Among the large number of extremely weird occurrences that peppered the recently completed Presidential election in the U.S. was the creation of an unusual lottery. Elon (or "Leon" as Trump first called him) Musk started giving away a million dollars a day to randomly chosen registered voters who pledged to support freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.
This was seen by some Democrats as an inducement to register, and lawsuits were duly filed claiming that such incentives are prohibited by election laws. I have nothing to say about the legality of the scheme here but will note that it seems a particularly cuckoo and wasteful way to try to affect an election. Obviously, it's chump change to our new hyper-efficiency devotee and future deregulation tsar, so it may not give a clear sense of the many ways he can benefit his and his fellow oligarchs' businesses by mucking around in Federal regulations, eliminating agencies and firing scientists.
That's not what I want to write about here though. What fascinates me now is his choice of the first two items in the Bill of Rights as provisions that are in need of support by perhaps a few thousand likely Trump supporters who may have been encouraged to register to vote for the first time. I mean, those two Amendments seem like they are pretty safe at present, especially given the present composition of the U.S. Supreme Court.
To be honest, I don't know what Musk's particular interest is in guns. Maybe he's got big ones on his space ships or wants to make some cool James Bond weaponry available to every Tesla buyer. Maybe he just wants people to be able to bring rocket launchers and bazookas to their local Walgreens without getting hassled by anybody. I really don't know. But I do think the NRA has had all that kind of thing pretty well in hand for at least a generation.
On the other hand, I believe I understand his interest in the First Amendment. It's about one more sort of absolute immunity now being sought by the right--the ability to make stuff up and disseminate it as widely as any really rich and powerful person can manage to do.
Some people may remember the old Rothbard/Rand/Nozick libertarians who, perhaps reluctantly added "fraud" to the single other item (force) that they said it was appropriate for laws to prohibit. In their heart of hearts, the old libertarians didn't think anything really ought to be unlawful except, you know, murder or theft of one's beemer. Other than that, people should be LEFT ALONE to do their things (i.e., make the world lovely for poorer people). The problem was that lying, which doesn't seem particularly forcey, could nevertheless mess up contracts. Even a small con could be bad for corporations as well as as well as common shmucks considering some nootropic supplement or a lightning rod for their house (see Melville), so it might be necessary to allow prohibitions of lying too.
Well, Musk at X as well as Trump at Truth Social do NOT want to be prevented from disseminating falsehoods, including absolutely cracked conspiracy theories. They want to be able to publish deep fakes and to insult any adversaries with absolute impunity (though, of course, Trump reserves his right to sue people--and maybe turn off the lights at media outlets--whenever he feels they are being mean to him. After all, consistency isn't really his thing.) But Musk doesn't seem particularly interested in suing detractors; he just wants never to be hassled for pushing whatever nonsense might benefit one or more of his businesses or those of his buddies, if he thinks those lies might be believed by a bunch of gullible fanboys.
To be honest, this is a very difficult problem. On the one hand, free speech, especially political speech, has a lot of good things going for it--even if J.S. Mill was a bit too optimistic about the benefits that he thought must follow from it. At the very least, democracy seems to depend on it. Furthermore, nobody really has any terribly good ideas of how to prevent dangerous lies from being disseminated. (We will surely have more of them emanating from RFK Jr.'s exciting future tenure as head of FDA, NIH, and CDC.)
But again, I don't have any marvelous proposals regarding how to handle these problems, which have certainly been exacerbated by inexpensive and broadly available AI. I really don't think anybody does. I have discussed this matter in several book reviews and prior blog posts. Here, here, here, here, and here, for example. As you can see, I have struggled with the tensions between free speech and disinformation. It's extremely tricky and may well just be too difficult for me.
It's not too sticky a wicket for Musk, though. He knows precisely what he wants--to be able to spray any sort of bullshit anywhere he likes without impediment...and to be free to do so in ways that will ensure that these lies will be seen by millions, whether they have chosen to follow him on X or not. That's his idea of speech freedom, and he'll give you a chance to win a lot of money if you agree with it.
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