ABSTRACT
Campaign contributions or independent expenditures should be a good investment of resources, just like commercial advertising. While businesses might prefer more conservative candidates to win office because of their preference for less regulation, they are primarily concerned with developing relationships with incumbents so that they have the opportunity to lobby – that is, they favor lobbying over electioneering. But the problems for political equality that resulted from Citizens United have been as much about rich individuals as big business. The idea of free speech is one of the most powerful in the American firmament of political principles. The marketplace theory is premised on the notion that there is a public economy of ideas in which good ideas are "bought" and poor ideas are rejected. The marketplace theory makes some important assumptions about people's capacity to be informed and critical consumers of ideas, and the psychological theory of free speech questions these assumptions.
