So says Gary Chartier. I’m inclined to agree that it’s a consumer good, at least in the actually existing economy. If freedom is doomed always to be an economic good, then there will always be constraints on freedom. Either freedom is impossible, or freed markets are an incremental step toward actual freedom, or freed markets can actually bring the cost of freedom all the way to zero.
“Freedom from arbitrary authority is a consumer good”
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3 responses to ““Freedom from arbitrary authority is a consumer good””
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From Chartier’s article: “A free society wouldn’t and couldn’t eliminate investor-owned or boss-dominated firms—nor should it, not only because direct, violent interference with these patterns of ownership and control would be unjust but also because workers might often benefit from the ability to shift risk onto employers and investors. But eliminating state-secured privilege and remedying state-sanctioned aggression could create significantly greater opportunities for self-employment and work in partnerships and cooperatives.”
Nonsense. This assumes that the state is the primary source of market distortions and limitations on freedom. “State-secured privilege and state-sanctioned aggression” pale in comparison with the warlord-secured privilege and pirate-sanctioned aggression that prevails under weak and failed states. What libertarians of all left, right, or center leanings always forget is the simple fact of real life–freedom is a creature of intelligence, restraint, and cooperation, not of impulse and unbridled nature. Civility is a product of education, training, and practice. Civic and economic flourishing is a product of fine checks and balances that are codified in social compacts but which actually arise bit by bit over great periods of time through much trial and error. Libertarians such as historians, anthropologists, and behavioral economists.
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That last line should read libertarians SUCK as…
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Concerning the idea of freedom as an economic good, I dug up something I posted a couple of years ago that seemed apropos, Is mass emigration from America part of our future? The question I explore there is: If human migration were as “liberalized” as capital flows, would the free world still be the world’s high rent district? My admittedly cynical belief is that it would be, probably more so than currently.
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