Louis writes: "The real question, which you are clumsily evading, is power. We live in a society where those who have money have huge megaphones. In plain language, this is called plutocracy. Despite all your blather about freedom, it is a question of what A.J. Liebling described in terms of "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.""
This is a different question than the one previously posed, which is whether the employer should use the workplace to encourage employees to vote in favor of policies favored by the employer. Libertarians oppose monetary limitations on speech for a variety of reasons. For example: 1. Monetary limitations inherently favor incumbents and the status quo. 2. Concern about monetary spending confuses cause and effect -- as the size of government grows, rent seeking correspondingly grows. 3. The government is incapable of distinguishing between good speech and bad speech. 4. Money cannot be properly channeled -- the money is like water going down a hill, and gravity will win over any limitations. 5. Because of 4, the control necessarily increases so that we develop a police state apparatus to control speech. We allow those in power to determine whether a movie or book is good art or bad campaign advocacy, etc. 6. There is no evidence that money generally determines elections -- money tends to follow candidates and issues that are more popular in the first place. 7. There cannot be effective communication without money, so to limit money is to limit effective communication, which is not conducive to democratic governance. David Shemano _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
