Why Economists Defend Free Speech

About this episode

Gene Tunny and John Humphreys discuss the relationship between free speech and economics, highlighting its importance in preventing policy failures.

What does free speech have to do with economics? A lot more than you might think. In this episode, Gene Tunny is joined by John Humphreys to explore free speech as a core institutional pillar of prosperous societies. From Mao’s Great Leap Forward to modern Australia, they show how restricting speech distorts incentives, breaks feedback loops, and leads to catastrophic policy failure. Even well-intentioned speech laws, they argue, can have dangerous unintended consequences.

People in this episode

Host: Gene Tunny

Guest: John Humphreys

Topics covered

• free speech
• economics
• policy failure
• incentives
• feedback loops

Keywords

• Mao’s Great Leap Forward
• Australia
• speech laws
• unintended consequences

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Australia

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