From what I understand, Traldi is saying that reframing the debate as two groups of people who both care about free speech but just differ in degree is not very meaningful. It obscures the fact that their differences *are* the result of differences in abstract principles, not merely them arbitrarily drawing a line somewhere on a continuum of unacceptable vs acceptable speech.
It's like saying "the difference between capitalists and communists is really just the the degree to which they believe the government should control and distribute resources." It's technically true, but it obscures the fact that these are two groups *generally* committed to discretely different principles. The capitalist wants to maximize the free exchange of goods and services, while the communist wants to minimize inequality.
Similarly, there is a group of people *generally* committed to the notion of the free exchange of ideas and a group of people *generally* committed to the notion that language is a source of oppression and must be actively policed. People are imperfect and contradict themselves, and not everyone is arguing in good faith, and both groups *generally* respect the other idea to some extent, but that isn't enough to not recognize that these are fundamentally different groups with, in practice, irreconcilable differences.
I think your capitalists and communists analogy is useful, because we're not choosing between them. Developed countries have varying degrees of regulated market economies with welfare states. Debating between "capitalism is good, communism sucks" and "no, communism is good, capitalism sucks" does little to address the economic policy questions faced by the US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, etc.
You state: "The capitalist wants to maximize the free exchange of goods and services, while the communist wants to minimize inequality." However, this is not an accurate equivalence. In order to make a more accurate statement, you should add why the capitalist wants a free exchange of goods and services just as you state with communism. Communism's goal as you say is to minimize inequality; Capitalism's goal is to create a more prosperous and fair society for all by maximizing the free exchange of goods and services. One is the goal and the other is the means. It seems to me that you have conflated the two.
I'm more in the Grossman camp than the Traldi camp. There are few (no?) true absolutes in social principle. Everything is a line drawing exercise. What's shifted recently is the ever expanding definition of "Harm" along with the rejection of the concept of forgiveness. The "Harm" boundary used to be a fairly bright line...and certainly something able to be adjudicated. But now? Once "Harm" was broadened to "it hurts my feelings", and everything became a function of individual perception, it lost all defining principle.
But still... social shunning was always the libertarian fallback to how to enforce social norms. As an example, many who argue against the CRA because of it's intrusiveness into private spaces, counter argue that social shunning would have eventually overcome embedded racism. But social media changes the social shunning dynamic. Does the ability to create large mobs quickly negate the utility of social shunning? idk
"What is 'harm'?" is a good line to examine. If almost everyone accepts that some non-governmental restrictions on speech in the name of harm reduction are legitimate (e.g. the n-word), then the question becomes how to balance harm reduction and free speech. But as you note, that depends on what constitutes harm. Using anti-gay slurs as insults is a good example of something I think is harmful, and the social pressure against it that grew over my lifetime is a good example of a social pressure-induced speech restriction that doesn't unacceptably violate free speech. But making "hurts my feelings" the standard for "harm" is too broad, and warrants pushback. Primarily, it's this process of line-finding that I'm defending.
And I agree on the social media mobbing point. It's an important way the current moment is different from the in-other-ways-similar PC panic of the 1990s. It changes the social shunning dynamic, creating a new mechanism that can, at least sometimes, be an illiberal force. Some is just people expressing their opinions, some is an organized effort that's more about power than reasonable harm reduction. Some has elements of both. I'm not quite sure where the line is there.
There is -- or should be -- no line. Not in law. If one wants to object to someone else's expression in some non-physically-aggressive manner (in the libertarian sense) then they are welcome to do so on the principle of equal liberty. Congress shall make NO law abridging the freedom of expression. All the supposed exceptions to free-speech absolutism are equivocations that attempt to make legitimately outlawing physical force accompanied by some form of epiphenomenal expression equivalent to legitimately outlawing expression. Hurting someone's feelings or offending their sense of propriety is not harming them in any way they cannot avoid by merely discounting the offending expression. This is all so obvious that it is only the totalitarian mentality that can refuse to see it. Such a mentality does so for obvious reasons: Without thought control there can be no suppression of the individuality that demands personal sovereignty -- the death knell of all forms of collectivism.
I found this exceptionally worded and well-written but also rather beside the point. The more salient debate is over social sanctions, not legal proscription. It's more about discourse norms than speech laws.
I agree with Berny Belvedere that my post was mainly about the violation free speech by governments rather than by private entities and thus off-topic. I did say, however, if one wants to object to someone else's expression in some non-physically-aggressive manner (in the libertarian sense) then they are welcome to do so on the principle of equal liberty. This takes us closer to the point at issue, because we now see that objections to so-called 'hate speech' or 'misinformation' have started to use methods that can get persons fired, contracts cancelled, homes picketed by demonstrators and worse, sometimes approaching physical force.
I see no way to persuade those who use such tactics to gain control of the public narrative to stop doing so as long as such tactics continue to work. Thus, the only alternative is to apply the principle of equal liberty and use the same tactics -- plus creative new ones -- in response. It's pointless to whine about the breakdown of what Aristotle called "civic friendship".* If those with a liberal or libertarian or conservative turn of mind wanted to prevent that breakdown they would not have allowed the capture of their culture by the forces of collectivism, the dead end of which is, of course, genetic collectivism, including the so-called 'identity politics' in which former unique individuals disappear into whatever group the arbiters of such 'identities' wish to place them.
I understand that this is a rear guard action. The racial/sexual collectivists have a shockingly great majority of the power in academia, including K-12; media, including newspapers, television, Hollywood, cable, and internet social media; and even in so-called Big Tech, where dissenting voices can be silenced by being deprived of the business services modern communications require.
I see no way for American individualism to win against these odd except by having all the leaders in the anti-collectivist camp unite in a coordinated online movement to create a Civic Friendship Internet, where free expression will not be punished. The only way to achieve this that I can see is to (1) insure that none of the technical essentials for free expression are held as monopolies of the collectivists and (2) getting rid of centralized moderation of public forums and establishing user-driven moderation protocols, so that we will see sponsors of, for example, Pete's No-Porn-No-Spam-All-Else-Goes Protocol, Mona's Teen-Safe-Protocol, the Progressive-Safe-Space Protocol and so on. Some might couple with Subscribe/Ads/No-Ads protocols -- for example, where the user content is basically the whole content. Protocol sponsors could be amateurs, businesses in the editing business, of course, even user-guided robots, but they must not be 'cancellable' by any member of the Civic Friendship Internet, so that the users have the choice of their preferred protocol (if offered by the protocol sponsor) on any Civic Friendship website they visit. That is, for one kind of site I may want one type of editorial protocol, while on another, another. The editorial protocols would adapt to changing situations and evolve on the survival of the popular principle.
Such a Civic Friendship regime would actually _deserve_ the protection of Section 230: the website can arrange their interface in any way they like, post anything they like as a publisher under the same rules as print, but would have neither the burden nor the opportunity to 'censor' anyone. It would be just like the original dream that inspired Internet pioneers.
Meanwhile, for those who are not interested in civic friendship but in political power obtained by crushing dissent, We will have to retaliate in creative ways, including 'fund me' type sites for the purpose of 'insuring' free expression cannot be destroyed by economic tactics and for the character assassination attempts respond with appropriate portions of bile and ridicule.
P.P.S. I'm going to subscribe to Arc Digital if anyone likes any of my proposals enough to do something with them, I will give them money, at least, and perhaps I can do more.
P.P.P.S As for 'socially acceptable' line drawing this depends entirely on the social context. I may elaborate later.
Lots of interesting thoughts. I don't quite understand exactly what you're proposing. But feel free to reach out to me at any time: berny@arcdigital.media
From what I understand, Traldi is saying that reframing the debate as two groups of people who both care about free speech but just differ in degree is not very meaningful. It obscures the fact that their differences *are* the result of differences in abstract principles, not merely them arbitrarily drawing a line somewhere on a continuum of unacceptable vs acceptable speech.
It's like saying "the difference between capitalists and communists is really just the the degree to which they believe the government should control and distribute resources." It's technically true, but it obscures the fact that these are two groups *generally* committed to discretely different principles. The capitalist wants to maximize the free exchange of goods and services, while the communist wants to minimize inequality.
Similarly, there is a group of people *generally* committed to the notion of the free exchange of ideas and a group of people *generally* committed to the notion that language is a source of oppression and must be actively policed. People are imperfect and contradict themselves, and not everyone is arguing in good faith, and both groups *generally* respect the other idea to some extent, but that isn't enough to not recognize that these are fundamentally different groups with, in practice, irreconcilable differences.
I think your capitalists and communists analogy is useful, because we're not choosing between them. Developed countries have varying degrees of regulated market economies with welfare states. Debating between "capitalism is good, communism sucks" and "no, communism is good, capitalism sucks" does little to address the economic policy questions faced by the US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, etc.
You state: "The capitalist wants to maximize the free exchange of goods and services, while the communist wants to minimize inequality." However, this is not an accurate equivalence. In order to make a more accurate statement, you should add why the capitalist wants a free exchange of goods and services just as you state with communism. Communism's goal as you say is to minimize inequality; Capitalism's goal is to create a more prosperous and fair society for all by maximizing the free exchange of goods and services. One is the goal and the other is the means. It seems to me that you have conflated the two.
I'm more in the Grossman camp than the Traldi camp. There are few (no?) true absolutes in social principle. Everything is a line drawing exercise. What's shifted recently is the ever expanding definition of "Harm" along with the rejection of the concept of forgiveness. The "Harm" boundary used to be a fairly bright line...and certainly something able to be adjudicated. But now? Once "Harm" was broadened to "it hurts my feelings", and everything became a function of individual perception, it lost all defining principle.
But still... social shunning was always the libertarian fallback to how to enforce social norms. As an example, many who argue against the CRA because of it's intrusiveness into private spaces, counter argue that social shunning would have eventually overcome embedded racism. But social media changes the social shunning dynamic. Does the ability to create large mobs quickly negate the utility of social shunning? idk
"What is 'harm'?" is a good line to examine. If almost everyone accepts that some non-governmental restrictions on speech in the name of harm reduction are legitimate (e.g. the n-word), then the question becomes how to balance harm reduction and free speech. But as you note, that depends on what constitutes harm. Using anti-gay slurs as insults is a good example of something I think is harmful, and the social pressure against it that grew over my lifetime is a good example of a social pressure-induced speech restriction that doesn't unacceptably violate free speech. But making "hurts my feelings" the standard for "harm" is too broad, and warrants pushback. Primarily, it's this process of line-finding that I'm defending.
And I agree on the social media mobbing point. It's an important way the current moment is different from the in-other-ways-similar PC panic of the 1990s. It changes the social shunning dynamic, creating a new mechanism that can, at least sometimes, be an illiberal force. Some is just people expressing their opinions, some is an organized effort that's more about power than reasonable harm reduction. Some has elements of both. I'm not quite sure where the line is there.
There is -- or should be -- no line. Not in law. If one wants to object to someone else's expression in some non-physically-aggressive manner (in the libertarian sense) then they are welcome to do so on the principle of equal liberty. Congress shall make NO law abridging the freedom of expression. All the supposed exceptions to free-speech absolutism are equivocations that attempt to make legitimately outlawing physical force accompanied by some form of epiphenomenal expression equivalent to legitimately outlawing expression. Hurting someone's feelings or offending their sense of propriety is not harming them in any way they cannot avoid by merely discounting the offending expression. This is all so obvious that it is only the totalitarian mentality that can refuse to see it. Such a mentality does so for obvious reasons: Without thought control there can be no suppression of the individuality that demands personal sovereignty -- the death knell of all forms of collectivism.
I found this exceptionally worded and well-written but also rather beside the point. The more salient debate is over social sanctions, not legal proscription. It's more about discourse norms than speech laws.
I agree with Berny Belvedere that my post was mainly about the violation free speech by governments rather than by private entities and thus off-topic. I did say, however, if one wants to object to someone else's expression in some non-physically-aggressive manner (in the libertarian sense) then they are welcome to do so on the principle of equal liberty. This takes us closer to the point at issue, because we now see that objections to so-called 'hate speech' or 'misinformation' have started to use methods that can get persons fired, contracts cancelled, homes picketed by demonstrators and worse, sometimes approaching physical force.
I see no way to persuade those who use such tactics to gain control of the public narrative to stop doing so as long as such tactics continue to work. Thus, the only alternative is to apply the principle of equal liberty and use the same tactics -- plus creative new ones -- in response. It's pointless to whine about the breakdown of what Aristotle called "civic friendship".* If those with a liberal or libertarian or conservative turn of mind wanted to prevent that breakdown they would not have allowed the capture of their culture by the forces of collectivism, the dead end of which is, of course, genetic collectivism, including the so-called 'identity politics' in which former unique individuals disappear into whatever group the arbiters of such 'identities' wish to place them.
I understand that this is a rear guard action. The racial/sexual collectivists have a shockingly great majority of the power in academia, including K-12; media, including newspapers, television, Hollywood, cable, and internet social media; and even in so-called Big Tech, where dissenting voices can be silenced by being deprived of the business services modern communications require.
I see no way for American individualism to win against these odd except by having all the leaders in the anti-collectivist camp unite in a coordinated online movement to create a Civic Friendship Internet, where free expression will not be punished. The only way to achieve this that I can see is to (1) insure that none of the technical essentials for free expression are held as monopolies of the collectivists and (2) getting rid of centralized moderation of public forums and establishing user-driven moderation protocols, so that we will see sponsors of, for example, Pete's No-Porn-No-Spam-All-Else-Goes Protocol, Mona's Teen-Safe-Protocol, the Progressive-Safe-Space Protocol and so on. Some might couple with Subscribe/Ads/No-Ads protocols -- for example, where the user content is basically the whole content. Protocol sponsors could be amateurs, businesses in the editing business, of course, even user-guided robots, but they must not be 'cancellable' by any member of the Civic Friendship Internet, so that the users have the choice of their preferred protocol (if offered by the protocol sponsor) on any Civic Friendship website they visit. That is, for one kind of site I may want one type of editorial protocol, while on another, another. The editorial protocols would adapt to changing situations and evolve on the survival of the popular principle.
Such a Civic Friendship regime would actually _deserve_ the protection of Section 230: the website can arrange their interface in any way they like, post anything they like as a publisher under the same rules as print, but would have neither the burden nor the opportunity to 'censor' anyone. It would be just like the original dream that inspired Internet pioneers.
Meanwhile, for those who are not interested in civic friendship but in political power obtained by crushing dissent, We will have to retaliate in creative ways, including 'fund me' type sites for the purpose of 'insuring' free expression cannot be destroyed by economic tactics and for the character assassination attempts respond with appropriate portions of bile and ridicule.
--Ralph
*P.S. For "Aristotle's on Civic Friendship" see: https://orb.binghamton.edu/sagp/197/
P.P.S. I'm going to subscribe to Arc Digital if anyone likes any of my proposals enough to do something with them, I will give them money, at least, and perhaps I can do more.
P.P.P.S As for 'socially acceptable' line drawing this depends entirely on the social context. I may elaborate later.
Lots of interesting thoughts. I don't quite understand exactly what you're proposing. But feel free to reach out to me at any time: berny@arcdigital.media