if you don't believe me then maybe you will believe John Steward Mill, one of the most influental thinkers in the 19th century, who (among others) shaped the conception of liberty. There are resources you can find over wikipedia, either on his page or on the freedom of speech article, but take it that the working definition of freedom of speech is: ''the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction.''

Lying is allowed under the definition of freedom of speech. if it is your idea that the patient does not have cancer, then telling him that is exerting your freedom of speech. However, Freedom of speech is limited by our government, which means that even though telling the patient a lie falls under freedom of speech, it is still being punished.
This is how it should be. if you say things that can have grave consequences, your words should be subject to great scrutiny.
if joe from across the street says that creationism is true, let him. if joe is running for president, then just no.

Let's take a break here and look at what limits are being imposed on the freedom of speech:

• - libel
  - slander
  - obscenity
  - pornography
  - sedition
  - incitement
  - classified information
  - copyright violation
  - trade secrets
  - non-disclosure agreements
  - the right to privacy
  - the right to be forgotten
  - public security
  - perjury

with full freedom of speech, these would all be legal. And that's why we limit freedom of speech, because it fucking sucks on it's own and needs to be cut down to prevent harm. One can agree with that and still value free speech on it's own, apart from the issues it has, which is what most people do.

Back to our friend John Steward, who says: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
This maxim is known as the ''no harm principle'', one of the most universally agreed upon ethical principles. All of the restrictions on freedom of speech follow this principle.

My argument is: News sections that are telling lies violate the no harm principle and should be penalized, just like all the other things that are outlawed because they are bad. Spreading misinformation is something that has serious consequences.

Freedom has been characterized as this great awesome thing, but this is not at all true. Freedom isn't great on its own, and it surely is not what makes America great.

Syria was an extreme example, but what about a conservative newschannel telling its viewers that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) allows taxpayer-funded abortions for everyone? (which is a lie)

You don't realize that most lies aren't obvious nowadays. Even about Syria, a clever newscaster could just obfuscate the issue to paint a different picture. Of course he won't say ''there is no war'', but he could still tell lies about the war to make people believe things about the war that are not at all true in order to influence their vote in the next election. The point was: There is nothing to prevent this from happening, and yes people fall for it en masse all the time, on both sides of the political spectrum.
Because nobody gives a shit about facts. You even denied that facts exist beyond obvious empirical truths like ''the sky is blue''. if relatively intelligent people like you can't even distinguish between fact and opinion, what does that say about the effectiveness of the democratic process?
i accredit this development to the media, politicians and the educational system blurring the line between facts and opinions for decades, and probably decades to come.

You seriously answer my economic points with:
''When you take a rock out of a riverbed, water goes and fills the place where it used to be.''

lets make some examples here to clearly illustrate how the free market does not regulate itself.

• - A company uses Chlorofluorocarbon instead of alkanes, because that's cheaper. This will never regulate itself because it is not visible to the customer.
  
  - 3 companies form a cartel to control the oil price countrywide. Being the only companies that have access to the distribution infrastructure, no other company can just come in and compete with them. Even if they do come in and build their own pipes, the 3 powerful companies will just offer super low prices wherever the new company settles down, to prevent customers from switching. Eventually the new company gets forced out of business and is bought up by the other 3. They can just set whatever prices they want. They also have the option of sharing their unfair profits with the oil-suppliers, to assure loyalty, making it impossible for anyone to just come in and compete.
  
  - A company claims that their product does not contain lead. it does contain lead! Since there is no control mechanism in place, and of course no regulation, it is only found out when the damage is already done. Since there is no regulation that says they can't do that, there also won't be any repercussions other than no more customers. The company has done a lot of profit by saving all the costs related to filtering iron out. They can use that to move to a move to a different business.
  
  - 161 factory workers die in a fire because the factory wasn't required to install sprinklers and expensive fireproof doors

the list goes on.
And believe me, these things have been happening all the time, and ARE currently happening in places that aren't as regulated. What's your answer to this? ''Things will fall into place''. ''People will find a way''

Don't accuse me of being naive for not believing in the completely free market. You are the one that is naive when you think that insanity like taking away all governmental control would work out.

Your beliefs about economics are ridiculous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac

people should watch this. is Freedom of religion something that should be protected in every case? When the children from this video grow up and have children on their own, is it their ''decision'' to send their own children to the same camp?
if schools did this (and they do, in some places), they have failed their purpose. The educational system has to educate, not indoctrinate. The goal of education is for people to grow up and become adults that can make decisions on their own.
indoctrination achieves the opposite and hence should be outlawed, just like scientology is outlawed in Germany.
it is factually wrong, it uses dishonest and harmful methods and people need to be protected from it.
Teaching things that are factually wrong is not education, it's simply spreading misinformation. The opposite of what you want. People need to learn the most accurate description of reality for them to be able to make accurate predictions about reality. This is why unaccurate descriptions about reality have no place in school.

Power will always be abused. At least democratic governments have mechanisms to prevent power abuse. You US is pretty corrupt and known for being imperialist, but the countries in the EU (say Germany) are operating with a minimal amount of exploitation for the power they have. i would even claim that the ratio between power and abuse is better than it ever has been before in the history of humanity.

i concede that it won't be perfect. But you leaving it up to people that mostly care about money is far worse. FAR WORSE.


you call me naive, so let me tell you something. You say i am blind for trusting the government like that.

i don't trust the government. But i know that thanks to regulations and the government's protection, we live in the safest time since the dawn of humanity. Power is super scary when someone other than yourself yields it, but yielding it correctly can make a lot of things better. What you suggest is just letting things fall into place on it's own. That won't work. it just doesn't. We saw the consequences in the past, we can see them now, and we can predict what would happen in the future.

Railey2 wrote:

if you don't believe me then maybe you will believe John Steward Mill, one of the most influental thinkers in the 19th century, who (among others) shaped the conception of liberty. There are resources you can find over wikipedia, either on his page or on the freedom of speech article, but take it that the working definition of freedom of speech is: ''the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction.''

Lying is allowed under the definition of freedom of speech. if it is your idea that the patient does not have cancer, then telling him that is exerting your freedom of speech. However, Freedom of speech is limited by our government, which means that even though telling the patient a lie falls under freedom of speech, it is still being punished.
This is how it should be. if you say things that can have grave consequences, your words should be subject to great scrutiny.
if joe from across the street says that creationism is true, let him. if joe is running for president, then just no.

Let's take a break here and look at what limits are being imposed on the freedom of speech:

- libel
- slander
- obscenity
- pornography
- sedition
- incitement
- classified information
- copyright violation
- trade secrets
- non-disclosure agreements
- the right to privacy
- the right to be forgotten
- public security
- perjury


with full freedom of speech, these would all be legal. And that's why we limit freedom of speech, because it fucking sucks on it's own and needs to be cut down to prevent harm. One can agree with that and still value free speech on it's own, apart from the issues it has, which is what most people do.

Back to our friend John Steward, who says: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
This maxim is known as the ''no harm principle'', one of the most universally agreed upon ethical principles. All of the restrictions on freedom of speech follow this principle.

My argument is: News sections that are telling lies violate the no harm principle and should be penalized, just like all the other things that are outlawed because they are bad. Spreading misinformation is something that has serious consequences.

Freedom has been characterized as this great awesome thing, but this is not at all true. Freedom isn't great on its own, and it surely is not what makes America great.

So, freedom of speech is exactly what I said it is? There is no such thing as 'full freedom of speech", the type of speech that is covered by freedom of speech was defined at its conception. And that's exactly what I've been saying. It's exactly the same as when I'm arguing for freedom, I'm not arguing for the 'freedom' to murder and kill people. You're just using those expanded definitions to argue that limitations must be placed on these things and support your point even when the things you're arguing for actually do violate these principles.

And no, the press spreading 'disinformation' is not covered under the harm principal. You can't just argue that anything that you define as 'wrong' isn't covered under freedom of speech, because you can do that with anything and then freedom of speech wouldn't exist. You can make a case if a company deliberately lies with full knowledge, if you can prove that. Otherwise, you cannot interfere with someone's right to speech and their own opinion.

Railey2 wrote:

Syria was an extreme example, but what about a conservative newschannel telling its viewers that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) allows taxpayer-funded abortions for everyone? (which is a lie)

You don't realize that most lies aren't obvious nowadays. Even about Syria, a clever newscaster could just obfuscate the issue to paint a different picture. Of course he won't say ''there is no war'', but he could still tell lies about the war to make people believe things about the war that are not at all true in order to influence their vote in the next election. The point was: There is nothing to prevent this from happening, and yes people fall for it en masse all the time, on both sides of the political spectrum.
Because nobody gives a shit about facts. You even denied that facts exist beyond obvious empirical truths like ''the sky is blue''. if relatively intelligent people like you can't even distinguish between fact and opinion, what does that say about the effectiveness of the democratic process?
i accredit this development to the media, politicians and the educational system blurring the line between facts and opinions for decades, and probably decades to come.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be processes which determine the validity of the news and claims, but if people keep watching and supporting news which have proven to be erroneous then really it's their own fault. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. There are lots of alternative news sites which are trusted and provide accurate news, people who are looking for that can find them.

The problem with you is that you want the government to regulate the media when it's the government in the first place that is prone to spreading lies to further its agenda. I think even you can see the conflict of interest here. You want the same people who benefit from lies, like the democratic or republican parties, to be the same ones who regulate the media and stop lies that benefit themselves. It's the same democratic processes you are arguing for that has contributed so heavily to the spread of disinformation.

In fact it has been proven by wikileaks that the Hillary campaign was collaborating with the media. If Hillary was elected, you would trust her administration to fairly regulate the media? In our recent election the labor party spread lies that the liberals were going to privatise medicare. How can the same people that spread lies be trusted to define what and what are not lies?

Railey2 wrote:

Most people don't care. Most of the time there is no backlash. As i said above, its only getting worse. The only reason why there was a backlash this time is, because they got undeniably refuted by trump taking the election home. Like saying ''the sky will be blue tomorrow'', but then it suddenly turns bright red. Of course there is a backlash.
if clinton had won by a hair there would have been no backlash, despite the left wing media's persistent dishonesty throughout the election cycle.
And both sides keep lying. The left lies about Trump's stances, the right lies about what the left wants. Nobody has to fear consequences, even though it clearly harms everyone.

There was a backlash before the election was even over, by Trump supporters. No matter the results, Trump supporters would have stopped watching the MSM. And I forgot the statistics, but public opinions of the MSM is at an all time low. The MSM have suffered consequences already.

You seriously answer my economic points with:
''When you take a rock out of a riverbed, water goes and fills the place where it used to be.''

Because that's a fair bit easier than explaining how every single system that the government controls would be replaced if it were to disappear. And your arguments thus far are on the same level of "I played Sim City without taxes and lost, checkmate ancaps". But I will humor you.

- A company claims that their product does not contain lead. it does contain lead! Since there is no control mechanism in place, and of course no regulation, it is only found out when the damage is already done. Since there is no regulation that says they can't do that, there also won't be any repercussions other than no more customers. The company has done a lot of profit by saving all the costs related to filtering iron out. They can use that to move to a move to a different business.

I doubt this company would find a market for their product if it hasn't been checked or certified by a private company that ensures that food is safe to eat. If it did, the vendors of this product would face a backlash for stocking an unsafe product, and thus people would be less likely to buy uncertified products in the future, and vendors would be less likely to stock uncertified products.

- A company uses Chlorofluorocarbon instead of alkanes, because that's cheaper. This will never regulate itself because it is not visible to the customer.

Similar to the above, the fact that a product contains Chlorofluorocarbon would be evidenced by the fact that it doesn't have any certifications proving otherwise. Thus vendors and consumers who don't want products containing this substance would not stock or buy this product.

- 3 companies form a cartel to control the oil price countrywide. Being the only companies that have access to the distribution infrastructure, no other company can just come in and compete with them. Even if they do come in and build their own pipes, the 3 powerful companies will just offer super low prices wherever the new company settles down, to prevent customers from switching. Eventually the new company gets forced out of business and is bought up by the other 3. They can just set whatever prices they want. They also have the option of sharing their unfair profits with the oil-suppliers, to assure loyalty, making it impossible for anyone to just come in and compete.

Well if you're against monopolies, by far the biggest coercive monopoly is the government itself. Monopolies and the free market are a complicated subject, I'm not an economist so I'm not going to claim that I can answer perfectly how every situation would run in a free market. Anyway, it's funny you mention oil as before anti-trust laws one of the biggest so-called monopolies in history was Standard Oil, they controlled around 90% of the market share of oil. They did control most of the market and did try to aggressively undercut competitors. Despite this, eventually they stopped doing this and before the company was disbanded by the government their market share was down to 70% due to competition. They never raised prices to 'whatever they want' as you claim they should be able to. This practical example leads me to believe that unlike what you claim, monopolies in a free market cannot inflate prices and still maintain market dominance, and that aggressively maintaining a monopoly is inefficient and unsustainable.

And remember that companies do not exist in a vacuum. There are lots of market forces which prevent tactics like increasing the price of a product. If there were a cartel that raised the price on an item, all of the involved companies are incentives to lower their prices slightly lower than of their partners, thus creating a likely hood that it would fail eventually. There are also lots of people that have a vested interest in keeping the prices down on a certain product like oil: the consumers, and all companies that are dependent on this product. Companies dependent on oil or petroleum, like companies producing combustion engines, would start to lose profit to other competitors like those producing electric engines. Consumers with cars using combustion engines would lose money as they had to pay for extra expensive oil products. So you have all of these people with an interest in creating competing companies, and thus they would be able to lever funds from their own separate jobs and industries into competing entities. It is very unlikely that a company or companies would be able to maintain the practice of undercutting in the face of all this competition and thus such a monopoly wouldn't be sustainable.

The average iq is so low because these people don't receive any sort of formal education. i can assure you that the average iq was just as low before everyone started going to school. if these countries had functioning governments, the average iq would shoot up over the decades as well.
Look up the Flynn-effect if you want. This is an irrelevant argument and i do not care in the least about it.

It doesn't explain the disparity in IQ and test scores comparing blacks and whites who receive the same education and same socio economic level. There is lots of evidence to support my theory and you can only offer speculation on your part. If I were you, I would call it a 'fact' that blacks have lower IQ, and to quote you, say that you have "ideological reasons to deny these facts".

Anyway, regardless of the cause, the point was that the the condition of these third world countries is caused by the IQ of the inhabitants, not an accurate representation of what places without strong government control would be like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac

people should watch this. is Freedom of religion something that should be protected in every case? When the children from this video grow up and have children on their own, is it their ''decision'' to send their own children to the same camp?
if schools did this (and they do, in some places), they have failed their purpose. The educational system has to educate, not indoctrinate. The goal of education is for people to grow up and become adults that can make decisions on their own.
indoctrination achieves the opposite and hence should be outlawed, just like scientology is outlawed in Germany.
it is factually wrong, it uses dishonest and harmful methods and people need to be protected from it.
Teaching things that are factually wrong is not education, it's simply spreading misinformation. The opposite of what you want. People need to learn the most accurate description of reality for them to be able to make accurate predictions about reality. This is why unaccurate descriptions about reality have no place in school.

No one has a right to abuse their children. However sending them to a camp where someone goes on stage and talks about Jesus is hardly abuse. Instilling religious values on your children is not 'indoctrination', and outlawing this is being totalitarian. Private institutions have the right to teach whatever they want. And whether someone believes in creationism or evolution hardly impacts their ability to work and it does not influence their ability to work or affect skills lime mathematics.

Yes, Germany has no free speech, holocaust denial is outlawed, and espousing right wing opinions on Facebook is hate speech and people have been arrested for it. I suppose you would support me being arrested for hate speech because of my opinions on things. This is not a good thing.

Once you said that evolution and climate change aren't facts, it became very clear to me that you either can't distinguish between opinion and fact, or that there are ideological reasons for you to deny these facts. No matter which of the two it is, they both most likely run too deep for anyone to correct on this platform.

I know what a fact is, it is something that is indisputably true. Things like climate change are not, there are scientists that don't agree, and even if there is a very small chance they are untrue that is enough to make them not facts.

you can't compare a monarchy to a modern government, that's ridiculous. A government consists of a shitload of people and multiple instances that exert power over each other. A monarch is one guy who can do basically what he wants. Nothing in a modern government comes even close to that.

if anything, a monarch is more comparable to a corrupt CEO with a lot of power in an unregulated system where he has full control over his company and can exploit the market however he wants. Like a super rich and influential business owner in a third world country. This is super ironic, because the analogy works more against you than it works for you, but you don't even realize it.

Governments and monarchies are obviously different, the point was about the power being concentrated at the top. Kings and CEOs are nothing similar, a king has a right to use force to control people in any way he pleases, a CEO is a part of a voluntary hierarchy based on voluntary actions. And a CEO will be replaced if he is not leading a company well.

They do have armies in countries without governmental control, and they had armies in the past in europe. They will have armies again when you take away all control. Who currently prevents them from having armies? The government.

What's stopping companies from having armies? The fact that armies are very expensive and companies are there to make profit. Are they going to force consumers at gun point to buy their candybars? lol. If a company could have an army, so could its competitors and everyone else. But violence is extremely unprofitable, so it's not like candybar companies would have miniature wars to try to end competition, lol.

Yes the government prevents people having armies, because it's the only entity that claims a monopoly on force. You don't do what the government says? People with guns are going to be sicced onto you. This wouldn't happen in a voluntary society.

Power will always be abused. At least democratic governments have mechanisms to prevent power abuse. You US is pretty corrupt and known for being imperialist, but the countries in the EU (say Germany) are operating with a minimal amount of exploitation for the power they have. i would even claim that the ratio between power and abuse is better than it ever has been before in the history of humanity.

i concede that it won't be perfect. But you leaving it up to people that mostly care about money is far worse. FAR WORSE.


you call me naive, so let me tell you something. You say i am blind for trusting the government like that.

i don't trust the government. But i know that thanks to regulations and the government's protection, we live in the safest time since the dawn of humanity. Power is super scary when someone other than yourself yields it, but yielding it correctly can make a lot of things better. What you suggest is just letting things fall into place on it's own. That won't work. it just doesn't. We saw the consequences in the past, we can see them now, and we can predict what would happen in the future.

There are some governments that work well, generally the bigger the country the more corrupt the government. Germany is not one of these non-corrupt countries. It has flooded the country with third world immigrants making the country more dangerous for everyone and putting a burden on the economy, and it has censored free speech like I have mentioned before. I could go on about why governments do not work well. If you actually did think that power would be abused, then the natural response would be to limit the power that government has to prevent abuse. But this is not what you want, you want to continue to increase the power of the government despite knowing that it will abuse its power in some way, which is absurd.

Yes we are living in the safest time, we are also living in the time where the rulers have the least amount of power over their subjects, and citizens actually have rights (that you want to do away with). We do not have the state to thank for our situation, no single institution has caused as much death and destruction since the inception of humanity. Your argument is that 'well it's not very good, but it's the best we have', which I disagree with. You cant hand out power and expect it to always be used correctly, that is fundamentally flawed concept. You have yet to prove my system won't work, and you haven't given any examples about how my system won't work, because it has never been implemented.