Liberty and Theory

Theory and Liberty


"What Color Tie Do You Vote For?: Or 'Is Economic Freedom Part of Liberty?' A Critique of Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom."

Milton Friedman is one of the key economists who made popular the view that "economic freedom is by definition part of freedom." This view has become widely accepted among conservative and libertarian think tanks in the last decades of the twentieth century such as The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute. This essay argues that Friedman’s formulation, while rhetorically brilliant and seemingly self-evident, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of freedom. Friedman assumes in a free society the bulk of individual choices are left up to the market, and government is simply the umpire of the game. This essay by contrast argues that this formulation misconstrues the nature of freedom. For the very question of freedom is where to place the boundary between markets and government in the first place, i.e., determining the rules of the game versus moves within the game itself.

This essay argues that Friedman’s formulation, while rhetorically brilliant and seemingly self-evident, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of freedom. Friedman assumes in a free society the bulk of individual choices are left up to the market, and government is simply the umpire of the game. This essay by contrast argues that this formulation misconstrues the nature of freedom. For the very question of freedom is where to place the boundary between markets and government in the first place, i.e., determining the rules of the game versus moves within the game itself.

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Why 'Market Liberals' Are Not 'The True Liberals' or Who Really Inherits the Liberty Tradition?
 
Some republicans and libertarians are fond of claiming that they are the true liberals of modernity. Thinkers such as F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and members of various think tanks such as the founders of the Cato Institute, Edward Crane and Boaz, all claim that their views about liberty and government are more consistent with what they regard as classical conceptions of liberty than those who traditionally called themselves liberals and now call themselves progressives.

These writers eschew the title “conservative” as not capturing their commitments to progress and liberty and think that the term “liberal” better serves to describe their position. This essay explores how the right is trying to co-opt the term “liberal” and see themselves as the inheritors of the liberty tradition.

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"Liberty and the Public Good: Endorsing Suicide and Slavery as Part of a Free Society."

My modest proposal is this: that if we really embrace a utilitarian view of liberty, we should change our laws to permit suicide and slavery. Specifically, we should immediately acknowledge that a society that is truly free in this sense allows people to take their own lives, sell themselves into slavery, and therefore allows others to purchase and traffic in slaves, under certain conditions. This sounds on the surface contradictory. How can a free society endorse slavery? But we shall see that if liberty is really founded on utility, then slavery and suicide should be embraced. Moreover, I have a specific proposal about which group of people would make the best class of slaves, a point to which I return later, after first justifying slavery as an institution in a free society.

Specifically, we should immediately acknowledge that a society that is truly free in this sense allows people to take their own lives, sell themselves into slavery, and therefore allows others to purchase and traffic in slaves, under certain conditions. This sounds on the surface contradictory. How can a free society endorse slavery? But we shall see that if liberty is really founded on utility, then slavery and suicide should be embraced. Moreover, I have a specific proposal about which group of people would make the best class of slaves, a point to which I return later, after first justifying slavery as an institution in a free society.

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"Why Can’t My Daughter Drive A Tank? Reflections on the Meaning of Liberty and Freedom in a Civil Society"

When my daughter began to drive at sixteen, I had serious fantasies of wanting to buy her a tank as a way to protect her on the road. Of course, the law forbids her from driving a tank. This essay explores the natural and necessary limits of liberty in a free society and why putting my daughter in a tank -- even though it may arguably protect her life -- doesn’t fall into my naturally protected rights of “life, liberty and property.”

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“Liberty Is Not Freedom To Do What You Like: How Notions of Public Good Constrain Liberty In John Locke and the Early Liberty Tradition.”

Many people still have the mistaken notion that liberty means “absolute freedom.” They assume that “to be free” is to do “what one wants.” When they think of liberty they think of the protection of “life, liberty and property.” Or they think of Jefferson’s word in the Declaration of Independence, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” They see big government with lots of rules as an infringement on liberty. They believe that freedom implies maximizing individual choices and minimizing government. They insist that “economic freedom is part of freedom” as if any infringement on one’s right to buy or sell, or any restrictions on markets by governments is a restriction in one’s liberty. Government should remain small, markets should work without interventions, and individual choices should be maximized. They believe these ideas are at the heart of what the liberty has meant and should mean in the modern tradition and the vision that the United States was founded on.

But in the modern liberty tradition, as it developed originally in Britain, where it principally started, and as it came to be appropriated in the American colonies before the Revolution, liberty did not mean total freedom, or the ability to do whatever one wanted with no constraints. On the contrary, liberty referred to the ability to exercise one’s will, within a set of known