What is Freedom?

What is freedom? It seems like such a simple question. Freedom is being able to do what you want to do. Duh! Allow me to demonstrate.

I'm tired of working for a living. I'd rather collect taxes. So that's what I'm going to do: collect The Milsted Tax. You are hereby ordered to estimate your income from the past 12 months, and write me a check for mere 1%. I have thoughtfully provided a mailing address for this purpose on my contact page …

What? You have a problem with my plan? Oh, I see. If you have to send me a check for The Milsted Tax, then I have interfered with your freedom to spend that money as you see fit. We have conflict! And our essential problem: we cannot indulge all freedoms at the same time; we must settle for a subset. But which subset?

Libertarians opt for a subset based on self-consistency. They define freedom as being able to do what you want to do as long as it doesn't interfere with the equal right of others to do likewise. That is, freedom is being able to do as you like as long as you do not initiate force or fraud against another's life, liberty or property. The word "initiate" is thrown in because libertarians do believe in the right of self defense.

This definition is mostly self-consistent; you can build an impressive legal and ethical framework on just this principle, and libertarians do. Their quest for philosophical self-consistency often becomes more important than common sense, or even freedom itself. The libertarian movement attracts more Vulcans than any other. A typical Libertarian Party convention is a tedious exercise in legalistic nitpicking.

The libertarian definition rules out the freedoms to steal, murder, commit fraud, or enslave. Otherwise, you can do what you want. This is rather uncontroversial until you realize that taxation is theft; war is murder and vandalism; and national service is a form of slavery. Since only governments have a legal right to initiate force, libertarians focus on shrinking, or even eliminating, government. The libertarian definition of freedom is thus Freedom from the Government.

Freedom from the Government is important, but it is not the only freedom. Recall my “Milsted Tax.” If I could collect it, it would increase my freedom enormously. Currently, I have a day job; 40 hours of the week I am under orders from my employer. If I could instead collect taxes, I’d be a free agent for an extra 40 hours per week. I would have Freedom from the Boss.

Of course, we cannot all sit at home collecting taxes. Somebody has to work. But today, some have to work many more hours than others for the same income, which is offensive to liberals and socialists. They note that wealth inequality can constitute a power relationship similar to that between mugger and victim, government and governed. They argue rightly that narrowing the wealth gap can produce a net increase in freedom overall, even as they call for regulations, taxation and even nationalization of industries.

Freedom from the Government and Freedom from the Boss are both important freedoms. When the libertarian vision of free-wheeling capitalism is fully unleashed, we end up with sweatshops and machine guns pointed at strikers. When the Left treats Freedom from the Boss as the only freedom, we get communism: dictatorship, bureaucracy, poverty, starvation, and prison camps. Balance is needed!

Consider yet another freedom:

Thurston wants to live in a quiet, beautiful neighborhood with manicured lawns tastefully decorated. Earl wants to ride his Harley and restore his 1969 Pontiac GTO in his front yard. Muffy wants a safe place to raise her children, free from the influences of drugs and pornography. Ringo wants to fire up some quality weed and have a nude pool party in his back yard. Starflower want to commune with nature, surrounded by ten thousand acres of old growth forest, with no evidence of technology or humanity in sight. She really wants Freedom from Everyone Else.

Freedom from Everyone Else is harder to preserve the higher the population grows. Preserving it entails measures such as government ownership of large chunks of land, restrictive gated communities, and restrictions on immigration. Both environmentalists and communitarians demand a form of this freedom. And what they call for often deeply conflicts with both libertarian and liberal ideals.

Perfect freedom is impossible. Complete fulfillment of one of these freedom visions result in great loss of the other freedoms. Balance is required to make everyone happy – or at least less unhappy.

But how do we achieve balance? Do we simply split the difference between the demands of the existing political factions? Does balance mean mere compromise?

Or can we do better? Why not look for ways to improve on all three freedoms? Let us search for ways to shrink the government and shrink the wealth gap. Let us look for ways to preserve wilderness and allow for human industry and habitation. Let us have manicured lawn communities and cars on blocks communities.

Yes, we must have compromise, but we can minimize compromise by looking for synergies. To find synergies, however, we must get out of the teamist mentality. We must learn to appreciate the values held dear by others and recognize the limitations of our own vision of freedom. To that end, the next few pages will address each freedom vision in turn, pointing out both the beauties and the limitations. The rest of this web site is devoted to ideas I have come across once I got out of my own tunnel vision. The red buttons on the left address economic equality vs. freedom from excessive government; the green buttons address the environment; and the blue buttons morality. The rainbow buttons point to articles on Holistic Politics in general. For the most part, the articles are self-contained; feel free to read them in any order.

As for this article, it continues here with Freedom From the Government.

Next: Freedom from the Government

In this Chapter:

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