
Why is the West so concerned with free speech? - philipkd
https://medium.com/@philipkd/why-is-the-west-so-concerned-with-free-speech-385558f53ea8
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brownbat
The argument is very weird.

1\. Free speech leads to obsession with texts.

2\. Textualism is responsible for ills like the San Francisco housing crisis.

3\. As the author has personally ranked favorite cities, the best ones are in
China.

4\. Therefore free speech will doom Western society.

On the bright side, if an argument isn't valid, it doesn't matter as much that
your premises are false.

~~~
philipkd
I agree, it's a weird argument! However, if the points you paraphrased are
supposed to be the premises, I'm not sure why they're inherently false. Maybe
I don't provide ample research behind them. But are they obviously false?

1\. Did an explosion of literacy due to the printing press lead to an interest
in free speech? Makes sense.

2\. Does endless debate / political gridlock lead to an inability to build in
San Francisco? Every attempt to provide housing becomes a vicious argument
between NIMBYs and YIMBYs. I also have personal experience working both sides
of local development issues in Austin, and the challenges are similar to the
ones in SF. As you're trying to go about your business in city council,
someone will stop the conversation with some objection to an act or policy
that would make everybody's lives better except for that one person (so they
think), and then nothing gets done, or it requires expensive lobbyists to push
through.

3\. I don't have an objective backing of my city ranking, but I've socialized
this high-density / high-functioning metric for some time now, and anybody who
has traveled has agreed with my assessment with Asian cities. Note, two cities
I mentioned are not in China: Tokyo and Singapore. I also forgot to mention
Taipei, but that belongs on the list too.

4\. I don't think free speech will doom the West. And that is not a premise
anyways.

However, if there is a takeaway, my hope is that the West takes a deep look at
itself as to what works and what doesn't work with its culture, and try to
evolve without losing its soul. Barring that, then accept that as Asian cities
evolve and support greater populations, the U.S. will be relegated to a minor
player role, similar to the U.K. today. I just hope I don't grow old and
discover that my beloved America is having its own petulant version of Brexit.

