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Here are some arguments I've found somewhat effective on normies:
Clearly draw the distinction between consumption and capital allocation. Capitalism isn't about who gets to live a lavish lifestyle — in practice, higher-ups in communist countries often get to do this, and you can, in principle, limit it as much as you like under capitalism with consumption or luxury goods taxes. Capitalism is really about who gets to decide where to invest resources to maximize growth. Most people recognize that politicians and government bureaucrats probably aren't going to be the best at deciding e.g. which new technologies to invest in.
Point out that the ultra-rich, who they've probably been told are hoarding wealth, mostly just own shares of companies. Bezos or Musk aren't sitting on warehouses full of food that could feed the hungry or vast portfolios of real estate that could house the homeless. They've got Amazon and Tesla shares. Those companies themselves aren't sitting on very much physical wealth either; most of their value comes from the fact that people believe they'll make money in the future. So even if you liquidated their assets, there would be little benefit for the have-nots.
Compare the scale of billionaire wealth with government resources, e.g. point out that the federal government spends the equivalent of Musk's entire fortune every 12 days or so. I find that this helps dispel the idea that famous (or infamous) capitalists really have 'too much' power. Use this to make the point that taking wealth out of the hands of capitalists wouldn't actually serve to deconcentrate power, but to further concentrate it.
Point out that US government spending on education and healthcare often already exceeds that of European social democracies in absolute terms; emphasize that the reason we don't have better schools and free healthcare is because of ineffective government spending, not private wealth hoarding. Ask if it really makes sense to let the political mechanisms that have produced these inefficiencies control of even more of the economy.
Explain that capitalism is just a scaled version of a natural sort of voluntary exchange. If I make birdhouses in my garage and trade them to my neighbor for tomatoes they grow in their garden, we're technically doing capitalism. A communist system has to come in at some point — maybe, in practice, not at the point where I'm exchanging a handful of birdhouses a year, but certainly at some point if I start making and exchanging a lot of them — and tell me I'm not allowed to do this. The state is already supplying the citizenry with the quantity and quality of birdhouses and tomatoes it deems necessary, and I'm undermining the system. Most people will intuitively grasp that there's something screwy about this, that I'm not actually harming anyone by making and exchanging birdhouses, and that the state really has no business telling me I can't.
Point out that capitalism is, in fact, actually doing a very good job of delivering the kind of outcomes they probably desire from communism. For instance it has substantially reduced working hours in rich countries, has made the poor and the middle class in the US vastly better off (and this didn't stop in the '70s as they've probably been told, per the last chart here), and has lifted billions of people out of poverty globally over the last few decades. If they invoke environmental concerns, point out that the USSR actually had a fairly atrocious environmental record, while almost all new electricity generation in the US is already carbon-free.
That's counting batteries as "generation" rather than load shifting, btw. And it's like a 48GW real increase on a 1300GW system, or 3.7%. whereas all the "electrification" programs predict doubling demand by 2030 due to electric everything. So less than half the growth rate required.
And next year Biden's 100% tariffs on EVs, solar and batteries hit.
Well, calling them "biden's tariffs" is a bit of a joke when he probably never even drooled on the order, but you know what I mean.
Edit: oh Jesus Christ they literally used nameplate capacity for solar. So multiply all the solar figures by .12, meaning all the solar built in the US will produce ~4x as much as the single nuclear plant built in that same year, and probably less than we lost from the decommissioned coal plants
Edit: after doing the math an absolutely optimal setup in the SW US might be more like .2 than .12. Germany's "energy revolution" dragged down global solar capacity factor along with their economy lol
While this error is atrocious, capacity factor of solar in the entire US is around double that, almost tripple for the sun belt.
Will be interesting how/if that changes the installation numbers. The Chinese are sitting on close to 1 TW of yearly production capacity. They'll probably lower prices, again.
I know a guy who directly imported the newest generation of 400W panels for his farm from China himself. He jokes that the panels are now cheaper than glass, cheaper than wall cladding and almost cheaper than fencing. He puts them on everything. 100% tariffs wouldn't change things much at this point.
Also, right now installation costs are dominating the price of new solar capacity anyway.
I guess the solar build out in Germany produced some worst-case capacity figures, didn't it. Is it really that good in the sun belt?
And yeah, I priced out a solar build recently and noticed concrete, posts, and especially wire would cost far more than the panels. Let alone all the charger and inverter kit.
All of Germany is north of Minneapolis and Halifax (to choose two famously cold North American cities). This doesn't matter as much as you think if you are doing utility-scale solar, because you can pitch south-facing panels to match the latitude so they face the midday sun directly. (You need more space between panels so they don't shade each other, but in the world we live in utility-scale solar is investment-limited, not land-limited.) If you are just sticking panels to roughly-south-facing pitched roofs the way most subsidised solar installs do, then it matters a lot.
The other issue is that most of the Midwest is a semi-desert, and therefore sunnier than Europe. Minneapolis gets 2711 hours of sunshine a year. Halifax, which is coastal, gets 1962. Berlin gets 1728 and Munich gets 1777.
There is a reason why the UK has more installed wind than solar, despite solar being a generally superior technology.
I did the math for my location (similar lat to Paris), and even with best seasonal angle practices you're still only getting 10% of what you would in summer (while non-industrial energy use more than doubles due to heating). Germany's significantly further north with worse weather as you say.
It hadn't really struck me that Texas and Arizona are basically as good as North Africa for solar. I should run the numbers for that and get a cap factor estimate.
Edit: fixed 31 degree angle in Phoenix AZ, you're getting a 25% base capacity factor minus probably at least 15% losses to AC delivered.
So more like 20% CF than the 36% you figured. But there's only 24% lower output in winter than summer, which is amazing compared to up north.
Of course all this excludes noon curtailment losses, which are going to be a big deal very shortly. The entire new battery capacity listed as "generation" in the doc doesn't even begin to cover for that.
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