Marketplace of ideas

Template:Expand The marketplace of ideas is the theory that, in a free market of ideas, bad ideas will be subordinated to good ideas in the long run, as good ideas will win more adherents in the absence of governmental pressure to adopt one idea.

This theory has become an underpinning of American free speech law, and the interpretation of the clause of the First Amendment: as Justice Holmes wrote in Abrams v. United States, mere disagreement with speech is never enough to condemn it: political majorities should be content to put their faith in the marketplace of ideas, that their ideas will win out in the end, and if they don't, that they didn't deserve to in the first place. Thus, the marketplace of ideas confronts "bad speech" by offering the remedy of "good speech" and competition to cure it.

Dictatorships tend to suppress free speech, as they fear that their ideas will not stand up in the marketplace of ideas, and can only survive with an administrative crutch. [[category:politics]