Reason: What about your article on the market for goods and the market for ideas in the American Economic Review in 1974? You created quite a stir with this and were interviewed by Time magazine. What did you say in that article, and why was it so controversial?

Coase: It was controversial because I said that the arguments for regulation of the market for goods and the regulation of the market for ideas are essentially the same, except that they’re perhaps stronger in the area of ideas if you assume consumer ignorance. It’s easier for people to discover that they have a bad can of peaches than it is for them to discover that they have a bad idea.

Reason: So if you think that the consumer, ignorant as he is, ought to be protected by a government regulator, then you should really believe that the government regulator ought to step in and police the speech of professors or politicians or pundits.

Coase: That’s right. If the government is competent to do the one, it’s competent to do the other.

Reason: Then there ought to be a federal philosophy commission.

Coase: That’s right. The press was horrified by the idea. If the argument is exactly the same for regulating the press as for regulating peaches, this meant that I was arguing for regulation of the press.

Reason: You have to be careful with reductio ad absurdum arguments.

Coase: As they assumed that all regulation in the market for goods was fine, it never struck them that the argument was really the other way around.

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