Honest and efficacy as predicates for substantive conversations

His case study is interesting but his larger point is more important.  From Accountability is a Prerequisite of Respect by Freddie deBoer.

He starts with the big point.

Suppose that you were walking down the street in any decently-sized city and you were approached by someone with a small cardboard box seeking donations. The box says “Save the Whales!” on it with a little picture of a humpback. Let’s say you do want to save the whales. So: do you give the guy money or not? I think most whale-saving proponents don’t give the guy money. Because a) they don’t know whether this guy is honest and really intends to use the money on saving whales and b) they have no idea if he or his organization will actually be effective at saving whales. In other words when people are asked to contribute to a cause a natural and indeed necessary instinct is to ask about the honesty of the do-gooder in question and the efficacy of their program. Otherwise there’s no point, there’s no progress. Why would we bother to empower people to fix things if we hadn’t asked whether they were honest and effective?

Those absolutely basic requirements of positive change have been completely evacuated from the public discussion of social justice politics, due to the fact that most people are afraid of the consequences of engaging in adult discrimination about these politics and also because they don’t really respect the people who espouse them. This is the state of social justice politics today. You and I and everyone else are beset with people rattling the change in their little cardboard boxes. And this is the obvious critique that liberals fight so damn hard to pretend that they don’t understand: none of us have any more reason to trust the people panhandling for money, clout, and fame through the auspices of social justice than we do reason to trust the guy trying to take our dollar bills for the whales. We are all being told, by progressive consensus, that we have to mindlessly donate, ask no questions, never wonder about motives, and never, ever consider the efficacy of their efforts. We either blindly fall in line when they say to give them whatever they want, including the adoption of extremely contentious policies in a polarized democratic country, or we’re on the other side, the bad side, and we have to live with the black mark of being “part of the problem.”

Nowhere is this dynamic more obvious than concerning BlackLivesMatter.

Then dives into the case of the BLM missing $10.6 billion unaccounted for with no media questions about either honesty or efficacy.

I think that one of the Achille's Heels of the internet is exactly that, we have little capacity in social media space to assess the honesty or efficacy of the individuals with whom we are corresponding.  

For the past week there has been an active debate on NextDoor on the nature and intent of proposed City Council changes to the zoning laws.  It sure looks like the intent is to undermine single family residential neighborhoods and to increase City tax revenues while creating all sorts of opportunities for developers and real estate agents.  

It is a serious debate and assertions and occasional links to data or studies has been going on for several days.  Two camps, of course, have emerged, those passionately opposed to the proposed to those changes and those passionately in support.  These are all neighbors.  

Yesterday, one of the opposers looked up on LinkedIn a couple or three of the most frequent pro-posters.  Architects and developers.  

Suddenly the question of honesty is brought forward more explicitly.  Those against the proposed changes are arguing a range of issues mostly related to the community as a whole - likely impact on taxes, on quality of life, on traffic congestion, on crime, etc.  

All of a sudden those arguing for the changes are exposed to be arguing around the narrow interest of their personal pocketbook.  Are they honest?  

Could be.  But now the question is raised it is hard not to put it back in a box.

Honest and efficacious - They are at the heart of any substantive conversation.  They can be challenging to answer in a person-to-person setting.  Almost impossible to answer in a social media context as currently constructed.  

What if the perceived polarization isn't about partisanship at all?  What if it is an unintended consequence of too many conversations occurring in a social media context where honesty and efficacy can't be adequately assessed.