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01 / 05
The Global Rise in Censorship | Podcast Highlights

Blog Post | Human Freedom

The Global Rise in Censorship | Podcast Highlights

Chelsea Follett interviews David Inserra about the recent attacks on free speech and how censorship can threaten progress.

David Inserra —

Listen to the podcast or read the full transcript here.

Today, we’re going to review this piece you wrote on the free speech recession in the democratic world. Tell me what prompted you to write this.

While doing some research of my own, I came across a study by an organization called the Future of Free Speech based at Vanderbilt University that looked at how free speech, both in terms of legal protection and cultural support, is declining worldwide. This study looked at 22 different democracies, the places that are most, in theory, dedicated to giving their citizens the right to express themselves. And in those societies where free expression should be the most protected, the study finds that it’s actually declining. From 2015 to 2022, 78 percent of new speech-related laws, court decisions, and regulations restricted speech. That’s a significant decline in expression in the places we should care most about.

You also note that cultural support for freedom of speech is declining in many democratic countries. Can you talk a bit about that polling?

Yeah. Unfortunately, people increasingly view free expression as harmful. They are concerned about things like hate speech and misinformation. I believe somewhere around a majority of Americans now think that the government should do something to stop misinformation. And misinformation can be harmful. But first of all, it’s not always misinformation. Sometimes, it’s actually the truth that we just haven’t figured out yet. The purpose of free expression is to protect us from the government stepping in to decide what is true and what is false. That’s the purpose of the First Amendment. And if it doesn’t apply to misinformation, then the protection of pretty much any speech can be called into question.

Let’s go over some of the specific examples you cite of freedom of speech declining or being under attack around the world.

One of the first things that I call out is a bill in the Irish Parliament that is dealing with incitement to violence or hatred. Essentially, this bill would make it illegal to communicate or behave in a way that “is likely to incite hatred” without defining what hatred is. Since the bill can’t even define it, it’s going to be up to the current government to decide. That leaves people with a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads because, at any moment, anything that they’ve said could be defined as hatred. If you compare Donald Trump to Hitler, have you trivialized Nazi war crimes? If a Catholic priest in Ireland takes a traditional religious perspective on sexuality, is that hatred? The amount of things that could come under the umbrella of this law is massive.

Another is that at the very end of 2023, the Danish government decided to implement a sacrilege law that said that if you were to burn religious artifacts or books, such as the Quran, you would go to jail for two years. This law was passed and has been implemented. They’re joining ranks with states like Iran and imprisoning people simply for peacefully burning a book. It’s especially sad because Denmark had actually, maybe a decade prior, gotten rid of their blasphemy law, which hadn’t been enforced for decades. Then, they fell right back into it because they were receiving pressure from authoritarian states and terrorists abroad. The fact that they conceded their values to the violent and the authoritarian really speaks to how modern, secular, liberal countries are going backward in their defense of free expression.

Another thing that you cite is the EUs Digital Services Act. Could you talk a bit about that?

Well, the Digital Services Act is massive, so we can’t cover all of it. One of the things it does is give a significant amount of power to EU bureaucrats to crack down on what they view as illegal speech. It especially applies to large social media companies. And it’s notable that pretty much all those companies are American, except for TikTok, which is Chinese. The EU is basically trying to get their hands on things that they didn’t build and control how the expression works.

They now have the power to investigate and demand things from social media companies when they’re not moderating the way the EU thinks they should. If the companies don’t comply, the EU can fine them as much as 6 percent of their global revenue. Twitter, X, is currently in enforcement proceedings for not handling what the EU considers misinformation or hate speech about what’s going on in Gaza and Israel.

You also talk about developments in Australia.

There was a development at the end of 2023 where a bill that was kind of like the Digital Services Act tried to give the Australian government the authority to look into and regulate the way that social media companies moderated content. It was notable that Australia’s own human rights commission said this bill is problematic because anything the government of Australia says could never be considered misinformation. The entire apparatus that they would be creating would only ever be directed at people who disagree with the government.

Can you talk a bit about how freedom affects power dynamics in society?

Whenever there’s something that challenges the authority of whatever organizations or people are in power, elites respond by freaking out. It makes sense, right? Their power is being challenged, and their control over authority and information is being challenged. You can go back literally to the printing press. Almost immediately after the printing press is invented, the Pope says we need regulation to stop the “misuse of the printing press for the distributions of pernicious writings.”

We are seeing this now with social media and the internet writ large, which have probably leveled the playing field more than any other technology. The printing press was limited by the physical ability to get the words on the paper and put it in someone’s hands. Now, you can get your own website for cheap or write your thoughts on Facebook or X for free. Anyone can access your words. That’s why you see so much energy being put into countering misinformation and hate speech, because there’s this elite panic.

Could you talk more about the relationship between progress and freedom of speech?

One of my favorite quotes in this area is by Frederick Douglass, the esteemed abolitionist, who says, “No, right was deemed by the fathers of the government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government.” He’s speaking to people on the verge of civil war. A country in conflict over the issue of whether humans can be property and treated inhumanely and terribly. He addresses that issue by saying that free expression is how we talk about this issue and bring clarity to this great moral issue of our time.

Civil rights advocates have said the same thing: that free expression allowed them to drive their message to the people of America. This has been the consistent theme of history: freedom of expression is not a threat to the minority and the persecuted; it is the tool that the weak have to call out the abuses of the powerful. It’s the ability to make arguments and to change minds. It is a powerful force for good, and that often gets missed in today’s discourse.

It’s also a democratizing force. People who previously would have had very little influence can now speak on issues of great political and social import on social media for free. Before, your best shot was probably to send a letter to the editor of the New York Times or something like that, hoping that, out of the thousands of letters they were receiving, they picked yours to print.

These are all things that we should celebrate. We should remind ourselves of these great advantages because we risk losing them if we do what other nations around the world are doing and limit speech.

There is a prevailing belief that increased government restrictions on speech are necessary. Tell me about that idea.

Various thinkers, like Herbert Marcuse, have developed this idea that certain types of expression are inherently harmful and that it is up to enlightened experts who understand what is good and bad to stop that harmful speech. This is now a prevailing belief in academia, and students are coming out of college believing things like “hate speech isn’t free speech.” It’s really a power grab. They are just saying, “Our side deserves to set the rules for what speech is and isn’t allowed.”

I think that school of thought largely started on the left. But it’s become an ongoing political power struggle where if the left advocates for shutting down voices on the right, then folks on the right respond by saying, “Well, we’re just going to turn this weapon around and use it against you.” So, that idea, while it may have started as an academic fringe theory, has worked its way into a culture that is becoming incapable of tolerating opposing views. The result is that the government can increasingly act on its desire to restrict speech because increasing numbers of people have bought into various ideologies that say it’s okay for us to restrict speech.

If you could make the case to someone skeptical of freedom of speech for it being a powerful force for human progress, how would you do so?

I would make a couple of points. First, the power to restrict and control speech will almost always end up in someone else’s control. Just think about the repercussions of giving that power to your political opponents who can weaponize it against you.

More meaningfully, we should support freedom of expression because it is one of the greatest tools for advancing human progress. Freedom of expression helps us determine what is true and what is false. If you want to understand how someone thinks or someone in history thought, you need uncensored access to that information. If you care about people reaching self-fulfillment, you should want people to have the right to express themselves without fear that they will be shunned or jailed. If you want people to be good participants in democracy and to be informed and engaged, then you need to take the advice of the Athenian author Demosthenes, who says that Athens was a constitution based on speeches. Do you care about peacefully resolving social conflict? Well, it turns out that if people have free expression, they usually don’t have to resort to violence.

For all these reasons, free expression makes people and society better off. Now, speech does have consequences that aren’t positive. The Reformation and Renaissance, for example, weren’t peaceful periods. They were actually very difficult, but they ushered in things like the Industrial Revolution. And so, if you want that kind of advancement, if you want society to flourish, then you want free expression so we can resolve challenges, advance our knowledge, and become a better informed and thoughtful people.

Blog Post | Cost of Technology

Appliances Contribute to Human Progress—but Regulations Threaten Their Affordability

The environmentalist regulatory agenda is targeting life-saving home appliances.

Ben Lieberman —

Summary: Home appliances have drastically improved human life, from preventing heat-related deaths with air conditioning to making household tasks more efficient with washing machines and refrigerators. Initially luxury items, many appliances have become affordable and accessible to most households thanks to free-market innovation. However, regulations driven by environmentalist ideology now increasingly threaten the affordability and accessibility of these essential devices, particularly for the lower-income families who need them most.

Human Progress has devoted a considerable amount of attention to home appliances—and for good reason, given the tremendous difference they have made in our lives. Whether it is the heat-related deaths averted by air conditioning, the foodborne illness prevented by refrigeration, the improvements in indoor air quality enabled by gas or electric stoves, or the liberation of women worldwide facilitated by washing machines and other labor-saving devices, these appliances have improved the human condition considerably over the past century or so.

Of course, the benefits of home appliances accrue only to those who can afford them, and on that count, the trends have been very positive. Although many appliances started as luxury items within reach of no more than a wealthy few, they didn’t stay that way for long. For example, the first practical refrigerator was introduced in 1927 at a price that was prohibitive for most Americans, but by 1933, the price was already cut in half, and by 1944, market penetration had reached 85 percent of American households.

Other appliances have similarly spread to the majority of households, first in developed nations over the course of the 20th century and now in many developing ones. And the process continues with more recently introduced devices, such as personal computers and cellphones. Cato Institute adjunct scholar Gale Pooley has extensively documented the dramatic cost reductions for appliances over the past several decades. The reductions are especially striking when measured by the declining number of working hours at average wages needed to earn their purchase price. For example, the “time price” of a refrigerator dropped from 217.57 hours in 1956 to 16.44 hours in 2022, a 92.44 percent decline.

Home appliances are a free-market success story. Virtually every one of them was developed and introduced by the private sector. These same manufacturers also succeeded in bringing prices down over time, all while maintaining and often improving on quality.

If left to the same free-market processes that led to the development and democratization of these appliances, we would expect continued good news. Unfortunately, in the United States and other countries, many appliances are the target of a growing regulatory burden that threatens affordability as well as quality. Much of this is driven by an expansive climate change agenda that often supersedes the best interests of consumers, including regulations in the United States and other nations that could undercut and possibly negate the positive trends on appliances in the years ahead.

Air Conditioners

Many appliances are time-savers, but air conditioning is a lifesaver. According to one study, widespread air conditioning in the United States has averted an estimated 18,000 heat-related deaths annually. Beyond the health benefits, learning and economic productivity also improve substantially when classrooms and workplaces have air-conditioned relief from high temperatures. Yet air conditioning is often denigrated as an unnecessary extravagance that harms the planet through energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, air conditioning faces a growing list of regulations, the cumulative effect of which threatens to reverse its declining time price.

In particular, the chemicals used as refrigerants in these systems have been subjected to an ever-increasing regulatory gauntlet that has raised their cost. This includes hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the class of refrigerants most common in residential central air conditioners. HFCs have been branded as contributors to climate change and are now subject to stringent quotas agreed to at a 2016 United Nations meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. The United States and European Union also have domestic HFC restrictions that mirror the UN ones. These measures have raised the cost of repairing an existing air conditioner as well as the price of a new system.

The regulatory burden continues to grow, including a US Environmental Protection Agency requirement that all new residential air conditioners manufactured after January 1, 2025, use certain agency-approved climate-friendly refrigerants. Equipment makers predict price increases of another 10 percent or more. Installation costs are also likely to rise since the new refrigerants are classified as mildly flammable, which necessitates several precautions when handling them.

Concurrently, new energy efficiency requirements for air conditioners also add to up-front costs. For example, a US Department of Energy rule for central air conditioners that took effect in 2023 has raised prices by between $1,000 and $1,500. This unexpectedly steep increase will almost certainly exceed the value of any marginal energy savings over the life of most of these systems.

The cumulative effect of these measures is particularly burdensome for low-income homeowners and in some cases will make a central air conditioning system prohibitively expensive.

Refrigerators

Refrigerators are technologically similar to air conditioners and thus face many of the same regulatory pressures, including restrictions on the most commonly used refrigerants as well as energy use limits. Fortunately, refrigerators have come down in price so precipitously that the red tape is less likely to impact their near universality in developed-nation households. However, for a developing world where market penetration of residential refrigerators is still expanding, the regulatory burden could prove to be a real impediment.

In addition to environmental measures adding to the cost of new refrigerators, the international community is also targeting used ones. Secondhand refrigerators from wealthy nations are an affordable option for many of the world’s poorest people. For millions of households, a used refrigerator is the only real alternative to not having one at all. However, activists view this trade as an environmental scourge and are taking steps to end it.

Natural Gas-Using Appliances

Several appliances can be powered by natural gas or electricity, particularly heating systems, water heaters, and stoves. The gas versions of these appliances are frequently the most economical to purchase, and they are nearly always less expensive to operate given that natural gas is several times cheaper than electricity on a per unit energy basis. However, natural gas is a so-called fossil fuel and thus a target of climate policymakers who are using regulations to tilt the balance away from gas appliances and toward electric versions. A complete shift to electrification has been estimated to cost a typical American home over $15,000 up-front while raising utility bills by more than $1,000 per year.

The restrictions on gas heating systems are the most worrisome example, especially since extreme cold is even deadlier than extreme heat. Residential gas furnaces have been subjected to a US Department of Energy efficiency regulation that will effectively outlaw the most affordable versions of them. And many European nations have imposed various restrictions on gas heat in favor of electric heat pumps that are far costlier to purchase and install.

There are more examples of home appliances subject to increasing regulatory restrictions. Indeed, almost everything that plugs in or fires up around the home is a target, justified in whole or in part by the need to address climate change. The cumulative effect of these measures poses a real threat to the centurylong success story of increased appliance affordability.

The Guardian | Quality of Government

Whales Are Doing So Well They No Longer Need The International Whaling Commission, Says Former Head

“Studies of whale populations make it clear that virtually all species are now increasing. Humpback numbers have risen sharply, along with blue and minke whales. The main exception is the North Atlantic right whale, which has suffered badly from vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.

However, the rest of the world’s whales are doing well, said Bridgewater. ‘Species numbers have bounced back since the moratorium to varying degrees levels. And that is the point of our message to the IWC: ‘You have done your job. It’s been really good work. You have got a result. Now it is time to hang up things and go with dignity.’’

From The Guardian.

Bloomberg | Energy Production

Swiss Plan to Allow Construction of New Nuclear Plants

“The Swiss government wants to cancel a ban on building new nuclear plants that’s been in place since 2018.

Switzerland currently has four aging nuclear plants, and also relies heavily on renewable sources for its energy supply. At a meeting on Wednesday, the government announced it will propose the changes to current legislation by the end of the year, with parliament set to discuss them in 2025 before the issue is likely put to a referendum.”

From Bloomberg.

CNN | Communicable Disease

FDA Authorizes First Over-the-Counter Home Syphilis Test

“The US Food and Drug Administration authorized the first at-home over-the-counter test for syphilis Friday.

Until now, people who suspected that they had the sexually transmitted infection had to go to a doctor to get tested. With the new test from the biotech company NOWDiagnostics, it will take the user just 15 minutes and a single drop of blood to determine whether they have syphilis.”

From CNN.