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Re:Jack Ma fell to earth and took Ant's mega IPO with him by _jal on Friday November 06, 2020 @11:08AM (#25008628)
> If exceptionalism is a fiction, freedom of speech doesn’t make sense

I think this only holds if you take a deeply communitarian outlook, which is somewhat difficult to mesh with a belief in the value of the exceptional individual.

I value freedom of speech for the same reason I value other freedoms, for the boringly baseline and everyone else, as well as for instrumental reasons - briefly, freedom is its own good because humans are wired for it; and suppression of speech leads to broken, damaging government.

In any case, small clarification - I do believe that exceptional people in the sense we're discussing exist. But they are far rarer, and the Superhero CEOs we're talking about are not those.

Re:Jack Ma fell to earth and took Ant's mega IPO with him by JumpCrisscross on Friday November 06, 2020 @11:17AM (#25008710)
Replace “doesn’t make sense” with “isn’t competitive.” If exceptionalism is a mirage, freedom of speech incurs a cost on a country for no gain. Ceteris paribus others without that drag will have an advantage.