This ineligibility for closer scrutiny is there for a reason. It is in the protection of that kernel of irrationality and some vague notion of individuality that can one sell absolutely anything. Trillions of dollars in this economy ride on the fact that millions of people will wake up tomorrow and make a suboptimal decision — or more accurately be convinced about their economically sub-optimal decisions — about their decision to buy some product.

The other important facet of everyday conversation, as I mentioned earlier, is that it is done primarily between economic and social equals. Conversation between classes has altogether dried up. This drying up can be seen as a result of drying up of places where these interactions used to take place. Cross class interaction or conversations always took place when the person from a lower class offered a service to the person from the higher class. The fora for these exchanges of anecdotes and stories between economic classes have almost dried up under current economic regime.

The mom and pop stores manned by neighborhood people have been replaced by chain stores that hire salaried employees with high turnover and whose only focus is to provide an efficient economic transaction and offer an empty courtesy. These routine commercial interpersonal transactions not only keep us from learning the difficulties across classes, hence possibly build empathy, but also have a profound impact on our everyday interaction with other people - even of similar social status.

Let me weave in another anecdote here to illustrate the point. When I first came into this country, I was often asked some variation of "How are you doing?" at the beginning of each conversation. I frequently responded by providing full descriptions of how I was doing. It was only after many months and after receiving numerous impatient glances that it dawned on me people expected nothing but empty curtsies.

The normative point I want to make is that our everyday conversation affects the nature and extent of our knowledge and style of argumentation. For example, it affects whether one is interested in politics or not, and the political proclivities one may have. The site of everyday conversation needs to be reclaimed to build a healthy body politic. Specifically for politics, we may need revival of public conversational spaces, what Habermas writes about and what Tocqueville observed.