Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

"Free speech" is when the President unilaterally withholds research grants from universities, based on statements made by students (not faculty)?

View on HN

This is the double edge sword of moving away from voluntary transaction in the market and towards government-imposed funding. The government takes away your ability to choose what to fund, holds the purse, then smacks the purse at you filled with the weight of your own money.

The government, with laws as written, has more restrictions on when it can pull money than private parties, due to its legal obligation to be content-of-speech-neutral. We are discovering that United Stares law is meaningless.

Law everywhere is meaningless unless “we have to follow the law” is a cultural norm. This is why norms are more fundamental and more important than laws.

You are discovering this. It wasn't that long ago when the national guard took tuition money away from Kent State in the form of executing their students for free speech.

Federal law is insanely complex. It's written by humans in an abstract legislative process so there's not even a guarantee that it won't conflict with _itself_. We have, several times, added laws to the register that were later determined to be in conflict with the Constitution itself.

This is why courts exist.

This is also why libertarians exist.

I'm not sure this is a "free market choices" problem. Some institutions like education should be funded by government, in part or in whole.

The government threatening to take away that funding based on "taste" is more of a problem of authoritarianism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com