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One often hears the expression "the marketplace of ideas" used in reference to John Stuart Mill's political theory in On Liberty. 1 This metaphor describes a situation in which people speak and exchange ideas freely, and it has a certain plausibility on two counts. First, the metaphor reflects, in a superficial manner, something of Mill's liberalism, his desire to minimize government's and society's interference in the life of the individual. Second, it reflects our ideological beliefs that market behavior represents paradigmatically the kind of freedom to which we aspire, so speech and action must be free, we believe, in the same manner. This metaphor does not come from Mill's own text, however, and quite to the contrary, the metaphor does not reflect accurately Mill's views on free speech expressed in On Liberty.
1. The Metaphor
The metaphor is based, first of all, on a market economy and on free exchange in the market. In such a market many products are available and we, as rational consumers, choose freely what we want from among those available after careful weighing of their relative quality. We consider price, quality of manufacturing, how the product fits our needs, tastes, convenience, and so on. Here is the manner in which an economist describes the process:
The consumer is assumed to be rational. Given his income and the market prices of the various commodities, he plans the spending of his income so as to attain the highest possible satisfaction or utility . . . In the traditional theory it is assumed that the consumer has full knowledge of all the information relevant to his decision, that is he has complete knowledge of all the available commodities, their prices and his income. In order to attain this objective the consumer must be able to compare the utility (satisfaction) of the various "baskets of goods" which he can buy with his income.
Demand of each individual consumer is then aggregated in the market. What follows from an entire force of such rational consumers in the market is the survival or triumph, increased market share, preponderance, or prevalence of the "best" product. This is the great benefit said to accrue from competition-that the market tends to deliver the best goods most efficiently. We must...