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.
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
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 ?
Nope
Telling their mom, obviously.
Fantastic
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
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
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
Benevolent Dictator? You mean Benedict?
No
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?
Do I have to be benevolent? Aaaw, okay…
Similar to what exists in the western world today.
Reasonable
