Coffee Houses and the Free Market of Ideas

While there’s a far greater amount of information accessible to all, there has rarely been a society where different types of people are able to have less discourse with one another. The ability for various groups to advocate for their beliefs in a hostile environment is greatly diminished by the fragmentation allowed by the Internet and regulatory barriers. Neighborhood divisions, and other forms of class segregation have made the working class or non-expert rich people far outside of where important ideas are discussed. Those who innovate in certain industries have almost no incentive to explain their work to anyone outside of their industry. However, in the 16th and 17th century, coffee houses in Britain forced discourse between academics, business people, and the everyman. Everything was challenged, and new ideas were generated from the cross germination of different kinds of ideas. The university was complemented well by the coffee houses’ rough and tumble form of academic pursuit. The radically free exchange of ideas allowed for society and business innovation that could have never been created within the confines of a university.

Shortly after they emerged in Britain, coffee houses became a central nexus for the exchange of ideas. Rather than the pubs of the time that incentivized drunkenness and merrymaking, coffee houses allowed for sharp-witted conversation and debate. At first they catered to the elites in Oxford, but once they moved to London they became a free for all that brought nobles head to head with merchants and the poor. Leading academics would have to explain and justify their work to people with a life of strictly practical experience. Their contentious yet civil discussions allowed truth to overcome poor thinking. Commoners developed a forward thinking vision of the world from academics, and academics were able to ground their research in critiques from normal people. Citizens were able to form plans together so powerfully that until protestation brought it to an end, King Charles the second briefly banned London coffee houses. The meeting of so many different types of people even created financial markets as we know them today. Stock traders met in these coffee shops and even Lloyd’s of London and several other financial firms had their start in coffee houses. The rapid economic growth of England during this time was not a necessary result of some enlightenment mindset, but rather arose from the free exchange of information between experts and those who knew the practical layout of the everyday world. The cutting edge of research was able to actually be put to effective use in a way that has not been possible and almost any other time.

The free and productive exchange of information in the coffee houses makes it clear just how siloed our current informational systems are. Universities, governmental organizations, businesses, and think tanks are all specializing with very little cross germination. Rather than justifying their research to normal people, researchers almost benefit from obscurity, as they can secure large government grants without ever having to explain their goals effectively to “the uneducated.” Of course, specialization has yielded much material progress, but research so divorced from the needs of normal people has a tendency to solve questions that are ever more discipline-specific. There are doubtless many specialized professionals who could discover new uses for their live’s work if they met the right people in a completely different industry. Even explaining their work to a laborer would have the opportunity to create far more benefit than a career researcher would ever think. Britain already had all the information needed to create financial markets or the progress that occurred in the 16th and 17th century, but only coffee houses allowed them to access it in the right way. Our current bias towards experts is greatly holding us back from utilizing the expertise of our society most effectively by people who have different aptitudes.

We must tear down the legislative and cultural barriers that stop our most valuable thinkers from getting prodded and challenged. The university system’s model of allowing only experts in the same field to credibly challenge someone has led to great systemic biases shared by all those in one discipline. Ever increasing levels of certification for different jobs further disincentivize people from different professions or disciplines interacting meaningfully. Hyperspecific government agencies also add to this problem by selecting an extremely biased group of people, who are all trained in one discipline and unable to see ramifications of their choices outside of the framework they have been taught. While some would claim that the internet has allowed us to challenge the experts more than ever before, it has actually often led us to believe things they could easily refute. When the experts are not even in the room to defend themselves, and the discourse is far from civil, the truth fractures rather than gains stability. The coffee houses were so effective because they allowed disagreement while building to an ever-growing set of agreed-upon truths. The internet does no such thing, and government regulations that further fragment professions and information are merely making the problem worse