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Two quibbles with the Disney story:

1) Defending Disney's right to control its own municipality on libertarian grounds seems . . . odd. It's fine to be against retaliatory legislation but this is a unique situation that is much more nuanced than anything in Citizens United.

2) We have at least 50 years of data on the results of Goldberg's high-ground strategy, where Republicans don't retaliate like this (but Democrats do). The data are in and the strategy doesn't work. It leads the current situation where we have a progressive-corporatist state and we're forced to put our pronouns in our email signatures or whatever. In theory I agree with Goldberg's position. In practice, it's way past time to admit it doesn't work and to look for something else.

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May 2, 2022Liked by Arnold Kling

As others have noted, the main issue is not one of free speech per se, but rather of government granting special privileges.

Every libertarian should be hesitant about the granting of special privileges for precisely this reason: it creates a means to control the beneficiaries. To take an example from my own life, we no longer accept state funds to help pay for homeschooling because the lovely state of California is attempting to use control of the purse strings to dictate the curriculum we teach our children.

I wish to live in a society were all citizens were granted the autonomy that Disney possessed in Florida, but a system in which the law is applied equally is preferable to one in which some are granted special privileges unfairly.

And given that we do live in a society where government-granted privileges can be used as a way to manipulate private actors, I must say I'm glad it is being used against my enemies. That's not just bare partisanship on my part either: I think that a tit-for-tat strategy might actually result in a de-escalation of the culture war. At the very least, it's not obvious that it will result in a escalation.

Just like the development of castles led to the end of viking raids, private actors will develop defensive strategies that will make this form of economic warfare less viable: things like resisting government patronage, diversifying payment providers, self-hosting, etc.

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‘… then seeing the company punished for its political views should make you unhappy, or at least give you pause.‘

First amendement gives the Right to express a political view, but it confers no Right not to suffer the consequences. But in any case, isn’t it normal for people to be punished for their political views? Isn’t that what elections are?

But, was it ‘punished’ for expressing its political views, or its contempt of and attempt to pervert the course of democratic government and stated intention to use corporate resources to do so.

And… anyone who steps into the political arena must expect political rules and sanctions to apply.

Corporate management has no business expressing a ‘corporate’ political view: there is no aggregate politics view of the shareholders to express. Government of Florida - quite rightly -fired a shot across corporate bows: stay out of my territorial waters.

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People should be able to earn a paycheck and have their kids watched during the day without having to worry about political/culture war garbage.

I really don't care what laws or principals are necessary to make that happen, whatever they are I'm for them and whatever is in the way of that I'm against. If your ideology ends in grooming seven year olds its worthless.

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May 2, 2022·edited May 2, 2022

I'm going to propose a heuristic that anybody citing Citizens United on corporate speech, especially the claim that it gave corporations expanded 1st Amendment rights, is probably grasping at straws. The specific law in the case criminalized advocacy against candidates prior to primary and general elections, and had been used by the FEC to prohibit many attempts by both liberal and conservative groups to campaign against office holders over the years. It had nothing to do with issue advocacy of the kind Disney decided to practice. That kind of advocacy has never been prohibited so long as it was not coordinated with a political candidate, nor did it overturn other restrictions on corporate political activity that are legal for individual citizens. I also recall at the time many conservatives, likely including Goldberg, made pointed references that *media* corporations like the New York Times, as opposed to non-media companies like Koch Industries, were already largely exempted from this restriction when they spoke through their media outlets.

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May 2, 2022·edited May 2, 2022

Invoking Citizens United seems a bit of a stretch: SCOTUS ruled that government prohibition of independent expenditures in service to a political campaign violated the corporation's First Amendment rights - a prior constraint on those rights. Even if you consider Disney Corp's opposition to the Parental Rights in Education act participation in a political campaign, Florida has taken no act to prohibit its speech. Disney acted politically and the Florida legislature acted politically in response: Are political actors now to be protected from political responses? Are all government benefits, individual exemptions bestowed politically particularly, now equivalent to a First Amendment right? Quite amusing to see "libertarians" making that case.

Live by the grift, die by the grift.

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My version of the Null Hypothesis in American education (and I thought it was your's) is that no intervention will result in a scalable, permanent *improvement*. There is no low-hanging or medium-hanging fruit left, and to get the high-hanging fruit would require doing things really differently.

But to make things worse? That's easy.

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Douthat has a nuanced column on the Disney battle and the broader question of GOP’s relationship to corporate America.

“But there is a conservative case for the principle of what he’s doing — a case that while the government can’t single you out for special disfavor for your political speech, what is being withdrawn in Disney’s case is special favor, linked to the bipartisan and indeed above-partisanship position that the House of Mouse has long enjoyed in Florida... I don’t know if this argument is constitutionally convincing when applied to something as crudely retaliatory-seeming as the DeSantis move. But it’s convincing at some level of distance.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/opinion/desantis-musk-disney.html

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> One or two days a week, small groups would combine for games and social activities.

Schoolchildren at least get recess &c every day/ to play and interact in, and that's little enough. Limiting it to one or two days a week is horrible. I believe that achieving a sufficiently high density of children is an important desideratum for any such newly enabled living arrangement developments.

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I see the Disney situation as a sign of the problems with our times, but not in the free speech realm. Rather, I see it more paralleling the removal of SALT deductions in 2016: good governance move that apparently was impossible to do before someone powerful got pissy and wanted to punish someone.

To me, that's a real problem with our political system: Both 'sides' support the status quo of corruption and kickbacks and so obvious good governance moves are elusive; only when someone is willing to kick the hornets' nests do we get improvements, but the motivations for doing the kicking are not good and so are erratic.

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"But if you support corporate free speech on principle, then seeing the company punished for its political views should make you unhappy, or at least give you pause."

I agree in principle, but as someone said above: Disney has these weird privileges in Florida that no other corporation has; that makes the situation a little unique. Is there a good reason they should continue to be granted such special privileges by successive gubernatorial administrations when they work to undermine the administration's legislative agenda?

Additionally, if Disney were simply being punished for advocating for its perceived self-interest, I would again have more qualms. Instead, what happened, as far as I can tell, was that the company's leadership team allowed itself to be bullied by a (probably relatively small) group of left wing ideologues it employs into taking sides in a state-level culture war legislative battle that really doesn't concern the company's commercial interests at all. I confess I have little desire to stand up for the rights of Disney when it won't stand up for itself, and instead allows its employees to force it into participating in a partisan food fight that benefits no one. Maybe this makes me some sort of hypocrite, but frankly I'm willing to bite the bullet on that one. I plead apathy.

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Rather than comment on Disney, l am going to draw on my experience with virtually schooling last year. We helped our daughter with our granddaughter. That experience makes me question the model of small groups centered on homes. That takes remarkable parents to pull off.

I also worry about the social interactions. Our granddaughter really needs the social stimulus of other children. That requires a larger grouping.

I would like to see the current public-school model broken up, but maybe there's something in between a classroom with 1 teacher and 25 kids and small groups of families that could develop.

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These adverse effects may, indeed, “fade out with time,” and they might do so even if what students got during COVID-19 instead of normal schooling were continued indefinitely, normal schooling never being resumed. But if the effects faded out only by age 50, or 40, or even 30, they would still be notably bad.

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"If we did not have our stupid, centralized public school system, I think that child care/education for young children would be a home-based business." That could be one result of a proper Child Tax Credit.

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"On the substantive issue of whether 7-year-olds should be given a sex-ed curriculum, I have no sympathy with Disney whatsoever." Is that the effect of the bill and only way of effecting that result? Was there an outbreak of 7 year old sex education that could only be thwarted by that text in a ne state law? Or was this just "do something-ism?"

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I'd like to hear Kling or others flesh out the principal of Corporate free speech in the Disney case.

First, Disney wasn't engaging in speech, they were engaging in a legal battle to strike down a law that they didn't like. Disney didn't speak to the public about the issue during elections. After the law was passed, the Disney spokesperson said, “Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that,"

Secondly, punishment here is withdrawing of special favors that they weren't entitled to in the first place. Politicians are constantly giving favors to friends, and denying those favors to others. I'm not saying that's good, but I'd like to hear where you draw the line between what is fair game and what is not. Corporations have free speech, but that can never be perfectly free from political consequences.

Lastly, Republicans are pressuring Disney to be neutral and stay out of issues that don't directly affect their business. Democrats are pressuring Disney to endorse their agenda and wage legal battles against Republican opposition. I imagine someone might say, both parties shouldn't pressure Disney in either direction. That's fair, but it's not fair to expect one side to unilaterally disarm and forfeit advantage to their rivals.

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