You’ve no doubt heard people refer to appealing to “the marketplace of ideas.” Which is a pretty clumsy way to describe negotiation.
It sounds neutral and normal, but it’s a remarkably bad idea.
We’re responsible for our ideas
The Marketplace of Ideas is an allusion. It hopes to apply economic theory to communication.
So let’s take the allusion literally. Imagine walking into the grocery store. You’re looking for a granola bar. But not just any. You want a protein bar with a low glycemic index. You want it to taste good and you want to pay a fair price.
Now, in an aisle full of bars and snacks, there are really only three or four choices. And none is wildly different from the other. People choose what items to stock in the store and how to group them together.
Shopping is a directive exercise, after all. We seek out things and stumble upon others. We purchase intentionally and impulsively. But we do so from curated markets and with the FDA’s approval that the food is all safe to eat.
So when we refer to all these different ideas as competing in some open market, we’re creating an image with no true correlation.
And worse, we outsource responsibility to “the market.” We strip each other of agency or responsibility for the ideas on the shelves, where they are located, or what we or other people purchase.
This is why racist and socially destructive ideas can be considered to be just some little idea. And loving your neighbor is another. The two become falsely equal, like two choices in the same aisle. We transform them into competing brands in the same market.
Nobody goes into Kroger looking to buy a protein bar and instead buys a pineapple. Nor would we expect Kroger to leave a pineapple I relocate to the protein bars.
We treat these ideas as if they are equal, ubiquitous, and even a point of faith. But fundamentally originating from a common place. This is fundamentally wrong.
Truth and Choice
If we honestly wanted to compare our ideas to a market, we’d quickly see how little they resemble an unfettered understanding of free choice.
Or if we force this vision of free speech to fit, we have to shave off such necessary elements as truth, honesty, and mutual understanding.
Many of us want so badly to have a fundamentalist view of free speech we see any regulation as a problem. But keeping it free isn’t the only value we are dealing with.
We also value truth, honesty, and mutual understanding. We want to value objectivity and using the same words to mean the same things.
Therefore, to keep speech free, we must also maintain equality of speech. It ensures that we can trust each other and what we’re “buying.”
Rather than argue on behalf of a marketplace of ideas, we need to be far more honest about what these ideas really mean. Which must include rejecting really terrible, dishonest ideas.