Read your best opponents

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You are not going to be convinced of errors the left is making by alt right trolls online.
You are not going to be convinced of errors the right is making by wokescold teenagers.

At the very least, watch a video by someone who has put time into it.

Ideally, read timeless philosophy/political philosophy. Left wing? Try some Adam Smith***. Liberal - like most people are? Read Edmund Burke*. Right wing? Read Karl Marx. Conservative? Read books by minorities speaking about what it is like to be a minority, for eg James Baldwin. Not really conservative but hate SJWs? Read third wave feminist thinkers - I promise you nobody is arguing for 43 literal genders. Pro-trans rights? Me too - but I have read enough second wave feminism to know the argument for abolishing gender includes cis people's genders, too.

Read people you vehemently disagree with. In book form. Unabridged e-book if you are dyslexic.

This way you are equipped to the best arguments your opponent will be making.

Make notes as you are doing & you can 1 see holes in the argument and 2 see where you agree with the ideal argument.

The internet is full of idiots with opinions. Some of which you agree with so you give the benefit of the doubt. Some of which you don't, so it looks absurd. Traditionally published books by non-celebrities** (in particular, books that stand the test of time) weed some of that idiocy out and leave you instead with the opposing argument in its ideal form.

* As much as I'm pro America being a free nation & countries not being run by aristocrats, I agree with him that revolution is a bloody affair - it's worth asking yourself if it's worth it for what you're wanting to achieve or if there's better ways.
** So many books by famous people are only published cos they'll sell cos they're already on tv or youtube.
*** I must admit I haven't done this yet. But I have read almost all of Ayn Rand. So when someone comes at me with an 'I'm a Randian objectivist' statement then go onto discussing the supernatural, I know that they're contradicting themselves for the sake of convenience.

Honestly, don’t think anyone reading books written over a century ago should be having their mind changed. Anyone reading with the benefit of history can pick holes in Marx or Smith that modern proponents would usually acknowledge. Well actually a Marxist probably wouldn’t ever acknowledge Marx’s mistakes, but if you’re remotely sceptical then you’ll spot them, and it isn’t really relevant to political discussions today.

I would suggest that for most people, a political biography from a retired or retiring elder politician will give you a better insight into their views than a theory book would do. Or if you really want a grounding in theory, then at least go with Friedman over Smith and Piketty over Marx.

I read some adam smith. two passages from the wealth of nations stuck out to me: the one where has a go at division of labour, because it makes people stupid and ignorant. And the one where he talks about the invisible hand. Basically every economist misquotes that as the invisible hand if the market - but adam smith wrote that capitalists would never invest abroad, showing love for their nation and, as if guided by an invisible hand, would invest at home.

adam smith was wrong about globalization, and it's therefore invalid to invoke him as argument for free markets. Almsot every economist I told this got really upset, but admitted to never actually having read adam smith.

I second the notion that classical philosophical works have limited contemporary value; a running joke from my university days was that a work would earn the label "classic" once it had nothing useful left to say.

And the problem with a lot of pre-WWII philosophical works is that they made assumptions about politics and economics which no longer hold today. With nuclear weapons, global warming, overpopulation, globalization, digitalization and automation (add additional "-ations" if necessary), the world today looks radically different than just a 100 years ago.

If philosophers like Adam Smith and Karl Marx were living in modern society, would they write they way they wrote?

Anyway, to understand the major "opponent" of the day (China), I would recommend the following:

- Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra Vogel, 2011.

This is likely the most authoritative biography of the man who "built" modern China. While strictly a biography, it also provides a detailed overview of the steps taken in the political drift away from the Marxism and communism of the Mao era towards the pragmatic state capitalism which defines China today.

- The Governance of China by Xi Jinping, 2014/2017/2020.

This is a collection of hundreds of Xi Jinping's speeches (the third volume was released last year). It provides an official account of the Chinese Communist Party's actual policy platform. If you want to know how the Chinese government sees and presents itself to the world, then this is the go-to source.

Last edited by GGPViper on 24 Jan 2021, 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Really?

Are you SURE the passage didnt read "its NOT the love of country, but market forces, that will lead capitalists to invest in their own country, and not abroad- as if by an invisible hand"? If that later were the case then he was still wrong (about our time, maybe not about his own), but wrong for reasons consistent with his free market ideas that he is known for.

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I just now Wikied "Invisible hand-Adam Smith". He only used the expression a few times in his writings. Not all of the times were in his famous "Wealth of Nations", and meant slightly different things by it at different times. So you might be right, but the pissed off economists you talked too might also be right about how he used the phrase.