Dear Friends,
It seems to me that there is both public and private speech. But speech can be broken down further. There is private speech about public things and private speech about private things. There can also be public speech about public things and public speech about private things.
For government to interfere in private speech at all is a dire threat to free speech and the well ordering of our society. As well as for government to interfere in public speech about public things.
Public speech about private things is a different matter. US law allows that public speech about an individual must be factually correct else it may be tried as slander. This is an example of public speech about private things.
The reason this is the case, is that public speech about private things is an immoral way to leverage people, into acting against their personal interests and perhaps the public interests (blackmail). It also is a prerequisite for a market system to function.
Every economist from Adam Smith through Olson agree that property rights are the cornerstone of a market system. Without property rights markets stop functioning. I have gone over many reasons in previous blogs why this is so.
Property comes in a variety of flavors however. There can be real property. Land, homes or condominiums. There can be property in the form of ideas a person puts down on paper, film or record. Personal property like chattel is another example. But property also can be information about a person. Personal information and personal dignity. These are also forms of private property.
Today we have examples of why this is so. The media has been reporting that a college student committed suicide after another televised his personal behavior on the internet. Regardless of the behavior, the person who televised secretly the personal information of the college student, stole from him no less than if he had shoved a gun in his face and demanded his wallet. In this case the government has a duty to prosecute the perpetrator as if he or she were a common thief.
That’s not what the government wants to do. The government wants to use the case to further the legal notion of thought laws. The people who violated the student’s property rights are being punished for their thoughts instead of their actions. Looking down this steep a slope gives me the chills. But this line of legal argument inevitably forces us, as a people and society, onto it.
Another example that appears in today’s media are the people who are protesting at the funerals of US servicemen and women who have died in action. On the surface it appears that it is public speech about public things. If that is the case it should be protected by the Court as free speech. But, if you think about it, is it really?
Is a cemetery a public forum for the free exchange of ideas? Is a funeral a public event… or a private event? But most importantly, is the dignity of a soldier, a human being who has, altruistically given his or her life, for the property rights of society as a whole, should government protect the property rights of that person? Are the property rights of a fallen soldier forfeited because he died in a public event? I.e. a war.
The reason government exists in a society that has a market system is to provide the framework to allow the market to function. Property rights being one of them. The deeper reason property rights are protected is the incentives that are set up if they are not.
What are the incentives in our society where, these most personal and private, property rights are not protected by the State?
