Alchian on the Right and “cost” of Free Speech

Well-defined private property rights, Alchian demonstrated, can generate incentives for human behavior that would result in economic development, efficient use of resources, and social harmony in general. Contrariwise, poorly defined property rights are prone to generate bad incentives and conflicts. He also pointed out that even in an advanced and complex society like the United States, private property rights are not as well defined in many areas as one would think. A clear example of that is the lack of consensus about how to define the right to free speech. In this passage, on one hand, Alchiam calls attention to the fact that individuals have a “negative” right to free speech; that is, they should be protected from the interference of others who may attempt to prevent them from expressing their ideas.

On the other hand, Alchian states the obvious fact that to communicate ideas is costly. A result is that it would be an infringement of private property rights if the right to “free speech” were understood as a “positive” right- that is, a right to force others to do something, to incur a cost for someone to be able to communicate his ideas. To understand the right of free speech as a positive right is, therefore, in contradiction with private property rights of media outlets, be that an auditorium, a specific bandwidth of the magnetic spectrum, or a platform on the internet. For about a century now, since the moment in which the allocation of radio frequencies became determined by the political process and not by the market, first to radio stations, next to television, and now to wireless transmissions, such political determination blurred the clarity about private property in the electronic media, giving rise to the “positive” understanding about what consists the right to free speech with the harmful consequences pointed out by Alchian.