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Tim says those who would trade liberty for safety deserve neither. I say people do this all the time or else millions would have migrated to no-government, no-safety Somalia. And what free-marketeer would stop people trading one thing for another?
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Surprisingly enough, this is not a story from The Onion.
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It’s always struck me as a serious tactical mistake for those on the left to argue against laissez-faire on the grounds that it deprives people of economic security, because this hands a powerful rhetoric of liberty to the right, who basically only care about it for rich people. The sensible thing to say is that what redistributive transfers to is redistribute freedom: money is general all-purpose means to doing things, and taking it from one person and giving it to someone else doesn’t of itself create or destroy freedom, but redistribute it. The question then becomes whether it is more important to have the freedom to buy your third mercedes-benz, or to not have to work every hour God sends in a soul-destroying job. This doesn’t strike me as a hard question to answer.
Posted on 08-Feb-07 at 11:11 pm | PermalinkRob, I agree, but I don’t think there’s much if any of a contradiction between arguing for economic security and for freedom. Freedom from want is the basis of most other freedoms.
Posted on 10-Feb-07 at 1:14 pm | PermalinkThe point isn’t conceptual - freedom from want is probably a kind of security - but practical or political: rhetorically, saying something is a kind of freedom is pretty powerful. Stripping the libertarian-right of a quasi-monopoly of a discourse of freedom would be, I think, a generally good thing.
Posted on 11-Feb-07 at 8:10 pm | PermalinkAgreed.
Posted on 11-Feb-07 at 8:28 pm | Permalink