatant. I think that’s serious. He was acting as an expert but making a political choice, and we might determine whether it’s right or wrong, of limiting the use of masks to people who most needed them, but he did not make it on political terms or make a political choice or take responsibility. He was hiding behind science to do that. I think that everybody’s responsible, but we economists are particularly responsible on that.

While it might be not the most efficient way to use the money to, for example, increase the minimum wage or do other things, maybe politically that’s the right thing to do. We economists need to take a step back and say, look, this will cost you X, but at the end of the day, I am not the person deciding. That should be a political decision. What can we do . . . You run an important university. What can we do to train our faculty to be a bit more humble and give advice without pretending to be God? We’re not God and we shouldn’t pretend to be.

Morton Schapiro: Yes, Saul. You’re pausing.

Gary Saul Morson: Only I’m God.

Bethany: That’s what we all believe on some level, isn’t it?

Morton Schapiro: I think Mike Sandel has got . . . I’m also a big fan of his and I think he has a lot of good points. But, Saul, what about training—I mean, Luigi’s challenging faculty here to be more open. I think part of it is showing the humility of your own and of your own field where it’s appropriate. Part of it is modeling that kind of thing. But, Saul, you’ve been thinking long and hard about this for a long time.

Gary Saul Morson: Part of the idea behind our class was that different disciplines do not just have different subject matter. They can see the world differently. What counts as a good question? What counts as good evidence? So, if we could take certain issues and show how, let’s say, a humanist, a sociologist, an economist would all conceive of that issue, see it differently, find different things of significance, come up with different answers, they would be able . . .

When they take a class in each of those disciplines, the fundamentals of those discipline aren’t questioned. But if you can bring them on the same issues together, you could view each discipline from the inside and the outside, how it looks to somebody else, and then its claims of absoluteness would be qualified. Within a discipline, everybody just accepts the assumptions and doesn’t do that, but if you can view disciplines in interaction with each other, then you can have the idea that the claims of certainty seem appealing but wrong, and if that’s true of disciplines, it’s probably true elsewhere.

Morton Schapiro: They also get graded, Saul, mainly in terms of how successfully they argue against their underlying belief. Some of them, really, at least in the course evaluations, Saul, say that “I wasn’t just arguing the opposing point. I actually started to see, for the first time, there is an opposing point that has some possible validity.” In Gen Z, that’s a tough argument to make for many of them.

What we’ve learned from our course and our engagement with this generation of students is some things work, some things don’t work. I mean, you could try to say, hey . . . The Las Vegas thing. What happens here, stays here. This is a safe space. You can argue whatever you want. It’s very difficult to pull off.

When I give the talk to the students, do I say, “Hey, speak your mind?” No, I say, “Be careful.” If you’re in an audience where people are not really listening and they’re just waiting to pounce on anything you say that could be interpreted in a bad way, don’t say it. Be careful. Have your spaces with your friends where you can work on your arguments and build your confidence. A safe space doesn’t mean you don’t have difficult dialogue. In my experience, you have the most difficult dialogue because you’re not afraid of being canceled. That gives you some serenity and some peace and some confidence that you could bring that out to the broader world. At least that’s my experience.

Gary Saul Morson: Of course, I can’t do this, but if I could, I would require two classes at a university. One in microeconomics, so they understand trade-offs, and one in Soviet history, so they understand what happens when you have only one point of view and forbid people to read other books. Those two classes would go a long way. When I was first traveling to the Soviet Union, I was shocked by somebody who said, “Of course, we have complete free speech here. We just don’t allow people to lie.” Well, you can say that now and nobody finds it funny.

Bethany: I was actually thinking that sums up our culture today very well.

Luigi: But Morty, isn’t the first safe space the one . . . I don’t want to be too self-serving, but for faculty. Because I think increasingly so, in a lot of schools, faculty get in trouble not for saying racially charged thoughts, but for saying things that are simply different ideas. They can be really canceled or attacked or marginalized. Increasingly, the administration is not protecting them. I have to say, I have a fantastic president that defended freedom of speech all the way through, but that is more the exception than the rule.

As a result of that, I spoke with a lot of faculty who have very different experiences. Presidents and provosts that, behind closed doors, say, “Look, we wouldn’t mind if you got a job somewhere else.” That’s really reminiscent of the McCarthy era. On the opposite side of the political spectrum, but still in that direction.

Morton Schapiro: If that’s the case, that’s more ubiquitous than . . . That’s an enormous problem. I think presidents and provosts and deans need to stick to the highest principles that any college or university tends to espouse. Provosts who are wanting to be presidents, once they get canceled, that’s over. Presidents, it depends on where they are with their terms, if they want to get reappointed or not. It’s a tough situation for everybody.

I think most of us make those right decisions. I know I’ve always tried to. It hasn’t always been very well-received, protecting people across the ideological spectrum, but I’ve always felt that’s what our universities are about. The only other thing I’d say, Luigi, I mean, if you can’t have dialogue among faculty at colleges and universities, where the hell are you going to have it?

Luigi: Sorry if I interrupt. I want to point out . . . Because you said something that scares the hell out of me. That if you are a provost today and you end up being canceled, this impacts your career. And so, they aren’t . . . No? What?

Morton Schapiro: Yeah! Or a dean or a department chair.

Luigi: And so, at the end of the day, if I’m . . . Today, if I am a provost or a dean, the way in which I will make a career is by not alienating the people who can cancel you, that tend to be mostly on the extreme left, and so I would like to prevent any discussion that challenges issues from that area.

Morton Schapiro: Again, Luigi, it’s about incentives. It depends. A lot of people say, “Hey, those of us in administration who continue to teach and publish aren’t afraid about going back to the faculty,” but if you really want to take on these tough issues . . . I mean, the reason . . . It used to be public voices. Presidents of all these institutions used to write very controversial op-eds on the topics of the day. Now, most presidents write, “Give me more Pell Grants and support sponsored research.” That’s really controversial. Those topics.

The few of us left who actually write about safe spaces or cancel culture or this or that . . . Yeah. Of course, you put your careers on the line. But if you’re a department chair who wants to be a dean or a dean who wants to be a provost or a provost who wants to be a president, and you take on controversial issues, there’s going to be a search committee who is going to Google you, and they’re going to see about the protests against you and being canceled, and it’s going to make it very difficult to get a job. That’s responding to incentives.

Now, I hope that’s a pendulum that’s swinging back the other way. Saul thinks the metaphor is a snowball going down a hill, creating an avalanche of distrust and lack of dialogue that leads to the demise of democracy. Scares the hell out of me. But of course, when you study Russia, that’s where you end up. But I do think it’s a pendulum. I already think the election of Joe Biden and other things are showing that we are swinging back a little, and I think that college administrators should be leaders there.

Bethany: Well, this was fascinating. Thank you both so much for your time. Morty, it was delightful to see you again after all these years, and it was great to meet you, Saul. Best of luck with the book.

Luigi: Indeed. Thank you very much.

Gary Saul Morson: It was a pleasure.

Morton Schapiro: Thank you.

Bethany: So, did the conversation surprise you at all, Luigi? Was it what you expected?

Luigi: I was really impressed by Saul Morson. He saw the limitations of what I said, and I think that . . . In the spirit of learning from others and not fighting, I have to say that he really opened my mind to the point regarding the use of intolerance as a strategy to gain more power. I think he’s right. We can interpret a lot of what is going on today as a desire to gain power through intolerance rather than through democratic means.

Bethany: I think that is interesting, and it goes to the bigger point that we all have a little bit of a fundamentalist mindset in us, right? In certain ways. And you sometimes have to poke and prod around your own brain to discover where your own fundamentalism is. Sometimes it can lie in tolerance of no tolerance, and sometimes it can lie in no tolerance for tolerance. Anyway. But it’s complicated within all of us.

Luigi: I guess the question is whether you become intolerant of what one percent of the population does or when you become intolerant about what 49 percent of the population does. Or even worse, 75 percent. And so, in particular, I was shocked that a sitting president of a major university would tell us that, basically, no university administrator who wants to continue and progress in his career as a university administrator is willing to take any risk of offending some of the vocal minorities that are going to cancel him or her. I kind of suspected that, but said so bluntly by somebody with authority? I see this as the terrible direction that we’re going.

During the episode when I was attacked for the Bannon thing, a professor sent me an email saying, “How could you do something that so much offends the sensitivity of a lot of other people?” I said, I come from Padua, and one of the things that you do when you’re there, you visit this amphitheater where they used to do anatomy when this was prohibited by the church. I said, thank God that they did it because, for example, the fallopian tubes were discovered by a guy called Falloppio who actually dissected cadavers. Because you cannot figure out that there are fallopian tubes without dissecting cadavers.

Later, I realized, even the entire circulation of blood was discovered by a student at Padua, and he got the sense of how the blood was circulating thanks to cutting bodies. And so, thank God that people did something that, at the time, was considered repugnant to a lot of other members of the society in the name of research and study.

Bethany: Obviously, you can say that that’s a completely different argument from saying something that might be offensive to someone else, but the line is hard. What’s offensive to someone else? I got into an argument with my nieces, who are high school students. Both very, very, very smart girls. They were effectively arguing you’re not a bad person if you upset someone else, but you are a bad person if you trigger someone else. I said, well, how is anybody supposed to know in advance what the line is between those two things?

Once you’re labeled a bad person by everyone in your peer group, well, there aren’t very many people who are going to take the risk of that, whether they’re a college administrator who wants to advance or a high school student who wants to have friends. And so, you’re obviously going to stay as far to one side of that line as you possibly can on any topic that might be controversial, so that you don’t risk the punishment for having done something you didn’t intend to do.

Luigi: Actually, what scientists at the time were doing and saying was offensive. When Galileo Galilei said that, actually, it’s the Earth moving around the sun and not the other way around, it was blasphemy. It’s hard to imagine, but at the time, people were so religious that this was deeply upsetting to them. That being the truth, it was upsetting, and they didn’t want to hear it.

Bethany: It’s fascinating because, in their book, they compare that mindset. That you want a Galilean mindset, an open mindset, and a mindset that things might not be as you perceive them to be, rather than a Ptolemaic consciousness, which is, this is the way the world works, and it’s fixed.

Luigi: I think, as a scientist, you should never have that approach. I think that this is the greatest discovery of the Western world, the scientific mind open to being wrong.

Bethany: I think that’s funny about today’s cry to believe in science. We believe in the science. We even see signs in some people’s yards, “We believe in the science.” When, in reality, believing in the science is sort of the opposite of a scientific mindset. Because believing in the science as a hard and fast thing is not the scientific mindset, which is being . . . It’s the opposite of the scientific mindset, which is being open to the idea that what you think might be wrong, being able to weigh the real-world evidence from it and say, is this right or is this wrong? What we want is for people to believe in the scientific mindset, not to believe in the science. It’s just such a misnomer or such an abdication of everything that science actually is.

Luigi: I agree completely with you, but what are the causes of all this? One of the hypotheses that was thrown out there, which I find very, very intriguing, is that the lack of religion might be the cause of this fundamentalism.

Bethany: I think it’s really fascinating. Friends of mine and I are obsessed by the ways in which the religious mindset is leaking over into other aspects of society. There’s this great anecdote in the book about how, in the past, a Protestant wouldn’t marry a Catholic. That would be just horrifying or would cause all sorts of societal upheaval. Now, nobody even raises an eyebrow at that, but you wouldn’t see a Democrat marry a Republican, and you wouldn’t even invite Democrats and Republicans to the same dinner party. The divides are just forming. The religious belief is just forming in other areas of my life.

Back to your point, one of my father’s favorite books, which we talk about a lot, is indeed a Russian novel. It’s The Brothers Karamazov. Because, at one point in the book, the main character essentially says, “If God is dead, well, then what?” Instead of that being incredibly freeing, it’s, well, if there’s nothing, then no rules apply. I think, in the face of that terror, we search for certainty in other areas of life. And so, we double down on the certainty we find in other beliefs, which I don’t really like. I was raised an atheist, and so I like to believe that they can be two entirely separate phenomena, but there’s certainly a causal link.

Luigi: Well, that’s interesting. Because I was raised a Catholic and I did not really raise my children Catholic and now, I think maybe I made a mistake. Because we want to experience fundamentalism to be free for the rest of your life. One of the reasons why I believe so much in the cause of freedom is because I experienced what it means where there is some fundamentalism and how terrible that is.

Bethany: Maybe we all need both of that. Maybe being raised in total freedom does just encourage this . . . not existential despair, but existential search for something that you can hang all your beliefs on.

Luigi: Can I return to the issue that actually bugs me the most, which is, what can we do about this rising fundamentalism?

Bethany: I liked their optimism that the way in which they were inspiring students to debate in classes was a way of encouraging these very kinds of conversations that we need to have to have a healthy democracy. From an intellectual point of view, I thought it was very clever to turn Morty’s defense of safe spaces into this idea that a safe space is a place where any kind of conversation can happen.

But I wondered, as they said that, how often does any kind of conversation happen within a safe space, and is this an intellectual wish list? I think it was intellectually clever and something to aspire to, but I wondered how that played out in practice.

Back to your point about university administrators or anybody who cares about their career, if you realize what the stakes are, well, then, of course you’re going to play it safe. If we all play it safe, then conversation grinds to a halt. That’s interesting. There’s that old saying, right? Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I think today’s youth have come to believe the opposite. Maybe because there isn’t such a threat of sticks and stones in many environments anymore. And so, who cares about sticks and stones? Words, of course, will hurt me and, therefore, you can’t say them.

And I see that. I actually think words are incredibly powerful and can do an enormous amount of damage, so I’m not advocating for a simple solution here. I love that today’s youth are more intent on not hurting each other than we ever were. I mean, the bullying we all grew up with was relentless and quite horrible. But I worry that it’s just a different form of bullying.

I think the best argument in defense of this is that it’s meant to make the world a better place. It’s meant to allow everybody to have a chance and an opportunity and to coexist together in a way that people are allowed to maximize their abilities, because they’re not constantly being stomped down by microaggressions or macroaggressions. Other people saying things that decimate them such that they can’t function. I think that’s a really laudable goal, actually.

I am a little bit worried about the way in which that goal is being implemented. Not in all cases, but I’m worried when the way that goal is being implemented results in squashing free speech. Because I really do agree with the authors of this book that the foundation of democracy is disagreement. It’s really hard to disagree if you’re really terrified of the consequences.

Luigi: The line between the two is very simple. If I don’t like what you say, I should have the freedom not to listen to you and to ignore it. If I don’t like what you say and I start to try to shame you and shame others into isolating you, then I am trying to use social pressure. That is typical of repressive regimes from the fundamentalist religious people to the Leninists to the Maoists and every sort of . . . and the fascists, in which they use social pressure to scare and intimidate people. I think that that is the fundamental distinction between a democratic society and a totalitarian society.

I think Nazis are terrible, but why do I need to shame them in front of others? Because the moment I start shaming them, then the question is, do they have the right to exist? I lived through Italy in the 1970s, when people said that killing a fascist was an act of love. Why? Because if you’re a fascist, you don’t have the right to speak. If you don’t have the right to speak, do you have the right to exist? If you don’t have the right to exist, killing you is something that I not only can do, I should do. That really goes straight to fundamentalism.

Bethany: I don’t know. I think, all of these things, it’s much harder to find the line. Because I think shame is one of the most powerful tools we have. I actually . . . I disagree with you. I think there are certain ideas that are utterly repulsive and abhorrent, and people should be made to feel shame for having them.

And then the question is, where is that line between that and other ideas that people might find hurtful? I find that a hard line to define for other people. I can define it for myself. And then I would say, well, shame is OK, but it’s not OK to subject somebody to loss of income or loss of life because you disagree with their ideas.

But back to our discussion about the university professor, then what is the line? If somebody in the university is expressing ideas that other people find morally repugnant and abhorrent, should that person suffer the consequences not just of shame but of an ability to advance their career? Again, a slippery line. I could say where I would draw that line, but again, it’s hard to set it in stone for other people, I think.

Luigi: But again, I think my story of dissecting cadavers . . . Dissecting cadavers was repugnant for most people at that time, and it would have been a terrible idea to shame people to not do that, where we delay the discoveries and the progress in medicine by centuries.

I’m not saying that I don’t think that it’s shameful to be a Nazi. I do think that, and I would say individually to a person that I’m abhorred by those ideas. But from there to, basically, do moral lynching, it’s a different story. I don’t know what the right line is. We now all agree that Hitler was terrible. Now, what about Mao and Stalin? They weren’t much better. You keep going, it’s a slippery slope. And then you can go to Dick Cheney. I had a faculty member who said, “Dick Cheney is a war criminal and should be . . . It’s shameful and he doesn’t have the right to speak anywhere.” Basically, when you . . . It’s a slippery slope. You don’t know where to draw the line.

Bethany: I agree with you. I think you are more intellectually consistent on this topic than I am. Because I am having trouble finding a place where I would draw a line for the rest of the world in terms of when someone should be shamed and when they shouldn’t be, and when they should be threatened with the loss of their livelihood and when they shouldn’t be.

I think one place that I could be very certain of is that people should not be threatened with the loss of their life for expressing an idea that other people find morally repugnant, but if you’re taking away somebody’s ability to make an income forever and ever and ever, how far away from that is actually taking away . . . Oh, dear. My dog had something to say on this front. From taking away their life.

But I have trouble because, in general, I’m drawn to this book. I’m terrified of the notion of minds wide shut. I agree with you on your example of cadavers, and the great advances in the world have come from people saying and doing things that they weren’t supposed to do. I struggle to find an intellectually consistent standpoint on this.

So, Luigi and I thought it would be fun to launch this new segment as part of Capitalisn’t, where we’d discuss some news of the week and decide if it’s a Capital-is or a Capital-isn’t. I’m going to blame Luigi for suckering me into a conversation about soccer, something about which I know nothing. And so, we made a mistake on the podcast, as many listeners pointed out to us. And thank you for pointing out the mistake. I suggested that Messi should have taken more than a 50 percent pay cut without realizing that the rules of the league didn’t permit him to do so.

Luigi: So, please let us know when we make mistakes. That’s very valuable. But we’ll try not to make more of them.

Bethany: Let us know when we make mistakes, and let us know when you disagree with us, too. Because we can also learn a lot from what you all think, and we enjoy that.

So, on to this week’s Capital-is, Capital-isn’t. Many of you may have read about one of the more gigantic swings that I have seen in business in recent years, in which the subscription service called OnlyFans, which allows a feed of images and videos that are often too racy for Instagram, they announced that they were going to kick any sort of sexual activity, starting in October, off the site. Totally. In a dramatic swing, the creators, who have sort of made OnlyFans possible and lucrative, rebelled, and OnlyFans reversed its decision and said it would continue to allow these creators to be hosted on its site. So, Luigi, what do you think of this?

Luigi: I think that it is very interesting and apropos for what we discussed today. Because, on the one hand, we see the credit-card processors were exerting pressure on OnlyFans not to accept sex workers, but then there was a revolt of the founder and many of the participants that pushed the company in the other direction. So, here, we see workers on one end and the financiers on a different end.

Bethany: Which is a fascinating dynamic, because you normally think, in sex work, that the workers are being exploited by the all-powerful owner of a site or, in the old world, a pimp. In this case, the workers felt like they weren’t being exploited. This was their means of making their living. And so, it’s a reversal of what many of us would think of as the age-old dynamic of how this stuff works.

Although I’m still unclear as to why the payment processors ultimately reversed their decision, I actually think that, overall, the entire story is a Capital-is. The site tried to do something that was economic pressure from their payment processors saying we won’t continue to allow you to do this, so they responded. And then they realized, oh, dear, we can’t survive without this content. Look at how much we’re going to lose if we allow this to go through, so we need to figure out an alternative in order to go forward. It was the economic power gained by a group of creators banding together and saying we’re all gone if you do this and, suddenly, you don’t have a site anymore.

Luigi: But also, what do you accomplish by kicking them off this platform? I don’t think you stop this market. This market will exist in some form or another and probably will go to the dark web or go to other sites that are of less quality, less transparency.

Bethany: Well, that’s always been the core philosophical or moral argument behind the legalization of prostitution at perhaps one of its most extremes. You’re not going to get rid of this stuff. And so, making yourself feel good and ethical by refusing to associate with it, while at the same time actually hurting the very people you purport to be helping, strikes me as moral posturing.

Luigi: Another example in which shaming doesn’t work.

Bethany: Yeah. Yet another example in which shaming doesn’t work. But I like that this played out publicly, so we could all see what happened and think about it. If we believe that economic decisions are a part of the core of capitalism, then this, in the end, seems to be a pretty pure case of the economics winning at the end of the day. With, again, the caveat that the piece of it I don’t understand is why the payment processors reversed their position. But I understand why OnlyFans did what it did in response both to pressure from its payment processors and then in response to the realization that it was going to lose an enormous chunk of their business. That seems, to me, like a Capital-is.

Luigi: I agree. Even if I think that part of the reason why Visa and MasterCard have so much power is because they are an oligopoly and so, they can exert undue pressure on what takes place. That’s the part of Capitalisn’t.

Bethany: Yes. I agree with you. I see nothing wrong with people making choices that are in accordance with their own values, but when companies have so much power that they can literally dictate the way the world goes based on whatever their own values might be, that’s a dangerous situation. Even if you agree with their values in some cases, you also have to accept the possibility that, with other decisions, you may not agree with their values.

One of the things I am wondering, though, if I weren’t on the side of the OnlyFans workers in this case, if I thought they were being exploited and they needed this move to protect them, would I be intellectually consistent? Would I still say this was a Capital-is? I’m not quite sure of that answer.

Luigi: I agree. Why don’t Visa and MasterCard stop sales or the charges for automatic guns? Because they could do that.

Bethany: Exactly. And so, I think it’s really shocking how much hypocrisy there is in the world. And I try to be aware of it in myself. I’m not always perfect about that, but I try to be aware of it.