Here in America, "freedom" is a word with almost religious connotations in the context of politics, but perhaps because of that, it is a word seldom analyzed in terms of its actual meaning. It is held sacred, not to be questioned, not to be studied, because to study something is, well, to treat it as a secular thing and not a sacred one. Especially if one studies with a critical bent of mind.

The reality is, however, that the word "freedom," all by itself in a vacuum and without modifiers and qualifiers, has no meaning. It is an empty word, verbal cotton candy, devoid of significance, producing good feelings to an unthinking soul but conveying nothing whatsoever of substance. It is only when we specify WHO'S freedom TO DO WHAT, that the word acquires actual cognitive meaning. And when we begin to do that, we discover some peculiar things about freedom.

We may define the word as "the ability of a person to do something, or to prevent something, or the condition of not being afflicted by something, so that in each case we speak of the person being 'free to do X,' or 'free from Y.'" I am free to speak my mind. He is free of drug addiction. It is also useful to specify that one is free to do X or free from Y in the context of some entity that might potentially prevent one from doing X or afflict one with Y. The phrase "free to do X" then acquires the connotation "free to do X without interference from Z." In practice, the word is almost always used in this way, especially in politics.

In an American political context it is common in some circles to speak of "freedom" always with respect to the government as the potential agent of interference, implying that the weaker and/or more restrained government is rendered, the more freedom is enjoyed by citizens. Again, though, it is necessary always to specify who's freedom to do what, and in the context of what potential restraining factors. Otherwise the word loses all cognitive meaning. The government is certainly a potential restraining factor with regard to many actions, and so it can be said that the weaker and more restrained the government is rendered, the freer the citizenry becomes of government interference in their actions -- a tautology, but true nonetheless. However, this says nothing about how free the same people would then become of other potential restraints on their actions, by non-government entities who are not themselves restrained by a government that is too weakened and restrained to do so.

As we specify who's freedom to do what, it becomes clear that at times, between two people freedom is a zero-sum game. Not always, though. It depends on what actions we're referring to, and whether with respect to those actions the two people are in cooperation or in conflict. For example, if I wish to publish a story I have written and you wish to read that story, then my freedom to publish and your freedom to read my work enhance one another. However, if I wish to own you as a slave, and you do not wish to be a slave, then we may not both enjoy the freedom referred to here. Either I am free to own you as a slave, or you are free from slavery: both cannot be true.

And this brings up another point. Freedoms should not be confused with rights. Freedom is value-neutral. It refers solely to an objective, observable reality, neither good nor bad necessarily: the ability to do something without interference. Whether that freedom is a good or bad thing depends on whether we judge the thing to be done as good or bad. If we judge that a person is morally entitled to do something, then we also say that he or she has a right to do it, and if he or she is free to do it, then that is the way it should be. But one may be free to do something that is not one's right, and one may have a right to do something that one is not, in practice, free to do. Today, we would say that there is no right to own slaves, yet that does not change the fact that the phrase "free to own slaves" has cognitive meaning and is not nonsense.

While slavery is not something encountered any longer in everyday life in America, it does illustrate the point that the government is not the only agent capable of restraining freedom, and that the actions of private non-government entities such as individuals and corporations may also do so, provided they are not restrained from doing so by the government, and of course provided that they have the power to do so. Such restraints may be gross or subtle, illegal or legal; they may take the form of a gun held to the head (gross, illegal), or of a threat of termination of employment (somewhat subtle, and usually legal).

What of a supposedly "free" commercial agreement between a buyer and seller? This is a complex transaction, including elements of both cooperation and conflict. Both parties desire that a deal take place, but both also desire the best deal (from their own perspective) that they can get. Setting aside the cooperative elements with a brief recognition that they do exist, the elements of conflict make commercial transactions a zero-sum freedom game, in which what one side gains the other side loses; if I, the buyer, can buy the item for a lower price, then what I gain is exactly what the seller loses, since the seller would prefer to sell at a higher price.

Recognizing this, let's consider three extreme cases of power differential in a commercial transaction:

1) The buyer is absolutely free to walk away from the sale; he does not need to buy the item from the seller. However, the seller MUST sell to the buyer; he will find no other (or at least no other that will offer a better deal), and failure to make the sale will result in unacceptable consequences.

2) The buyer and the seller are equally free to walk away from the sale; for each, it is an entirely optional transaction. The buyer would like the item but doesn't need it (or it's freely available from other vendors), and the seller would like to sell the item but would suffer no dire consequences if he doesn't (or there are plenty of other potential purchasers).

3) As #1, but reversed: the seller will suffer no unacceptable consequences if the sale does not take place, but the buyer will if he doesn't acquire the item, and he can get it from no one else (or at least no other that will offer a better deal).

Which of these can be said to offer the most in the way of freedom?

If we accept that "freedom" properly applies to control over one's own actions rather than to those of another, then #2 -- the state of equality -- maximizes freedom. In #1, the buyer is free but the seller is not; in #3, the reverse. In #2, both parties are free, and this represents a real "free commercial transaction." The other two are not; they are coercive in nature.

Now, how would this apply when the commercial transaction is one of employment?

Under almost all circumstances, the employer (buyer) is free to walk away from the transaction, not because he doesn't need to buy the item (the labor), but because there are enough sellers that he can turn down any one offer without serious consequences. So we are not going to see situation #3 except on very rare occasions indeed.

Thus, all employment commercial transactions are described by either #1 or #2. If the job-seeker has an independent source of income, or enough savings that the job isn't an immediate necessity, or if positions of that sort are so plentiful compared to persons to fill them that he can turn down any offer without suffering unacceptable consequences, then we have #2: a genuinely free commercial transaction. If the job-seeker has no independent resources, and jobs for which he is qualified are scarce compared to the number of applicants, then he is not free to reject the offer, and we have situation #1.

Since the possession of savings or of independent income becomes more likely with higher earned income to start with, so that one has some leeway to save and/or invest, freedom becomes increased as one approaches economic equality, and reduced as inequality of wealth increases.

Since a capitalist economic system, absent mitigating restraints imposed by government and/or socialist-leaning social-welfare measures, tends to maximize income inequality, the inescapable conclusion is that such a system tends, over time, to reduce freedom and, at least with respect to the labor market, to reduce the occurrence of free commercial transactions. (And it may have the same effect on other commercial transactions as well, particularly if the result is a tendency to monopolistic control.)

Thus, once you begin to parse the fine print and specify who's freedom to do what, it becomes clear that capitalism is the antithesis of liberty.

Wow.

Where to start?

I though about multi-quoting you, but I think I would rather shoot myself in the foot.

Your post was totally wrong.

Freedom does have a definition.

Here is the most commonly accepted view..........


Main Entry:
free·dom Listen to the pronunciation of freedom
Pronunciation:
\ˈfrē-dəm\
Function:
noun
Date:
before 12th century

1: the quality or state of being free: as a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care> d: ease, facility <spoke the language with freedom> e: the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken <answered with freedom> f: improper familiarity g: boldness of conception or execution h: unrestricted use <gave him the freedom of their home> 2 a: a political right b: franchise, privilege

All freedom has boundaries. These boundaries start, where another person's "rights" begin. Freedom and "rights", are dependent on each other.

In a true, free society, you would be able to do almost anything you want that doesn't hurt someone, damage property, or infringe on another person's rights.

Now, when it comes to certain things, like national security, obviously some rules have to be bent. For instance, you should not able to grow anthrax spores, even though you aren't hurting anyone at the time, nor infringing on their rights.

These exceptions should be rare and truly used for WMD's and a few other areas of concern over national security.

If we followed the true definition of the word freedom, the would be no compulsory education, no war on drugs, no eminent domain abuse, no gun bans in any city EVER, no 21 drinking age(unless that was the age of adulthood), no seat belt laws, no fluoride in our water, no forced vaccinations to go to a compulsory school and............too much other stuff to even list, as it will just tick me off.

If the above definition is not accurate for freedom, how would you define it?

I never said it didn't. I said, without qualifiers, the word has no cognitive meaning. It doesn't refer to anything specific, anything real. You have to define who's freedom to do what you're talking about before it acquires meaning.

Even words without cognitive meaning still have definitions, though.

You're confusing freedom with rights here, I believe. Yes, all freedom has boundaries, but those boundaries are practical, not moral. (If morality has anything to do with it, then that is because we, as a society, impose restraints and limits on freedom in accordance with our beliefs.)

You're not addressing what I said in any way here, which leads me to believe you didn't understand it. All you are expressing in that paragraph and the ones that follow are your beliefs about what the limitations on freedom ought to be. This says nothing about the nature of freedom itself.

There's a difference between a statement of fact and a statement of value or opinion. Both are important, but each has a different criterion for judgment. We judge a statement of fact to be true or false; a statement of value or opinion, however, is one which we can agree or disagree with, but which cannot in itself be true or false. That's the case with all "ought to be" statements, including statements about what people's rights are.

I didn't make any "ought to be" statements in my OP, no statements of opinion. (Which doesn't mean I don't hold any opinions on the subject, of course.) I am, instead, addressing the concept of freedom philosophically, in terms of its necessary nature. In a nutshell, here are the points being made:

1) To have cognitive meaning, the word "freedom" must be qualified by specifying who's freedom to do what one is talking about, and also usually the potential limiting entity the person is free from being limited by.

2) Government is one of the factors that can limit freedom, but not the only one; minimizing government will (of course) minimize the limitations on freedom imposed by government, but may actually increase limitations on freedom imposed by non-government entities.

3) Freedom is, where desires conflict, a zero-sum game; if person A desires X, and person B desires Y, and X and Y conflict, then if A is free to do X, B is automatically not free to do Y.

4) Many so-called "free" commercial transactions are not free at all. The only such transactions that are free for both parties are ones that both parties can walk away from without serious consequences.

I made some extrapolations from these points, but those are the main ones. They cannot be answered with "should be" statements, because none of them is a "should be" statement itself -- all of them are "is" statements.

Regardless of what should be, do you deny that these statements are true? If so, why?

I think what you are missing is that "freedom" does not mean the ability to do anything free of consequence. Even with our most cherished freedoms which we base on the notion of fundamental rights (freedom of speech for example) there is no promise of freedom from consequences for the exercise of your freedoms. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you cannot be sued for slander or libel, it merely means the government may not restrict your freedom.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

No, I'd say it's Subtley wrong. The OP addresses the conventional usage of the term freedom, that pertaining to governmental interference. And while the two of you may not agree on the subjective aspects, you do seem to agree on the basics of that aspect.

What TSG is getting at, and you seem to have missed entirely, is extra-governmental freedom. For example, if one lives in what is essentially a one-employer town, are you truly free? Using a coal-mining example, with a few exceptions, every local, employed person you know works at the coal mine. Ignoring unionization for the moment, when it comes time for wage negotiations, the mine has a choice between accepting a given miners wage request, or turning him down and either accepting a different miner or making do with one less miner; all three seem to be viable choices. Each miner, tho, essentially has the choice between accepting the mine's labor request, or turning it down and being unemployed with the option of trying to get work in some other town; only one option appears viable. In that situation, one can reasonably argue that the miner is not truly free, as the conditions of his employment, and by extension many other aspects of his life, are essentially dictated to him.

TSG makes a more general argument, and notes that capitalism tends towards income disparity, which implies a natural tendency towards variations on the mine/miner scenario above. This seems to reasonably lead to the 'capitalism is not freedom' conclusion.

There is some merit to this argument, and no absolute refutation, AFAIK. The best responses available would appear to be that unless economic stratification is governmentally enforced (thus violating the more common usage of 'freedom'), major disparities are self-correcting over the long term (3 generations or less?), and that while capitalism is not without its warts, it is the best approximation of a meritocracy current available. (i.e. There are no demonstrably better options available, and no theoretically better options available that don't themselves violate the more common usage of 'freedom.')

__________________
Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

No, I'm not missing that. But in fact, being sued for libel isn't a consequence of free speech, it's a limitation on free speech: you are not free to engage in speech that would libel someone. You may be punished for doing so; your freedom of speech is restrained in that respect. This is no different from saying that you are not free to commit murder; if you do, you may be (severely) punished for it. Practically speaking, if engaging in an activity results in unacceptable penalties, then you are not free to engage in that activity.

Which brings us back to the commercial transactions and economic balance of power which is the main result of my thinking here. When two people are making a trade, and one of them can walk away from the trade without unacceptable consequences but the other cannot, is it really a free trade? If one insists that it is merely because the government doesn't interfere with it, then the designation of something as a "free" trade loses all significance.

The conclusion that I find inescapable is that freedom requires a certain minimum of economic equality, a certain limitation on disparity of wealth. I do not believe it requires absolute equality: one can engage in free trade with a wealthier person so long as one is not so impoverished that the trade becomes non-optional. But too great a degree of inequality reduces the poorer people to serfdom.

Two interesting points. Thank you. However, some clarification may be needed on both of them.

When you say that major disparities in wealth are self-correcting over the long term, do you mean that, after X number of generations, those major disparities will no longer exist, or simply that they will no longer afflict the same family as they did in the past?

Assuming it's the latter, and assuming that's true (which it may be), one must note that A) one's grandfather was not free even if one is oneself, and B) the problem still exists even if it is afflicting different victims today.

If you meant the former -- and it's definitely worth noting that the status of the working class in this country in 1965 was far, far better than it was in 1905 -- then it might be worth looking into just how that happened, and considering whether this really represents "self-correction."

On the second point, one must ask what defines capitalism. Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, or J.P. Morgan would be aghast at today's economy and would consider it to be, in many respects, socialist. (Although a socialist from the same period would disagree, while noting with approval the changes that the above capitalists would view with shock.) Eight-hour workdays? The right to form a union and bargain collectively? Government regulations affecting working conditions? Social Security? The SEC? All of these were hot issues in the heyday of pure capitalism in this country. (A good book on the subject that I'm currently reading: Death in the Haymarket by James Green. It does a good job of describing late 19th-century capitalism in Chicago and the events leading up to and following the Haymarket bombing.)

If an economy incorporates many socialist elements into itself, while not going all the way to state or collective ownership of the means of production, can it be considered fully capitalist nonetheless?

What doesn't lead to income disparity?

Socialism?

Communism?

Where is there more opportunity to become successful than in the US?

Capitalism is not perfect, it has flaws, but I have never seen socialism, or communism work. Every time either has been tried it has oppressed the people.

No, libel is not a limitation on free speech, it is a consequence of exercising that freedom in certain ways.

You are perfectly "free" to commit-or try to commit--murder, but you will face consequences to that.

Again, you mistake freedom of action with freedom from consequence. Just because doing something or not doing something will be to your detrminent doesn't mean you are not free, it merely means that there are consequences to the choices you make.


This is nonesense, nobody in this nation is forced into anything resembling "serfdom". While people's individual choices over there lifetime may result in them ultimately being in a position where they face incredibly difficult consequences for any given choice they must now make, that doesn't change the fact that they have been free to make all those decisions and are in fact still free to choose, but must face the consequences.

Just because you will die if you jump out of an airplane without a parachute, doesn't mean you are not free to do so.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

If you are talking about freedom, it must be in relation to a group of people. A town, a city, a state, a nation, a world, it must refer to some group or it is meaningless.

FREEDOM AND RIGHTS ARE TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON EACH OTHER.

You can't have freedom without rights and you can't have rights without freedom.

The rights must not always be declared, sometimes that can be implied.

You brought up slavery as an example, but if there is slavery, then there can't be freedom, as some are not free. In the beginning of the US, freedom was reserved for white males who owned land. Luckily, the people were wise enough to realize that this isn't right and now all Americans have the same freedoms, too a point. There is still a large disparity in our courts between rich and poor, as well as some other disparities, but we are still pretty darn close to freedom for all in the US.

The "limitations" on freedom that I spoke of ARE PART OF THE DEFINITION OF THE WORD FREEDOM.

If I am free to won slaves, then the slave isn't free and freedom doesn't exist.

If I am free to take your land, without consequence, then freedom doesn't exist.

You claim you are "talking about the nature of freedom itself", but you don't even know what the word means.

Instead of looking at the word logically, you decided to go on some long winded speech about freedom philisophically, which is meaningless.

I am still waiting for your definition of freedom.

?

If you want to use the words in that way, then you end up concluding that everyone is free to do anything, and the statement "I am free" becomes a meaningless tautology.

In normal usage, the existence of a punishment for some action implies that one is not free to take that action. It's possible to use the words in such a way that this is not so, but if you do, then a slave on an antebellum plantation becomes "free" in the sense that he can disobey as long as he's willing to accept the consequence of a whipping. In ordinary usage, to say that a slave is free is nonsensical.

As everything else you said follows logically from this, I will limit my response to this, which goes to the heart.

I don't understand the significance of this statement. Perhaps you can explain.

Untrue. Just to clarify: "rights" are moral judgments that we make, determinations that a person is morally entitled to do X. "Freedom" means the ability to do X without unacceptable penalties imposed. You listed in an earlier post certain things which you judge to be people's rights, for which penalties are imposed. For example, you mentioned compulsory education. In your view, a school-age child has a right not to attend school. However, he does not have the freedom not to attend school.

Conversely, it is possible for someone to have the freedom to do something that we would judge him NOT to have the right to do. This is especially so from the perspective of the present looking back on behavior in the past. Most obviously, we would judge today that nobody has the right to own slaves, yet in the U.S. prior to the Civil War, in many states one had the freedom to do that.

If there is slavery, then there can't be freedom for the slaves -- or at least, there can't be freedom from the condition of slavery. But that doesn't mean there can't be freedom, of this kind and others, for people who aren't slaves. There is even one kind of freedom in such a society that does not exist in ours today: the freedom to own slaves.

No, the right to vote was so reserved. People who didn't fit into that category might enjoy many different sorts of freedom (or not, depending). The only thing one can say for certain is that in most states they could not vote.

It was in the first post; I'll repost it:

You are free to believe what you want.

However, have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like to be a poor person in China, or Russia, or Chile, or the Sudan, or Pakistan, or Cambodia, or almost any country in the world besides the US, Canada, Australia and the European countries?

Have you ever truly wondered what it would be like to criticize your government and be tortured for it?

Have you?

I doubt it.

Anyways, I no longer wish to discuss what freedom means with someone who doesn't even believe in freedom. Too bad you will not live long enough to see global governance become entrenched, as then you would understand what freedom means and you would miss it dearly.

I think you'd be extremely hard pressed to call the current US Economic system "capitalist" in any pure sense.

Out of curiosity, do you consider freedom vis a vis capitalism to be a zero sum game? That is, if the current system is capitalist (or, let's say American economics - capitalism flavored with socialism) are you saying that increased freedom for someone (employer) necessarily means decreased freedom for another (worker)? And, furthermore, that the only way to make it not a zero sum game is to restrict the freedoms of those with the most to augment those with the least?

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson