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1624 sats \ 32 comments \ @Scoresby 9h AskSN

I like freedom. When I hear about a new law being passed that restricts freedom in some way, my response is: this is bad.

I'm curious though about the cases where freedom is bad -- eg yelling fire in a movie theater or public nudity or starving yourself to death.

What are the cases where freedom is bad?

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102 sats \ 0 replies \ @openyoureyes 22m

Only if you are a domesticated house animal that can not live free and independent.

144 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 9h

The freedom to exercise aggression with impunity.

101 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 9h

this is the big one, but what about the small ones? freedom to spit on the sidewalk? freedom to smoke in a restaurant? freedom to run a large diesel generator near a playground? freedom to teach my kids to be sociopaths?

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 9h

Pollution could be defined as a form of aggression. Smoking inside a restaurant and running a large diesel generator near a playground would fall under these.

Teaching your kids to be sociopaths is technically aggression too, because your kids aren't your property, even though you're responsible for them.

Freedom to spit on the sidewalk - your own sidewalk? sure. Someone else's? Kinda rude lol.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3h

Freedom is bad when people are bad.

Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other

510 sats \ 4 replies \ @Natalia 8h

sometimes restrictions set you free, two examples come to my mind so far:

Constantly roaming around, aka living anywhere you want, versus having a home base where you can focus on learning or creating.
Having a dedicated partner who grows with you versus dating around.

102 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 6h

That really depends on whether you chose those restrictions though?

If I give you a nice home base in the Tower of London and marry you to Brutus against your will, does it really matter that you have the home base and a dedicated, brute, partner?

99 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 5h

Fair. it's not a choice is isn't freely chosen. *Voluntary restrictions may be a key. Far more interesting though is the thought that involuntary restrictions could result in setting you free. Take for example addiction: preventing an addict from accessing the source of their addiction might possibly set them free (I've been around enough addiction to know that this only occasionally works...but it does occasionally work).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 5h

I think that if you have the freedom to choose your restrictions, then your chosen restraint can be really great for you, if you choose well. As someone that actually once upon a time had a far less than awesome marriage I know that's not a given, but I chose freely so I can own it and I do. I know plenty of people that didn't get to make these choices though, and some of them are stuck in bad places, and they don't get to experience much of that freedom.

Take for example addiction: preventing an addict from accessing the source of their addiction might possibly set them free

Is it the act of prevention (and mind you this is targeted, so it's almost incomparable to generic restrictions to freedom) that makes it occasionally work, or is it that and reform, or even simply a lot of care and love and positive stimulation that does that?

I personally subscribe to the latter because I think that the act of taking something away on its own is likely to be perceived as a punishment and therefore often an invitation to regression, but maybe, if something else comes in the place of the addiction, there could be a positive result.

333 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 8h

my wife and I talk about this all the time in the context of our single friends. Committing to a partner definitely creates freedom. Freedom to take risks that you couldn't take with someone who might leave you at a small inconvenience, freedom to be honest with each other, freedom to let your guard down and be vulnerable, and on and on.

In English "freedom" is maybe too blunt a word. I'm sure there are nuances here that other languages may have the words for.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @_stacktoshi 4h

There are so many moral gray areas that you almost need to think of it in terms of an efficient or Pareto frontier where high freedom and low responsibility are tradeoffs (with finance, this is high reward vs. low risk of an asset allocation). For every increase in individual sovereignty, a commensurate increase of personal responsibility is required. As long as participants can freely move along that curve (move to different jurisdictions) and thrive, there shouldn't be any conflicts. If they're far below the curve, that's when you get death, disease, societal collapse, etc.

102 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 9h

Other than @optimism's point, I don't think it's the freedoms that are bad. It's bad people who do bad things.

Having the freedom to wear what you want (on private property where the owner...) is good, because the alternative is a dress code police invading private property and assaulting people for their clothing choices.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 8h

I don't think it's the freedoms that are bad. It's bad people who do bad things.

But to some extent, they can't be separated. Guns don't kill people, people do is reasonable, and yet when trying to figure out how to stop people from killing each other, people seem likely to vote for controlling guns.

If my neighbor wanted to walk around their yard naked all the time, I'd certainly have a problem with that.

Here's another example: someone does a reckless thing like trying to chop down a large tree on their property by themselves. Let's assume they don't know what they are doing, but they don't want to hire a arborist. The tree might fall on my house. If there's no law against chopping down large trees, I have to wait until they accidentally smash my house to have any recourse. However, in the case of the existence of a law that says no one can chop down trees over a certain size unless they hire an arborist, I could potentially stop them before they smash my house.

On the other hand, the tree-felling might go perfectly well, despite their amateurism, and I don't like laws that impinge upon freedom because of a lowest-common denominator assumption (just because most people can't safely fell a large tree, doesn't mean I can't).

These are the cases I'm curious about. Not selling tobacco products to minors is another. Ideally, parents would be responsible for the behavior of their children. Why should merchants be tasked with enforcing good health?

202 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 8h

If my neighbor wanted to walk around their yard naked all the time, I'd certainly have a problem with that.

The reason people don't like freedom is because they don't want to pay the necessary price to own all the stuff they want to exert their control over.

If you don't want to see your neighbor naked, buy enough land so that you can't, build privacy fencing, make a deal with your neighbor, move, or just accept that you don't always get your way.

someone does a reckless thing like trying to chop down a large tree

Generally, libertarians do consider it appropriate to be able to stop credible threats to one's person or property. So, I'd put this into "exercise aggression" no-no category.

Not selling tobacco products to minors

I'm not sure exactly and I've never seen anyone tackle it philosophically, but it probably goes in that aggression category too. (How convenient is that?)

Minors are not considered competent to consent to contractual arrangements, so contrary to most libertarians preferences, this would have to be considered something like theft from the minor.

102 sats \ 4 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 7h

Basically, all freedom's good, right? Until your freedom starts messing with someone else's.

42 sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby OP 5h

Is the freedom to starve oneself good? (I think it may be, but it's troubling)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 2h

If you want the freedom to starve yourself, others shouldn't pay for your medical care if you pass out and a hospital tries to revive you

I personally don't think we can ever have an entirely free market for health care because most people are not morally willing to let people who can't afford health care die (or even suffer, much) because they can't afford it

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 5h

Letting people starve to death isn't good, but having the freedom to decide that is. Isn't that basically what we do all the time? I know people die from hunger daily, and I don't do anything about it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 3h

I was specifically thinking of someone's choice to starve (think hunger strike or anorexia), not famine or involuntary hunger.

102 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 7h

so they pass such nonsense but don't want to talk about Epstein? lol

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 5h

is the freedom to not talk about Epstein bad?

124 sats \ 1 reply \ @rootmachine 8h

Freedom is bad only when is misunderstood. When people think that freedom means disrespecting others and breaking the laws. When freedom is wrongfully associated with violence, fascism and other things in this area. I am seeing this more and more often and the world is becoming a really messy place. I wonder where did things go off so bad in the past 30 years. I look at my generation (I'm 36) and I feel we are the last normal ones.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 8h

While I agree with you, I also have a feeling every generation feels like they are the last normal ones. Isn't the trouble, though, in the perceptions of the things: sure some people feel freedom means freedom to insult, but what if I'm doing something that is interesting and good for me, but insulting to others (drawing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad for humorous purposes)?

Even more troublesome is that some people seem to think freedom means never having to feel insulted. It is messy.

102 sats \ 2 replies \ @itsrealfake 8h

Freedom is always fine.

Responses to circumstance are problematic.

Yelling fire in a crowded theater is fine. When people respond to it with a mad rush to the exits, that's a problem.

If you cause a stampede, you're in the wrong.

Our laws should be about handling liability, and not causing restrictions to behavior. However, if you spit on the sidewalk ... that's grody, and maybe your peers will penalize you for it. They're free to do so.

The thing about "freedom" is that we all have it, and we exercise it according to our awareness of it.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 8h

Our laws should be about handling liability, and not causing restrictions to behavior.

This is pretty much my base case. However, in the context of something like Texas' law new law around age verification for websites with sexually explicit material

If someone hosts a porn site online, I don't think they are liable for the harm done to some child who visits that site. It's the parents who should be making sure their kids don't spend time on the internet looking at porn.
If someone posts porn to a social media platform, I'd still say it's the parent's job to keep their kids from going to bad places on the internet.
If some kids youtube channel has a commercial for an adult site, well now that might be the line. Clearly, YouTube should be liable for that harm. What if it's not particularly a kids channel? In general, I think Youtube just doesn't allow adult ads at all for this reason (at least I've never encountered one on YouTube).

But where is the line between 2 and 3?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @itsrealfake 7h

<<< Enjoyed this thought experiment, thanks :) >>>

Clearly, YouTube should be liable for that harm.

I would say, It's up to the legislature to decide how to define that harm, how to demonstrate harm, and then to enforce whatever rules they have for penalizing that harm. To the extent that the harm may be measured in different cultures/regions, it's good to let the legislatures decide how to handle the rule making for their district/regions.

I think, if there's harm (there likely is), it should be penalized steeply... whether that means monetary penalty (maybe that would work) or executive leadership penalty (confining leadership in a jail would probably be a good penalty, too).

And, I think if you have put your kids in front of a screen and you're not aware of what the screen is feeding them, that you also carry responsibility for some of the harm. So, as I think about this more deeply, I guess I'm saying "let the lawyers figure out the balance".

In the end, we're responsible for our actions to the extent that we can be.

If you get hit by a car while crossing an intersection, chances are you took your safety for granted and didn't look both ways. If there was a drunk behind the wheel, that person may also be at fault (though I'm not a supporter of MADD, I do acknowledge that being behind a steering wheel is something I would prefer people didn't take lightly).

If you're a child, and you're harmed by an adult or another child, I think the waters get murky... like, I can imagine a circumstance where somebody at an airport trips an unruly toddler who falls and scrapes a knee and cries. While the adult could have felt what they were doing was "good for the rambunctious youth" I suspect that NAP would discourage tripping the kid.

What if the liable entity is predatory, though? How would we demonstrate predation? What mechanisms might we deploy to determine willfulness vs. neglect? Are the rules on the books sufficient for that? I'm here for the 4th amendment, and I'm also here for adjusting old rules to match new realities...

If personhood is granted to incorporated entities by the US Gov, perhaps that's not ideal. An incorporated entity (many humans in a company) has a lot of tools at its disposal to evade/hinder detection of individuals within the company. So, how could we adjust the rules such that the governed (individuals) are correctly balancing their ability to coordinate (as a republic) with the need for innovation (exercising freedom from norms)?

102 sats \ 1 reply \ @CruncherDefi 8h

In cases where we have prisoner dilemma dynamics from mathematical branch of game theory.

Unconstrained, players will go for greedy 'defect' action. Which makes other players also retaliate with 'defect' action and everyone ends up worse off.

If you can limit possibilities of playing 'defect' action, it's easier to stay in pareto-optimal solution of everyone playing 'cooperate' action in which everyone is better of.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 8h

I'll admit, I don't know enough about game theory to wrap my head around this. But, maybe there is something here that even my ignorant mind can catch: repeated interactions change the game. I've been positioning this whole conversation as one-off interactions. How does our understanding of freedom change in the context of an ongoing relationship? Freedom in the context of marriage might be a fruitful place to spend some time. Thanks for bringing me to this.

102 sats \ 2 replies \ @unschooled 9h

i don't know if it's is ever bad per se but that it should sometimes be curtailed in cases where otherwise you would have undesirable or anti-social behaviour.

now then the question becomes, on whose authority we decide that, and I definitely don't have an answer there..

45 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 8h

yeah, that's the problem: who gets to decide when it's a situation that requires curtailment?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @unschooled 6h

its a moral problem and a hard one.

i think there are, generally speaking, two types of a answers. on the one hand, you defer to the elders in a society. no matter what, those who have lived the longest have the highest authority. this is hard for westerners to conceptualize, but it is truly the case in some places. on the other, you defer to to doctrine (religion, law or constitution), which requires building up systems of interpretation and enforcement (legal proceedings, police etc.)

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @Macoy31 3h

I get where you're coming from freedom is one of the highest values, but it's also one of the trickiest to define in absolute terms. I think freedom becomes "bad" when it infringes on others' freedom or safety. Like you said: yelling "fire" in a crowded theater isn't about silencing speech, it's about preventing chaos and harm. Same with public nudity. it's not always about morality, but about shared social norms and the right of others to not be forced into discomfort in public space.

There's a balance between individual liberty and collective responsibility. Absolute freedom without limits turns into anarchy or harm. But too much restriction kills what makes life meaningful.

So maybe the better question isn't "when is freedom bad?" but "when does freedom need boundaries to protect freedom itself?"