[Uehreka]

Part of the problem is that people say “I’m telling you someone’s making a buck, just follow the money”, then they don’t actually follow the money. For many people, it’s enough to just say that catchphrase and not even bother looking into it. The argument wins itself.

Another part of the problem is that when I do see people follow the money, they often come up with something like “the deputy undersecretary of the USPS’s brother used to work for Ford (as a mechanic at a dealership when they were in college)!” And then they treat that fact as if it overrules all the complicated forces that go into this kind of organizational decision-making.

So no, following the money is not a bad idea on paper. But in practice it’s often very sloppy, to the point that it’s frequently annoying when trying to have meaningful debate about policy issues.

[haswell]

To clarify my parent comment, I'm not advocating for blindly resorting to "follow the money", and I acknowledged that. But your response is actually substantive and delves into some of the pitfalls of this kind of thinking, which was missing from the GP, and really what I was asking for.

[voldemort1968]

> it’s enough to just say that catchphrase and not even bother looking into it. The argument wins itself.

And that is why it's thought suppression.