Re: Fraud and free speech

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 7:57 PM -0700 6/8/97, William H. Geiger III wrote:

>So what you are saying that if I call up Widgits, Inc. and order product
>"X" that they advertizes does "Y". They instead send me product "X" that
>does "Z" not "Y" then I should have no recource? I should atleast be able
>to get my money back as they have not sold me the product that they
>claimed to be selling (clear violation of the "contract" between buyer and
>seller).

Contracts in a free society are a complicated issue. I suggest reading some
of the usual literature on the subject, including Benson's "The Enterprise
of Law," Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom, "Reason" magazine, etc.

In your hypo above, even you are talking about after the fact redress, or
contract arbitration. This is quite different from the increasing
regulation of commercial speech in blanket forms (such as no liquor
advertising within X yards of schools, no cigarette advertising without
extensive mandated warnings, limitations on claims for medical products,
etc.)

In the hypo of ordering a product, an implicit contract is made. Phone
orders are for the convenience of consumers like ourselves; corporations
usually place "purchase orders," and these P.O.s almost always contain
performance requirements.

End consumers who are not happy buying from "PCs-R-Us" because they ordered
a 200 MHz Pentium and instead received a 66 MHz 486 machine have plenty of
recourses. They can almost certainly get their money back from the vendor
(without their being laws on speech), they can call their credit card
company and cancel the sale, they can take the matter to court or
arbitration (not on free speech grounds, of course), and so on.

Ultimately,  "PCs-R-Us" would last for a short time in a competitive
environment, and savvy buyers would avoid them. One of the best protections
against the kind of hypothetical fraud William Geiger hypothesizes is
_reputation_.

Claiming that Big Brother needs to have laws limiting the speech of
"commercial" speakers is not the right way to go.

(And it wasn't even common until this century, especially the last 20 years.)

--Tim May




There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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