Free Speech

More than just the first amendment

So what is free speech exactly? I think the discussion on this has gotten really weird. A lot of conservative-leaning or conservative-sympathetic folks have been complaining about it for a while.

Unfortunately, their complaints are often incoherent, or never really gel into anything that makes sense. It's mostly just a vibe - they feel like they are being silenced in various ways and they don't like it. But they struggle to properly articulate what the precise problem is or how it might be solved. For instance, Elon Musk got tied into knots at one point trying to claim that twitter moderation should permit anything allowed under US law, a position that is absurd for many reasons.

In the US at least, the first amendment looms large - a lot of people basically equate the first amendment with free speech. I think this is a bad analysis. The first amendment only applies to the US government. The government is certainly an important actor in terms of free speech, but it is one of many. The government isn't magical - anything the government does can also be done by other organizations of sufficient power, reach, and resources.

So let's theorize out free speech and see what's actually going on here.

The pyramid of speech

I've come to think of speech as a pyramid, sort of along the lines of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The bottom of the pyramid is more fundamental, and without it free speech is impossible. The higher levels of the pyramid represent more advanced levels of speech.

The bottom of the pyramid represents raw physical constraints on speech. At the most basic, if your mouth is sewn shut and your fingers are broken, your ability to communicate is obviously severely compromised.

A little higher up the pyramid would be the physical tools of speech. These depend on your culture and available technologies. But if writing is important, then access to pen and paper matters. Access to a printing press matters. An internet connection matters. Notably, the tools of speech usually cost money (sometimes a lot of money). So essentially every society gates speech behind financial resources, at least to some degree.

The final physical level of speech represents physical access to an audience. If you are allowed to say what you want but are physically prevented from standing in the town square, your ability to speak doesn't mean very much. If you are writing things but aren't able to get those in front of anyone, then your speech doesn't matter.

The middle levels of the pyramid represent freedom from reprisal. The threat of reprisal doesn't directly stop you from speaking, but it can powerfully disincentivize speech, creating a chilling effect.

The most basic level here is freedom from violent reprisal. Obviously, if someone has a gun to your head telling you what to do, most of your freedoms are in practice being severely curtailed, including freedom of speech. If the government publicly executes critics, then physical ability to speak doesn't matter very much.

The next level up is economic reprisal. If speaking on a topic will cost you your livelihood, then your practical freedom of speech is rather limited.

The most abstract level within the reprisal tier is social reprisal - loss of respect and status. If you feel that speaking your mind on a topic will cost you the respect and admiration of your peers, then your freedom is at least somewhat curtailed.

(A common phrase you'll see is "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." I think this is just flat wrong. To a very large degree, freedom of speech really IS freedom from consequences. This is obvious when those consequences are things like death or jail time. My view is that other sorts of consequences also chill speech, though to somewhat lesser degrees.)

The highest level of the pyramid has to do with cultural receptiveness to new ideas. If society holds to religious beliefs that forbid hearing out conflicting opinions, then your speech is falling on deaf ears. Or if people are simply incurious and uninterested in new ideas, then your speech is effectively meaningless. This level is the most abstract and also the least important. It matters, but only when the lower levels are covered.

Does anyone have freedom of speech?

My pyramid model doesn't really establish a clear binary of has/doesn't have free speech. Instead, it establishes something like a rubric by which freedom of speech might be graded. I don't think it would be desirable to live in a place maximally devoted to freedom of speech - such a society would place strange and unfair burdens on people to make sure everyone had a chance to be heard to the fullest.

In practice, freedom of speech has always been and will continue to be heavily gated behind financial and social resources. Someone who is well-financed and well-connected is heard much more clearly than someone who is poor and unimportant. I don't think there is any good way around this, though policies might be taken up to try and flatten this out.

Why do we care?

So why do we care about free speech? My take here is that free speech is, in a practical sense, useful. Societies with freer speech will generate more robust dialogue and debate on important issues and will be more likely to do the right thing. They will also be much faster to embrace new ideas.

I do not think we need to optimize solely for free speech. Free speech is useful to a point, but other things matter as well. Abolishing money would make speech more fair, but would generate many other negative effects.

I think that in this light, the anti-woke complaint can be stated more plainly - there is a feeling that certain vital topics of discussion are being intentionally locked out of public discourse through the mobilization of both public and private resources. Is this true? I think it is. Does it matter? I think it obviously does. And stated this way, I think many on the side of censorship would have to agree that this is their objective. The whole point is to mobilize social and economic pressure to penalize certain types of speech that they believe are harmful.

The crucial question, then, is whether this is worth it. I've conceded that I am not a free speech maximalist - it is one of many things I value in society, but certainly not the only thing, or even the most important thing. If censorious behavior furthers other important values, a case might be made that it is worth making that tradeoff.

This piece is not meant to litigate that tradeoff. Instead, I wish only to make the case that there is in fact a tradeoff being made, and that the thing being traded away can reasonably be referred to as free speech.