Government imposed equality is NOT freedom…
But neither is market imposed inequality…
This Yearning to Breathe Free – Part 2 is a follow up to an older post I wrote a few years back.
So then, what is freedom?
I mean, really, what is it?
I recently posted about freedom as being the unifying concept, or that it, at least, should be…
However, our disagreements about what freedom truly is are at the heart of the division we’re currently experiencing.
The scientists and doctors involved with managing this pandemic are telling us all to wear masks and “social distance.”
Many regard that as an assault on freedom.
Others would argue that sometimes we must curtail personal freedoms for the good of the collective whole.
And daily we see videos posted to social networks of normally decent citizens tearing each other’s eyes out over the issue of mask wearing in order to protect the health of their fellow humans!
Why can’t we agree on this basic issue – what is freedom?
What we mean by free, with respect to the market, is that it is free from interference…
that it is allowed to charter its own course.
Which is what I guess most of us would likewise enjoy individually.
But without diverging into economics, a completely “free” market isn’t altogether possible and for that matter, neither is a completely “free” individual.
The market does not and cannot exist on its own…it is not a product of nature. It is a product of collective agreement. We agree on how the market should operate and give government the authority to make sure it does indeed operate in that manner!
And our own personal freedoms connote some responsibility to others. This idea is enshrined in the oft-quoted expression that my liberty to swing my fist ends where your nose begins!
So, can anything be truly free?
Perhaps not in the sense that freedom must have its limits, or boundaries.
The political fault lines seem to align with our varying perceptions about where those boundaries lie.
For instance, conservatives are adamant about a free market, with minimal government intervention…
However, they are equally adamant about “law and order”, with clear boundaries and enforcement concerning certain actions they deem societally harmful…
like drug use, for instance.
Liberals on the other hand clamor for more government intervention into the market and less into our personal choices.
I posed the question in the unifying concept post about whether or not there could be a happy medium?
Since we all agree that freedom, at least in theory, is good and we all want to enjoy it…
Couldn’t we also possibly come to some tacit agreement about the limits to said freedom?
Let’s consider an example where disagreement often arises…
Take health care, for instance…
Can a person be truly free if he or she lives under the constant threat of an economic disaster stemming from an unanticipated sickness or injury?
I have many conservative friends who, if I could venture a guess, would answer no to that question.
So, why is it that as soon as we suggest taking the health care issue off the market, so to speak, and making it a “public good” to be collectively (meaning government) administered, are we right back at each other’s throats?
My conservative friends would quickly tell me, well, because government is bad at managing anything, whereas the market is good at it…
But they won’t make that same argument with respect to other public goods, like law enforcement, the military, or the fire department.
Let’s consider another example…
Most of my conservative friends would probably agree that it is not good for 90% of a country’s wealth to be owned and controlled by only 1% of its population…
They would agree things should be more equal than that…certainly not completely equal, mind you, but at least more equal than that…
But they will also fight me tooth and nail on the idea that government has any role whatsoever in equalizing that playing field…
That is the job of the market, they’d tell me…
But the robust unfettering of the market over the last several decades has gotten us into this gross inequality mess in the first place, hasn’t it?
Again, the market is organized and managed via collective, or government, action. It is NOT some freely operating natural phenomenon…
The problem is that the government, which is supposed to reflect the collective will, has been unduly influenced by those who have enjoyed the vast majority of the market’s largess. The so-called “free” market has been rigged in their favor…so, I guess in that sense it is free, but only for them.
I’d opine that the majority on both the right and the left share the sentiment that government is inept at managing anything and what managing it does do is usually for the benefit of only a small percentage of the collective.
The truth is that our cherished freedoms are both promoted and curtailed by “collective” action and lately, that action has been far less than reflective of the popular (or collective) will.
The concept of “self-government” does not only mean taking personal responsibility for ones individual actions, it also means taking collective responsibility for our collective actions, i.e., our government!
That is a fundamental tenet of democracy! Self-government does not work without that level of personal and civic responsibility.
And we seem to be doing a piss-poor job of it lately.
The point of this post is that if we all want to enjoy the freedoms we so seemingly cherish, well then, we need to do a better job of collectively managing ourselves, don’t you think?
We need to pay closer attention to how we actually employ self-government in practice…
How do we do that?
That’s a very good question that I’m afraid I don’t have a cogent answer for…
But I do know how we’ll never be successful at it…
And that is by staying the current course of being at each other’s throats about that very issue of…
how the fuck to govern ourselves in order to maximize the freedoms we collectively cherish?
Isn’t it high time we stopped retreating to our respective tribal corners and irresponsibly shirking that solemn responsibility?
