Counterpoint
Every episode gets a follow-up.
Challenge an argument, add what I left out, or correct something I got wrong. I’ll bring the strongest responses into a Counterpoint episode about a week later.
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Questions for Counterpoint
Choose a question to read more and respond.
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I argue that AI inherited distrust of the tech industry. But people might dislike AI for reasons specific to AI, regardless of how they felt about other technology. What does that explanation get right, and what does my argument miss?
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You don’t have to dislike tech to dislike living next to a data center. Am I reading a broader backlash into opposition that’s really about what these facilities do to the places around them? If you live near one, I’d especially like to hear from you.
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How much of the left’s anger at tech comes from tech leaders embracing Trump? Does that political shift explain the change in attitudes better than the story I tell in the episode?
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I keep saying “tech,” but much of my argument focuses on social media. Is that too broad a label? Where does the story hold up for the rest of the tech industry, and where does it fall apart?
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The whole premise might be overblown. Disliking tech doesn’t seem to stop people from using it. How should we understand the gap between what people say about these companies and what they do every day?
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Maybe the techlash is mostly an elite story. Journalists, academics and politicians lost a lot of their gatekeeping power to tech platforms, and they’ve had every reason to tell a story of public betrayal. Meanwhile regular people kept buying the phones, using the apps and trying the AI tools. If you think the distrust lives mostly in newsrooms and on Capitol Hill rather than in kitchens, make the case.
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Cars, radio, television and the early internet all had their panics, hearings and moral crusades, and all of them ended up woven into ordinary life. Maybe today’s backlash is the normal price of a technology that’s changing everything at once, not proof that tech lost anyone. If you think this moment looks like those earlier ones, or think it’s actually different, tell me which precedent fits best.
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Make another argument, fill a gap, or flag a correction.
Questions for Counterpoint
Choose a question to read more and respond.
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I argue that people are right to feel a middle-class life has drifted out of reach. But by many measures, young people today live better than wealthy people did in the 1970s: bigger homes, more travel, more meals out, and a computer in their pocket that does almost anything. Is the problem what life costs, or what we now expect a normal life to include?
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I call cheap goods the wrong abundance. But cheaper goods helped poorer households most, because they spend more of their budgets on them. Is the problem that TVs and phones got cheap, or just that housing, health care, college and child care didn't?
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Groceries are now about 8% of what the average household spends, one of the smallest shares ever. Outright hunger, the kind earlier generations knew, is rare in America. Is that one of the biggest achievements of the last century, and did I give it enough credit?
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I put these two stories side by side, as if one helped cause the other. But maybe they're separate stories that happened at the same time. Is there a real link between cheap goods and expensive housing, health care and college, and if so, what is it?
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Housing and health care each got a long section, but they're enormous systems. What's the biggest reason they got so expensive that I left out?
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Did the talent go where the money was? Entrepreneurs follow capital, and capital follows margins. The highest margins are in software, not in big, slow, physical systems like hospitals, construction and schools. How much of this story is that the best builders spent 25 years working on the things that got cheap?
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I argue social media makes people feel further behind but doesn't write their bills. How much of that feeling comes from seeing what other people have, all day, on a screen?
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I treat owning a home as part of the middle-class deal. But for most of history, and in rich countries like Germany and Switzerland today, most people rent. America's postwar ownership boom may have been the exception. Should owning a home be the goal at all?
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I end on the midterms as the first round of a longer fight. But voters in both parties now rank affordability as a top issue, and states and cities are already changing zoning, child care and drug prices. Are we at the point where things start getting cheaper again?
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Make another argument, fill a gap, or flag a correction.
Questions coming soon
The questions for this episode will appear here when they’re ready.
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What happens next
NLW reviews the submissions and brings the strongest arguments into the follow-up episode, alongside his own counterarguments.
Counterpoint usually follows the main episode by about a week. If you’re listening later, you can still respond to an older episode.
Free to submit. Free to listen.