Ask any libertarian whether or not freedom is a right and the answer will most assuredly be “yes.” But I would like to challenge that notion. It may be true in one sense and yet in another sense be completely false. This is a shortcoming of the English language that has caused much confusion and conflict. The word “right” has a loaded meaning that has not only led neo-liberals astray, but libertarians as well.
The words “entitlement” and “right” are often used interchangeably in American discourse. In fact, a synonym of the word “entitlement” happens to be the word “right.” So, much to the chagrin of libertarians do neo-liberals consider goods and services, such as health care, to be rights. Free-market economists understand, however, that an individual’s mere existence does not entitle them to goods and services, but instead must be acquired either through self-sufficiency or exchange(ideally voluntarily).
To philosophically-consistent libertarians, or anarchists, any violation of the non-aggression principle is necessarily a restriction of (some)one’s freedom. Morally speaking freedom can be thought of as right. Notice I did not write “a right” but simply “right.” This is because what is right -in this case freedom- is just. What is right is just.
To say that freedom is a right would be equivalent to saying that freedom is an entitlement. But this would be patently false. The universe does not entitle any individual to their freedom. If the definition of freedom is “liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression,” then clearly freedom must be gained through self-sufficiency or in exchange for protection.
Therefore, if one’s freedom is directly proportional to one’s ability to protect one’s self from aggressors, either through self-sufficiency or in exchange, and if an economic good is a “physical object or service that has value to people and can be sold for a non-negative price in the marketplace,” then we can safely say that freedom is an economic-good.
The implications of this are profound. If an individual, or group of individuals, do not value certain economic goods, such as freedom, should libertarians be concerned when they do not receive it? They are not, after all, entitled to it.
Are economic goods generally advertised for their moral probity or their utility? Perhaps libertarians should abandon the non-aggression principle as a selling point for freedom, and instead focus on freedom’s efficiency.
How many modern goods can be acquired through strict self-sufficiency? Can freedom be acquired through self-sufficiency? Is civil-disobedience an attempt at acquiring freedom through self-sufficiency? What sort of tactics would an organization need to engage in to provide the economic good of freedom to its customers?
For too long libertarians have falsely assumed that freedom is a right, or entitlement. It is not a right. Freedom is a good. Understanding this truth opens up a host of new questions for the libertarian activist. Perhaps as individuals we should be less concerned about defending the freedom of those who do not value it and instead work towards acquiring more for ourselves.
What do you believe is a right? I believe that the freedom to own property is a right. That is an example of freedom being a right.
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“Freedom” and “liberty” have many uses. More specialized usage among libertarians and anarchists is useful, and you might as well direct the more specialized usage here; however, we don’t want to be so idiosyncratic that others misunderstand us. I typically reverse your usage of “freedom” and “liberty”, and this reversal seems more common to me.
You and thefreedictionary’s second entry define freedom with “liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression”.
I ordinarily use “freedom” consistent with thefreedictionary’s first entry, “being free of restraints”. With this meaning of “freedom”, I use “liberty” to mean “freedom of a liberated person from slavery, detention, or oppression”. This “liberty” implies constraints on other persons. My liberty limits you freedom and vice versa.
In other words, “freedom” describes the absence of any constraint, including statutory or customarily proper constraints, while “liberty” describes the absence of constraints imposed on one person by other persons who are themselves constrained from imposing.
So we have legal rights (entitlement) to liberty, but we don’t have (and don’t need) rights to freedom.
The first entries for “freedom” and “liberty” at the TheFreeDictionary are essentially the same.
liberty – The condition of being free from restriction or control.
freedom – The condition of being free of restraints.
In both cases, the political definition is the second entry.
liberty – Freedom from unjust or undue governmental control.
freedom – Liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression.
Google’s dictionary lists the different definitions first.
freedom – The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
liberty – The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life.
Here, the first entry for “freedom” is the apolitical definition, and the first entry for “liberty” is the political definition, and this distinction seems more common to me.
On the other hand, I encounter this confusion routinely, so people use both words interchangeably as you say. I can follow your convention here, but I’ll stick to my current convention otherwise.
Here’s a look at the etymology of the words.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/stromberg/stromberg14.html
Also, “free” has many common uses outside of the political context. For example, in particle physics, one particle is “free” of other particles if it does not interact with the other particles. Physicists don’t commonly say that a particle is “liberated” from other particles.
By the way, how do I change my avatar from this frowning face? I’ve registered for the forums, but I haven’t figured out to register for the blog and change this avatar.
I agree that freedom (in your sense) is an economic good, but I’m not sure how people establish forcible standards of propriety uniformly across a region without a state. Enforcement of property is valuable to a proprietor, but this assertion only raises the question: What is a property? I’m not quite free of Proudhon’s confusion on this score.
Haha! Yes, the notorious frowning face!
Check out Gravatar. It will let you upload an image, and then any time you plug in your email address in these little comment boxes, it will automatically put up your Gravatar image. Good luck!
Excellent point, Seth. As a good, it is property, the very word removed from the Declaration of Independence and substituted by the phrase, pursuit of happiness. John Locke also saw it that way in his discourse on the state of war. That one who would unjustly seek to deprive me of my property when they had me in their power, must be assumed to be as ready to deprive me of my life and they have therefore created a state of war between us. Think about that for a minute and we will see we are forever at war with the state which has no respect for life or property of others.
We can also see the truth of freedom as property in the exchange of one’s freedom for wages. I give my time and labor in exchange for currency or goods. I have then traded my freedom to do as I choose by contracting with one who will pay for my restricted behavior in the pursuit of specific accomplishment for their benefit and our mutual benefit. Even the man living alone in the forest will exchange his time and labor for a tree nature provides. Some choose to trade all their freedom to benefit others. Some choose to trade very little. The choice in the first case is often an unconscious one. We have fallen into one or more traps requiring this exchange continues for indefinite time. This produces suffering and a great sense of loss. The one who made this very clear to me a long time ago was Harry Browne with the book, “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World”. In this book, Harry describes the many freedom destroying traps we may fall into and how we can get out of them without changing the world. This book taught me the essence of freedom and how to put my own value on it. It took me about 5 years after I read it to drop out of the rat race and in 35 years, I never went back, never filled out a job application, never punched a time clock, never paid income taxes. Any stress in my life was self created and I ;earned how to cease creating it. I highly recommend the book to any for whom freedom matters.
Natural Rights are simply those natural freedoms of action that individuals must be free to take to provide for their survival and happiness, and must respect in others. Natural rights are infinite. Some are trivial—the right to wear a hat—and others critical. For example, individuals must be free to bargain with each other. Natural rights are by definition non-contradictory. One persons right cannot reduce the right of another person.
The right of self-defense is the right of individuals or groups to defend themselves from the use of force. The right of self-defense is the basis for legitimate government. We may empower a government with our power of self-defense without losing the right itself. But individuals may not legitimately empower our government to do anything we cannot do as individuals. We cannot legitimately authorize our government to take the property of others, or their rights. That is not a power we have to give, And if we employ government to use force for any purpose beyond the protection of our lives, our rights and our property, that government is illegitimate. It is also immoral. If, as individuals, we vote to authorize government to use force for anything beyond the defense of our lives, rights and property, it is precisely as if we used force to take our neighbors freedom or wealth. And in voting, we too, are immoral. When government gets into the value-giving business—free medical care, the right to a comfortable retirement, education, fair housing, etc—that government is using force to steal and redistribute values earned by others. That government is illegitimate, a thief used by the majority or the politically powerful to steal from others.
To see more on rights see http://ernelewis.com/blog/libertarian-lexicon/
I love this idea.
For so long I have struggled with the origin of natural rights. If I were religious, I could believe that natural rights are God-given, which is a beautifully simple premise. But as an agnostic, it’s not so easy to believe that.
It makes more sense to me to accept that our rights — even our so-called natural rights — have been gained through social conflicts. There’s plenty of historical evidence to support that, and it implies that all rights really are nothing more than entitlements.
I’ve been through that train of thought many times, and while I like the logical simplicity of the conclusion, it undermines my gut feeling that natural rights are inalienable and entitlements are bullshit. This is the first time that I see a potential resolution to the question.
Suppose all rights are goods. What an interesting thought. It’s important to note that these goods have no scarcity. In that way they’re similar to intellectual property and digital goods — in fact they could be classified as a type of intellectual property.
So perhaps rights are simply intellectual goods that are created by social conflicts. Like any good, they can be traded, sold, or stolen. Like any intellectual property, they can be acquired for free without taking from anyone else. We are not born with them, but we find it easy to acquire them very early in life, and at no cost.
I love how beautifully obvious and clean this idea is. I haven’t mulled it over long enough to know if I see any holes in it, but my intuition says it’s correct. If so, this could be a major realization. I have to guess that some of the great thinkers must have written about this idea before.
The first part is clear, but there is a kind of contradiction in the last pharagraphs (or at least what is seems to me) because economic efficiency only can be porsued throught norms (those are entitlements about property). So, if freedom is a good also could be an entitlement.
In my point of view the term property contains two dimentions: natural possesion and the social entitlement. We born with the first as a condition of human existence (and it’s what I believe natural rights tradition is always traying to explain in their philophical language), we don’t born with the second (what I think non-naturalist tradition is traying to explain).
Private property anarchists have the potential of create a new and powerful tradition about ethics and legal theories, because we can see that all ethics and legal issues is about property.
My understanding of Locke is that he understood all freedom in terms of property rights, i.e., the power to exclude or limit access by others.
But Locke certainly wasn’t an anarchist, and maybe not even a minarchist, because he didn’t believe property rights could exist without a legal system, a state. And he felt that the number one purpose of government was to protect property.
So, for example, under Locke a property right in real estate only exists because we have title recording systems to prevent multiple sales of property by unscrupulous sellers, a land court to determine and enforce property boundaries, a police force that can be called to assist in getting rid of trespassers, etc.
In other words, freedom (in the form of property rights) doesn’t exist positively in the state of nature, but negatively through a kind of contract we form with an enforcement system.
I’d like to add that for Locke even crimes against persons were considered to be a violation of property rights, the property an individual has in his/her own body. So, even in the area of criminal law, there is no positive right, but only a right to not be hit, killed, raped, etc., and to expect the state to prevent or punish such violations against the property one has in one’s body.
Expecting the state to protect and punish is a positive right, because protection and punishment are costly. Expecting the state to protect me and my property rights and to punish persons violating my rights doesn’t differ fundamentally from expecting the state to feed, clothe and house me. I think that’s what Seth means by “freedom is a[n economic] good”.
Martin, I hope you’re right, but I didn’t think anarchists would consider property rights that are solely supported by state coercion, or the threat of state coercion, to be an economic good.
If so, in my opinion, that would be a good thing, because it would mean we can potentially claim a property right in our labor, and to a lesser degree, a property right in certain kinds of money we use.
Anarchists say that a state need not provide law enforcement directly, and I agree with them. Decentralized protection services competing to serve proprietors can provide law enforcement.
But what laws are they enforcing? Even these competitive services must enforce a particular rule of law, and that’s where nominal “anarchists” seem to deny a state that they advocate.
If my law enforcement service enforces my title to a parcel of land, and your service enforces your title to the same parcel, we have a conflict between these law enforcement services. Eventually, one rule wins by force and/or competing services “compromise” (each accounting for the might of the other). Either way, the result is a state. In other words, competing law enforcement services must ultimately be licensed by a state.
Martin: “In other words, competing law enforcement services must ultimately be licensed by a state.”
Me: Yes, that’s what I’m trying to say, and as soon as anarchists can accept that, the sooner we can begin to use the state to our advantage (by requiring the state to support a property right in our minds/body/labor/actions/energy, and in the money we use).
No, just because two competing agencies resort to violence, does not make the victor a state. If I break into your home and you shoot and kill me, does that make you a state? Clearly, ethics comes into play. If it’s a legitimate land dispute then violence would be an unfortunate consequence. It would require systematic and methodological violation of the NAP to come close to being a state.
If you break into my house and shoot me, under color of law, and if other people in a region don’t effectively impede your imposition this law, then yes, you are a state. When competing enforcement agencies differ and one agency overpowers others in a region, then the victorious agency rules, and it is the state. Ultimately, other agencies enforce a consistent law, and all of these agencies are then agents of the state.
And that’s all any state ever is.
I like this idea. Freedom can be bought, sold, traded, stolen or recovered. That sounds like a good. I also like the idea of not worrying about people who do not value this commodity. That just causes minarchists unnecessary stress.
There is no requirement for law enforcement. People who form gangs to harm others can be dealt with and there need be no requirement for hired help – ever. No need to create so much as a mini state.
When one has been burned by fire or suffered a great loss because of fire, it’s understandable that the idea “all fire is bad” would be lodged in that person’s brain, but that’s also an idea that should questioned (because it denies the person all the beneficial uses of fire in that person’s future).
Suppose you and I and Rick claim three adjoining parcels of land. We agree on the boundaries separating our parcels and related bounds of propriety, and we agree jointly and forcibly to exclude the use of our parcels by others without our consent.
Have we formed a gang to harm others?
Or have we formed a state?
What’s the difference?
Freedom isn’t an object or service. There are goods you can buy to maximize psychic revenue if freedom ranks highly on your value scale, such as a handgun or insurance, but that doesn’t mean freedom itself is a good. This argument also nullifies the concept of natural rights. I think the idea that you are entitled to go about your business free from coercion is intuitive. I also think it is intuitive that the initiation of force is a waiver of that entitlement, both logically and emotionally (for the non-psychopath). You can still make the point about how one ought not be worried about the freedom of those who hold freedom in a low position on their respective value scales without discarding natural rights and complicating economic analysis by expanding the definition of economic good to include the condition of freedom.
I’m not tossing out natural rights, I’m merely pointing out that they are irrelevant to the real world.
The fact of the matter is that there are tons of threats to individuals in the world, such as lions and tigers, bears, and yes, other humans. Freedom is really just security, security from the initiation of violence by other humans. Security is a good. I’m pretty sure that is indisputable.
You’re right. Security is a good, and that is indisputable. I don’t accept your premise that freedom == security though. I also fail to grasp the distinction between declaring something irrelevant and tossing it out. In the real world there are real people with real brains. In these brains the conception of legitimacy has been selected for over the course of our species evolution. What exact combination of base pairs in the human genome resulted in this particular arrangement of gray matter, electron transfer, and chemical concentrations is hitherto unknown, but not necessarily unknowable. My point is though, that it is real. People conceive of legitimacy. Security is a good, but each individual’s perception of the legitimacy of initiating force is not. The more people in a society that view force initiation as illegitimate, the more free that society will be. Also, a totally hegemonic society is something that no amount of security can protect you from, the only way to get freedom in such a situation is to revolt or flee.
That’s a very interesting perspective. It does seem true that freedom could be achieved by having a sufficiently powerful defense provider, or an effective way of evading violence. The first type of endgame would coincide with agorist conclusions, while the second method is being developed by the seasteading folks.
Interesting distinction. But I would say instead that freedom is a right, and protecting freedom is a good or service.
Rights, after all, are merely concepts about how we expect people to treat other people, an “ought”, and not an “is”. Maybe that’s not a common way of looking at rights, but if more people viewed it that way, then maybe the liberals would understand why education, health care, etc. aren’t rights, precisely because those ARE services.
Obviously, because freedom is a right, an “ought”, there is no guarantee of freedom simply for existing. But it is not freedom that is the good or service, but the protection of freedom, or the protection of rights, that is the service.