At some point during a lengthy argument today with an unabashed capitalism apologist, I realised that a fundamental cause of friction in our argument was more a matter of naïveté or cynicism (depending on your point of view) than political polarisation.

The argument centred loosely on the relative societal benefits resulting from the generosity of philanthropic billionaires.

Arguably, the discourse began with a fairly polemic Scroopular statement: "Society needs more people like Bill Gates." I don't believe it would be fair to say my reaction was knee-jerk, but I did take the bait, quickly pointing out that the generosity of the private sector is hardly solid scaffolding with which we can address societies many ills. Riposte: of course this was not what he was saying - but that society is without doubt better off for the donations of these people.

Counter point - point - counter point. Much was discussed, but as interesting as a blow-by-blow account here would be, it would actually detract from the main thesis of this rant, which is: in the end I discovered that we each actually took offence at the motivation of the arguments more than the arguments themselves.

That is, Scroop took offence to the fact that I would even bring into question the actions of seemingly charitable individuals because it's their own private affairs. With respect to what they do with their money, what right do we have to question their motives, or besmirch their good intentions with suspicious accusations? Scroop believed that I was revealing a blindly far leftist agenda simply by asking why we should not assess the social costs of this transaction between a private entity and the broader public.

I, on the other hand, would encourage anyone to question anything that effects themselves or the society in which they live; so while I wouldn't say that the Gates foundation should be dismantled or their incredibly generous work to worthy causes should be overlooked, I would say that only a fool would keep their hands out and their eyes closed. In fact, I firmly believe that in all things that interact with society, all possible social costs should be measured. To quote Thomas Jefferson, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance".

Needless to say, when we realised the true sources of our disparities we swiftly made amends. Barriers were dropped, tears were shed and we swore we'd never argue again. Although I believe Scroop still holds a rather disapproving view of my perpetual scepticism, I think we each share a better understanding of the others respective dispositions, and how they influence our language and colour our respective points of view - the raving sceptic and the blind apologist.