DOAC Stevenson versus Priestley: Who won?
Why a two-hour debate on the pitfalls of capitalism is just what we need right now....
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In this week’s edition:
Is DOAC the new Newsnight?
Meta stole my work; why I’m not bothered
The consequences of low birth rates
Substacks I’d recommend
It is 2.5 hours long, but that hasn’t put off 2.5 million people watching it. Like him or loath him, you cannot deny that Steven Bartlett, the social media marketing supremo, understands what sells…. and oddly, what is selling these days ain’t entrepreneurial 5am routines but a debate about wealth inequality. As Bartlett himself states at the end of the duel, ‘these are the conversations we need to be having right now’.
For those who have no idea what I am talking about, last week the Diary of a CEO podcast hosted a debate between former financial trader turned inequality campaigner Gary Stevenson, who claims to have been among the best in the business, and entrepreneur and author Daniel Priestley. The aim was to explore whether hard work still leads to wealth in today’s economy and so….. obviously I listened with some interest. Full disclosure: I’m currently doing Daniel Priestley’s Entrepreneur’s Course (it’s excellent by the way) and I’ve also just written a book on social inequality, Inheritocracy, which touches on many of the themes of Gary Stevenson’s work, so I’ve got skin in the game as it were. Here are my thoughts on their ideological duel…
1. It IS worth listening to… but on double speed
There’s a lot of macho posturing and, frankly, too much repetition throughout the debate. Both in argument and phrasing. Priestley repeatedly insists that the digital nomad world makes taxing the rich impossible and the only way of fixing capitalism is to encourage an entrepreneurial economy. So far, so rational. But he overly assumes that everyone can just be an entrepreneur. They can’t.
Gary Stevenson repeatedly claims the unarguable moral high ground ("people can’t afford to feed their kids") while simultaneously expressing a sort of disaffected detachment ("I don’t have to be here, I’ve made millions"). It’s a curious mix of forceful moral urgency and forced personal ambivalence that I sometimes found irritating.
The debate isn’t particularly well chaired by Steven Bartlett, who allows Stevenson to use one of the oldest tricks in the book: barrage your opponent with so many questions that they eventually slip up — and then go in for the kill. It’s a tactic Stevenson uses repeatedly, but not always effectively. Bartlett should have pulled him back. He actually becomes far less combative towards the end.
I found Stevenson difficult to follow; his arguments were often disjointed, and I was never entirely sure what he actually believed. His strength lies in personal testimony — I was a trader, I’ve seen how nasty capitalism works from the inside — but beyond that, his position felt murky. Daniel Priestley, by contrast, came across as patient and polite, but completely naive in his faith that entrepreneurship will somehow lead us out of structural economic inequality, and all government needed to do was to be smaller. He also didn’t seem to appreciate the social and economic difference between solopreneurship and entrepreneurship, the diminishing rights and power of organised labour in the digital economy, and the fact that workers play as much of a role in wealth creation as entrepreneurs. Nor did he appreciate the intimate way that government, business and the third sector are often intertwined.
The tone of the debate, however, was remarkably civil, especially when compared to earlier infamous televised sparring matches such as that between ideological heavyweights like William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal, where insults flew and egos collided. No one got called a "crypto-Nazi" or threatened with a punch to the nose. We’ve progressed since the late sixties.
2. We ARE at an inflection point
Credit to Gary Stevenson for highlighting the crisis capitalism is in — and yes, I phrase it that way deliberately. He was far less convincing, however, when it came to diagnosing the crisis of the state, which is just as deep, just as urgent.
It does feel as though we’re living through another 1970s-style inflection point: a real brain drain, growing disillusionment with both government and the market to materially improve our lives, and a return to the politics of blame, always directed at the 'other'.
I would argue it’s worse than the 1970s, because we’re now living under true globalisation — not just the West with a few oil states in the margins, but a world shaped by multiple, competing centres of power. For those who haven’t quite clocked it yet, we (especially in Europe) are sleepwalking through one of the most economically, socially, and geopolitically challenging periods since the Second World War. Anyone under 45 knows that capitalism and government aren’t working for them, and with current demographics, political inertia, and mounting economic headwinds, there’s little reason to believe they will improve anytime soon.
This is why family support and the rise of Inheritocracy matter so much and are easy to understand. For those fortunate enough to benefit, it offers a protective buffer against today’s harsh economic realities of higher education costs, home ownership, and raising a family in the 21st century (as well as a pandemic and inflation). A point overlooked completely in the debate. There was little nuance. One thing both Priestley and Stevenson did agree on though: the current system is fuelling widening wealth inequality, and this is politically, economically, and socially unsustainable. Crucially, they both recognise that this is no longer just a working-class issue; it’s hitting the middle class just as hard (unless you have rich parents), which is why politics is all over the place right now.
3. The post-war years were exceptional (and unrepeatable)
Both Priestley and Stevenson agreed on one crucial point: for most of history, societies have been made up of a concentration of ultra-rich individuals and large numbers of the poor. Stevenson believes we are heading back in this direction unless we do something. He is right. But he cites the immediate postwar period as the blueprint for change. This is problematic.
Since the Thatcher years, there’s been a tendency on the left to romanticise the social democratic period from 1945 to 1979, while the right (and Daniel Priestley) are nostalgic about what could be called the long Thatcherite period: 1979-2008. The former era saw the formation of the welfare state and a marked reduction in social inequality for the post-war generation. The latter saw the liberalisation of markets and the rise of individualism, but crucially the birth of a property-owning democracy, and policies that largely benefitted ONE generation - mostly Baby Boomers (and some Gen Xers). But these were initiatives that could not be replicated for their children: the mass sale of council housing was a one-off, free tertiary education ended, and the triple lock on pensions will be long forgotten by the time I draw it. Boomers, born after the war, will likely be the only generation EVER to see through the original cradle-to-grave promise from the NHS.
If we are going to have a serious debate about the state of capitalism — and the state itself — we must first acknowledge that both 1945–79 and 1979–2008 were exceptional periods and for different reasons. We cannot simply attempt to recreate them or hold on to those promises. Demographics and globalisation won’t allow us to. We need to move beyond the arguments of history and face the reality of the times we are now living in. Stagnation and low growth for a start, which won’t simply be reversed by ‘unleashing’ our entrepreneurs. Arguably, much of the growth experienced between the 1980s-2000s was powered by North Sea Oil, a demographic dividend of young people, more women going into the workplace and immigration - and not by deregulation. Today, though, we are facing tough decisions about major structural questions that successive politicians have dodged for years, if not decades: from energy generation to education, from social care to house building.
4. Are you an idealist or a realist?
You could argue this wasn’t a debate between left and right, but between realism and idealism. Priestley positioned himself as the realist, particularly on taxation, arguing that what matters is not what you should tax, but what you can tax. That’s true, but Stevenson is right when he says, what is deemed possible changes over time amid political pressure. Stevenson is the idealist here. Having witnessed the cruel realities of casino capitalism on the trading floor, he wants to fight for something better, and who doesn’t feel sympathy for that right now? I should say that when Stevenson speaks, it is very different from millennial socialism — that time when, believe it or not, many millennials (and the Labour party leader) were taking economic and political cues from Russell Brand. At least Stevenson has inhabited the world he critiques, which lends his arguments a degree of insider credibility.
But the bigger issue, for me, is that we’re still obsessing over the one per cent super-rich and how to tax them. While that’s obviously important, the real problems run far deeper. Much of the debate circled around inequality, but offered little reflection on what
brilliantly calls vulture capitalism. The free market is no longer that free. Nor did they dwell adequately on the systemic failures of the education system, which continues to prepare people for an economy that no longer exists. Or what we do about the swelling numbers of young people not in training, education or employment with no future and costing the state billions. Even more striking was the absence of any meaningful discussion about AI, and the ways it is set to upend not just jobs, but entire ideas about value, labour, and human purpose. The conversation, for all its passion, often felt locked in an outdated framework, when what we urgently need is a new one.My conclusion after 2.5 hrs, Bartlett should do more of this kind of content, there’s clearly a market for it, but maybe let other voices (and certainly more women) have a go.
The Money goes out of Motherhood
The Times reported this week that London’s Royal Free Hospital is to shut its maternity unit as birth rates tumble. The number of births in North London has fallen by 14 per cent in five years. I’ve written this before; public money tends to follow demographics, and now more than ever given the state of the public finances. Expect to see fewer resources going into education, maternity services and nurseries. Local government budgets are already pivoting away from child services to eldercare, as this is where the need is greatest.
The Convenience of Code
As artificial intelligence quietly slots itself into our daily routines, it is not simply transforming productivity. It is reshaping intimacy. I’m hearing increasingly of individuals turning to AI for the kinds of conversations once reserved for partners, coaches, line managers or therapists. How long before this efficiency tool becomes something we lean on for emotional support?
Students now rely on AI for private tutoring, guidance, and even reassurance. Workers consult it to navigate sensitive workplace conversations or to structure tricky emails. In both cases, AI has assumed the role of confidant, reliable, nonjudgmental, and crucially, always available. It gives the instant feedback that so many of us crave.
When it comes to intimacy, crudely speaking, the genders are using it differently. Women are engaging with AI for thoughtful, attentive conversation. An experience often absent in online dating. Men, on the other hand, are gravitating toward AI predictably for fantasy and stimulation of a different kind.
We hear constantly that AI will make human interactions even more important, whether in the workplace, friendship, or educational space. Will it really? I’m no longer confident of this. On the contrary, there’s a clear appeal to low-maintenance, emotionally responsive machines. Ones that anticipate our thoughts without requiring us to consider their feelings, beliefs, or values. A machine that constantly adapts and bends to our will (for now, at least) risks eroding our capacity for empathy and patience with actual human beings.
The real question for the next generation is not whether AI makes human interactions more important, but whether future generations will be equipped to engage in the difficult reciprocal business of human relationships when they’ve been taught to only think in terms of a one-way selfish dialogue.
LLM’ed
Like most published authors, I tapped my name into the Atlantic database this week and found that Meta had used my research and publications for their AI training.
The publishing world is in outrage, but I’m not. Why? Well, because it has been nearly a decade since I wrote those books and the fact is that my ideas have changed quite considerably. It is obviously different if you write fiction, but as a non-fiction author, I feel completely detached from my earlier published works. They were written by a different person, in a very different time. I’ve moved on. By the way, this is just an observation and definitely not an adequate strategy to combat the AI/copyright issues.
Rent, don’t Buy
My husband adores art. He wants to live with art, not just admire it from a respectful distance. The only problem? Original artwork costs a small fortune.
Enter: Interrupted Art. Founded by former Tate curator Stephanie Crosland-Goss, this London-based art membership lets you rent curated original artworks on a subscription model to trial in your home. It was his Christmas present last year, and it’s been a complete hit. We’ve had two of their pieces in our home and LOVED both.
Interrupted Art has just launched their ‘Independent Collector’ membership tier, giving you access to their live online collection. You get to browse, select, and book delivery of artwork straight to your door. It’s perfect for those who prefer to live with art before they commit to buying it. So if your walls are craving more than IKEA prints, click to find out more.
Substacks I’d recommend….
Substack is Twitter enhanced. Here’s some stacks I’ve been reading… and yes, I like an ideological mix.
Left-Wing Economist
Kids These Days with Generations Expert
American Author
who writes about class.Author of multiple books,
whose book Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us, I’ve been reading this week, and it is the topic of next week’s newsletter.
Thanks for reading,
Eliza
Just finished Generational Shift and about to start Inheritocracy and I love that you've posted about this DOAC episode!