[ExI] pay to not play

[Adrian Tymes]

On Mon, Dec 5, 2022 at 11:07 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 5, 2022 at 11:42 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> * Libel?
>> * Slander?
>>
>
> ### The victim of these actions should be able to petition a competent
> court to make a pronouncement regarding the defamatory statements, to the
> effect that the court believes they were defamatory and to append the label
> "slanderer" to the person or organization that made such statements.
> Members of the public should be then able to update their beliefs that were
> influenced by defamation, and should be able to update on how much trust
> they would have in other statements by the slanderer. The intent of this
> approach is to allow independent assessments of truth to exist, with the
> help of due process, rather than have a centralized authority potentially
> using the excuse of preventing slander to punish speech. Slander would then
> be punished by members of the public independently choosing to shun the
> slanderer, rather than by the strong arm of the law.
>

Interesting, but what mechanism do you propose whereby most people would
even be aware that the  potential for these labels exists, let alone how to
find out if someone has these labels?  If this was the least bit complex,
causing people to not bother to shun those with this label, what would keep
these labels from being completely ineffective in practice, thus leaving
people effectively free to libel and slander without consequence?

Would there not be degrees of label, to distinguish between someone who
once had a vendetta with one person as opposed to someone whose slander
harmed thousands or millions of people?

Also, who would get to say that someone had these labels?  What would stop,
say, Trump or Fox from simply declaring - with no court involved - that Joe
Biden and Kamala Harris were slanderers, with the same impact as or more
than a court-appointed label?


> If I am free to say anything, that includes saying that you agreed to give
>> me all your material wealth and then commit suicide right now, which you
>> are in obvious breach of because you are still alive.  Are you sure that
>> speech of that nature should not be punished?
>>
>
> ### Generally, if the statements are sufficiently stupid so as not be
> believed by a reasonable person, there is no reason to punish them. If they
> are believable and are used to defraud somebody, then that fraud should be
> punishable.
>

Unfortunately, these days the "reasonable person" standard has been left in
tatters.  Claims that no reasonable person should believe, too often result
in very real (if deluded) people with very real guns trying to take justice
into their own hands.

In the example above, I might be called a slanderer - and you might wind up
dead.  Most people would rather have a system where I would  pay fines
and/or go to jail for making such claims - a much more effective deterrent
- and you would still be alive, as I would be stopped from broadcasting
such claims before I could whip up some vigilantes.
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