#125 Misinformation & Economic Competition

Misinformation and Economic Competition The Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board spells disaster for “misinformation” and economic competition within a civilized society.  People should be free I often ask my students at Dallas Baptist University if they’re still required to read Animal Farm in high school. I’m quite pleased by the results because it seems that many have read the classic novel.  This led me to wonder this week if anyone in the Biden administration has read George Orwell’s 1984. Perhaps they have not, because that seems to be the only explanation for the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board.  This is a serious restriction of freedom that Christian economists care deeply about. I’ve said many times that the intersection of Christianity and economics is FREEDOM.  The idea of a disinformation board is a danger to the First Amendment, which says that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”  Free speech is important in religion in economics, here’s why: Open discussion and debate are vital within a society.  We need a greater supply of information, not less.  That’s because you can’t know what you believe, and you can’t believe what you know. God set it up that way. If you could prove God, no faith would be required.  More information helps us to solve these difficult philosophical questions.  A couple of presidential elections ago, a leading candidate was the Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. He was asked by the BBC: Do you believe in evolution? Well, that’s kind of a dumb question.  Microevolution is a scientific fact, which does not require belief. You can’t believe in science because science is defined as an observation. Do you believe you are reading this currently? Kind of a dumb question, isn’t it? People should be free is the first of ten biblical commandments of economics that Sergei Saydametov and I wrote in our book Biblical Economic Policy.  Let’s see if we can make a case for the idea of free speech.  There’s been so much talk about Elon Musk buying Twitter for the cause of free speech. Sorry, I don’t think so.  I see it as a simple business deal.  Think about this analogy: suppose there’s a car company (let’s call it Tesla) that sells cars in only 25 states.  A wise investor will buy the company and expand sales to the other 25 states and double the sales.  Now, let’s change the company name from Tesla to Twitter and change the first 25 states to liberal perspectives and the underserved states to conservative perspectives.  Musk is wanting to open Twitter to conservatives who have been discriminated against by Twitter.  More information distributed within and through Twitter will increase the value of the company, as well as increase the accuracy of the informational outcomes.     The Competition of Ideas One of Ginger’s quips goes something like this: “Is Pluto a planet?” because when Ginger and I were in school, it was a planet. See, continuing to seek more information gives us better science and more complete answers.  Restricting information leaves us with worse answers. This might be an interesting case for the “Disinformation Board” What about the competition between a rich, famous inventor named Thomas Edison, founder of General Electric, who’s one of the scions of the Gilded Age. He favored direct current to light America.  An unknown upstart from Croatia named Nikola Tesla favored alter...