The Marketplace of Ideas Isn’t What You Think
It’s a Market for Allies — Ideas are just the Currency
The marketplace of ideas isn’t what you think. Thinkers like John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes believed that in a free market of ideas, true and useful ideas would outcompete the rest.
Today, the marketplace for ideas is bigger than ever. But the research shows that false news travels faster than true stories. A more robust marketplace of ideas is making us more polarized, not bringing us to consensus.
How does the marketplace for ideas really work? Let’s dive into a telling example.
Are Wolves Good or Bad?
One of my uncles grew up raising sheep and cattle on a dairy farm. To this day, there’s a wolf-skin hanging from a nail in the living room. “This was a wolf, a BAD guy,” my aunt said by way of explanation. Wolves kill and eat livestock — and sometimes people.
In 1900, a big portion of the US population were livestock farmers who had a stake in the story that wolves were the bad guys, and should be exterminated. 40% of the American population lived on a farm. Deer were protected by season and bag limits as early as 1851, but it was open season on wolves.
Livestock farmers used to say, “The only good wolf is a dead wolf.” If you wanted to be on good terms with a farmer, you couldn’t go around arguing otherwise. Even city-dwellers read their kids the story of the Big Bad Wolf.
A critical mass of vocal proponents kept the rest of us aligned and supporting their story — wolves are the enemy. The last pack of wolves in Yellowstone was exterminated in 1926.
Demographics Change, Facts Don’t
Then the demographics changed. Fewer and fewer Americans were farmers — about 2% at last count. Less than half of them raise livestock. Only a few hundred farmers raise livestock near areas of the US where a wolf could survive in the wild.
Almost nobody had a stake in the story about exterminating wolves anymore. The number of people who remembered growing up on the farm was dwindling. The story of the big, bad wolf was still popular, but it was undefended. There was no social cost to disagreeing.
At the same time, educators across America were teaching children the idea of responsibility, stewardship and greater purpose through environmentalism.
Environmentalism was less regulated and less controversial than teaching religion, and gave educators a lens to teach many of the same kinds of lessons. The environmental movement saw wolves and other predators as part of the natural ecosystem, unfairly maligned by farmers who brought slow, tasty domestic animals into the wolves’ territory.
Same Facts, Different Market Result
By the 1990’s the tide of public opinion had shifted. Students had aligned with teachers on the environmental agenda, and then grown up to become parents and teachers themselves. If you want the right answer on the test, you’d better agree with the teacher.
A generation later, you can talk about the benefits of wolves almost anywhere in America without anyone telling you that you’re wrong. What people believe about wolves now reflects their desire to align with their friends and neighbors who believe the environmental ideas they were taught in school.
Here’s a picture of my daughter wearing a shirt that says, “Just a Girl who Loves Wolves.” She picked it out at the Zoo.
The Wolves Haven’t Changed
Needless to say, the wolves haven’t changed. They are the same animals they were 100 years ago. A wolf poses the same level of danger to livestock and humans; and has the same beneficial impacts on the wild ecosystem around it. None of the facts have changed. The marketplace of ideas produced a different result, even when the facts stayed the same.
In 1995 the National Park Service re-introduced grey wolves into Yellowstone National Park. Environmentalists praised the wolves’ effects in reducing the Elk population that was overgrazing the park. The elk herd was reduced from 19,000 to 6,000. Beavers returned to the park, finally having enough small trees to eat and build dams.
And, of course, some wolves left Yellowstone and ate farmers’ livestock. Wolves killed 1,853 cattle and 3,723 sheep between 1987 and 2012.
What Can We Learn?
The marketplace of ideas produced a completely different result in 1900 than in 1995, even though the facts were the same. The marketplace of ideas does not work to find truth in the way that John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes said it worked.
It’s primarily a marketplace for social allies, where ideas are the currency.
We accept ideas to align ourselves with other people who are important to us. In 1900, the average American wanted to be aligned with their friends and neighbors who raised livestock. In 1995, the average American wanted to be aligned with the environmental message taught to every schoolchild.
If you want to change people’s minds, you have to understand how the marketplace of ideas really works.
