Let’s say you’re a “benevolent dictator” with complete power over legislative and judicial processes. What laws would exist involving speech(public square and private)? What would punishments look like (if any)?
Talking out of turn… that’s a paddling.
Ideologies that require harming others do not have the right to be promoted. Nazis, the Confederacy, etc… It’s illegal in the United States to call for the death of someone, it is considered assault to threaten the life of someone. But its not illegal to promote Nazism, which calls for the deaths of millions. And its not illegal to fly the flag of a traitor nation built on the idea that humans can be property and thus snuffed out at any moment by their owners.
Ideologies that require harming others do not have the right to be promoted.
This will just enforce the status quo. For instance, if the current regime is fascist and requires a revolution in order to overthrow, you have effectively outlawed talk of regime change. To be fair, a fascist regime would do that already, but the fact that a fascist regime would do it is another bad sign for your proposed law.
Maybe we could carve out an exemption for “harming others in self-defense”?
The fascist regimes also use free speech to promote their fascist regime.
But yeah, its an idea on social media, not a legal text.
You would implement similar laws to the US now with the addition of ideological speech based on harm? Seems pretty reasonable if you’re the benevolent dictator. Would utilize punishments to offenders?
The same punishment as threatening someone’s life.
I wonder if there could be some kind of way to allow violence-inciting speech on the condition that the speaker waives their own legal right to protection from violence
I mean realistically it probably wouldn’t work but it sure would be nice to be able to legally curb stomp fascists
the biggest problem with banning an ideology is that its followers can use suppression as a way to appeal to the disillusioned with the argument, “our ideology is so powerful that ‘they’ use bans and censorship to hide it from you!”
so this hypothetical tit-for-twat model defangs that argument. “sure, go ahead, try being a nazi. see how far you get before you find out.”
Hm then how would we ensure people are verifying the person they’re curb stomping is a qualifying member of an unprotected group? Maybe some sort of database system where they have to legally affirm they’re a piece of shit who is waiving their right to not get the snot kicked outta them?
lol idk. try not to take any of this too seriously, I’m just doing a hamfisted attempt at participating in philosophy
Posting movie spoilers would be punishable by 30 days in the pillory where passersby are instructed to draw dicks on your face.
I can get behind this.
Not because I care about spoilers, I just want to draw some dicks.
Completely reasonable
Few/none. If your speech causes physical harm, I.e. inciting violence, that’s illegal. If you’re a public person with a large audience, the causal link can be weaker.
I can get down with that. Any idea on what punishment would look like ?
Telling their mom, obviously.
Fantastic
Nope
Calling for another person to be killed or harmed. Either directly or by supporting ideologies that require it. Example:
- OK - Being gay is bad, my holy book says so. Everyone should stop being gay please
- BAD - We need to remove the gays from our population one way or another, or God will punish us
Spreading false information with the intention of causing harm. Aka “shouting fire in a crowded theatre”.
Harassment. In the sense of saying things to a person with the specific goal of making them uncomfortable, or impacting their mental health, regardless of the truthfulness of those statements. Depends a lot on the context so the line is not very clear here.
That all sounds pretty reasonable, although, the last part could be hard to lay out. Would you engage with any type of punishment?
Punishment is always a hard thing to decide, with any types of laws. It should deter others from doing it, if possible convince the offender not to repeat it, but also not be too severe as not to reinforce the problematic idea or create a martyr.
Some kind of community service is appropriate I think. Unless they try to actively organize an action to murder, then it should be prison.
That all makes sense
There’s two kinds of people in this world that I can’t tolerate: those that are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and Ohioans
So there’s a group you can’t tolerate with a subset you can tolerate even less /s
Benevolent Dictator? You mean Benedict?
No
This is tough because ideally I would want no limits. I do recognize speech that could cause harm. The yelling fire in a crowded theater. The only way to really deal with it is the court type of systems we use. You have some initial limits and why and then you encourage courts to restrict it if necessary but minimally. If im immortal I would make myself the dictator of speech as aweful as that would be. Maybe I would not. Man would I get so much flack for what I would allow. I mean a big problem is technology. Like I would have no restriction in literature and that should be the same for all fictional things. So with standard cartoons thats kinda fine. But then like live action well they can’t actually be doing anything illegal so that gets dicey but doable. But they you get to the level of computer graphics that we have today and you get into the very real problem of if you can tell if its computer generated or not and if it is computer generated is it using anything from reality (faces or whatnot) that is also problematic. As much as I hate it I think that is just going to have to be very restricted as its to real and you are going to have to be worried about actual things taking place. If we limit the subject matter to literature then no limits for fiction. You can’t though like print out private information. Like war plans, peoples bank account numbers, spying on someone and writing about what you see. That kind of thing. Of course that would not apply if they were doing criminal activity and you were reporting it to police. Privacy is a whole nother matter where it depends where you are located and your expectations of having it. Your home vs the public square kind of thing.
Do I have to be benevolent? Aaaw, okay…
Similar to what exists in the western world today.
Reasonable
I will unilaterally decide.
First off, conservatives aren’t allowed to speak anymore.
That… that might be it. I might be done. Now everyone else can get to work building a better world.
Lmao you’re the benevolent dictator you do get to choose
I think I’d be pretty restrictive. Most of the arguments for free speech revolve around the idea that you need it to reform or overthrow a corrupt government, but we already have the ideal philosopher king (me) as the benevolent dictator, so we don’t need those pesky freedoms.
I did frame the question that way. So what type of restrictions?
