Karen Attiah, the woman who hired Jamal Khashoggi, has been fired from The Washington Post. Khashoggi, a journalist, was brutally murdered on the orders of the Saudi dictator for speaking truth to power. She is being interviewed by Paul Krugman here.
What is happening in the United States is worse than McCarthyism because it is broader in scope and more directly driven from the top of executive power. The attack on freedom of speech is part of a wider reconstruction of institutions in a dystopian direction.
Obama’s observation that abstract issues and the price of eggs are not separate things comes to mind in trying to explain why the attack on free speech in the United States (and, by extension, in democracies more generally) is damaging not only in cultural terms but also for economic and social welfare.
Not all the economic effects of policies and public decisions are captured in GDP or other macroeconomic indicators, though these too may suffer in the long run. Freedom of speech is one of the essential capabilities required for a free life, and therefore everyone has the right to enjoy it—just as they do housing, education, or basic healthcare. Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach emphasizes what people are able to do and to be, rather than merely the resources they possess or the utility they derive.
Free speech is part of human dignity. Education, health, nutrition, and shelter up to minimally adequate levels do not exhaust the list of fundamental capabilities. The freedom to express opinions and to criticize the powerful affects individual welfare directly—not only the welfare of creators, journalists, and citizens who want to voice their views, but also the welfare of those who benefit from consuming others’ opinions. The right to irony and sarcasm is itself part of individual freedom.
Freedom of speech also affects economic and social welfare indirectly, by fostering dialogue and creativity. Its absence does not harm only elites. Without free speech, dialogue collapses and innovation dries up: ideas eventually stop circulating, as happened under Stalinism in the Soviet Union.
As historian Timothy Snyder notes in reference to youth mobilization in Serbia: a young generation sees no future in their own country without the predictability and freedoms safeguarded by the rule of law—and once lost, these could be gone for good. Free speech is a fundamental part of the rule of law. Without it, one of democracy’s key contributions to economic and social welfare disappears.
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