It is a common mistake to think that freedom means doing whatever you want. That kind of freedom is tyranny as that implies tyrannizing others in order for someone to do what he wants.

What the concept of freedom really meant before its true meaning was wasted by overuse, is that someone more powerful than you are wont impose his will upon you, wont force you to pay for things you dont want and wont impose his own ideas by decree upon you.

To state that “true freedom” doesn’t exist, that is, confusing its meaning by a kind of anarchy is an old trick to confound people and made them think that real freedom is not freedom at all and you'll need the power of the state to guarantee that you will have true freedom, which of course is tyranny. That is as old as Jacobins.

This is an old idea. Rights necessarily entail duties. The obvious example is my right to life means you have a duty not to kill me.

Perhaps, a better argument would be that - success (not freedom) is a zero sum game

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i was surprised that scott adams assumed readers would initially reject the idea. this is something i have believed for a long time and is intuitive for me.

all possible use cases for reality will have controllers/masters. each event is either ordered by master in vacuum, against will of others, or by consent. who actually has 'right' is of little consequence because master is running show and use-case 'consent' is only available to those with 'rights' when master dictates.

you might as well say 'master' actually has 'right'. anyway its clearly a zero sum in my book. stalin's 'right' to dominate others freedom is infringed when they negotiate for more of it.

every new czar and executive order obama takes unto himself takes away from power and rights of 'we the people'.

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You are incredibly wrong. This topic was likely already addressed by the utilitarians back in the 1700's and was likely the basis for the US constitutional phrase "inalienable right to life". If you have two people and you can assign the right to kill each one to each of the two people... only one can have the right at once... you have 4 possibilities. 1) A can kill A or B gives B no freedom. 2) A can kill A gives B freedom to kill A 3) A can kill B gives B freedom to kill A 4) A can kill neither A nor B gives B freedom to kill A. Now the Utils (utility units) gained by A in killing B are far less than the utils lost by B when he is killed. Therefore situation 2 is superior in terms of utils and so liberty to the other situations. Hence the basic premise of a person's right to life and the ownership of their own body trumps all other distributions of the right to their life and body. Now, given this I propose that property rights to the other stuff of society once arbitrarily assigned will allow a free exchange of value that is at least equal to all other assignments providing you have property rights and a right to a person's inalienable ownership of their own body and life. Therefore Free Market Capitalism is superior to other allocations of liberty and property. Your proposition has been really thought provoking. I hope to make some more progress in my line of thought.

Your theory is that any positive amount plus any negative amount is zero.

My freedom to keep my shoes on in a public airport has been curtailed by Richard Reid. (Frankly, the president is in more danger from shoes than airliners are.)

Also curtailed is my right to bring my shaving cream or cologne with me in my carry-one, because someone figured that more than 3.5 oz of any fluid substance is probably a high-explosive.

And my right to buy relatively inexpensive bottles of soda has been curtailed by the vendors' right to sell them inside the airport "security" checkpoint for a 200% markup.

I don't think it follows that freedom can be a zero sum game, because a single person can impair the freedom of a variable number of people at a time. If I listen to music at one volume, I derive a certain amount of pleasure, and impair the freedom of two other people. What percentage of my freedom am I exercising? If I crank the volume, I may impair the freedom of many more people, perhaps 200. Am I a hundred times more freedom? What if I put on a loud speaker in the middle of Los Angeles, and impair the freedom of 5000 people. How much more free am I?

Taken to extremes, a dictator can never exercise more than 100 percent of his or her freedom, yet could impair most or all of the freedom of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people, depending on the polices he or she chooses.

I am free to have wild, erotic thoughts about you Scott despite your being a happily married guy - ok, now tell me who's freedom is impeded by my fantasies? : )

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

Try again...

The widespread introduction of the contraceptive pill gave a huge increase in freedom(s) to women. What freedom(s) was lost?

Bit late but here goes:

The widespread availability of the contraceptive pill gave a huge increase to women. Where were freedoms lost?

My brother typically will exercise his freedom over the car stereo by turning it on, and selecting the station of his choice. To me, my freedom to not hear the radio at all was just overruled.

Many people forget that freedom includes absense. To an abused wife, it might be the freedom to say "no" to her violent husband. To a young child walking home from school, it's the freedom from needing to worry about getting kidnapped. To the maladjusted autistic child, it is the freedom from being bullied at school.

I'd rather live in a society where people were free from being victims, rather than one where people were free to do what they pleased. I can't claim to have an answer to how this practically would exist...I'm just saying it would be a better place than what we have now.

"Followers of unworkable political philosophies or discredited "science" are lower on the list, but what they lack in danger they make up for in obstructionism."


Obstructionism? When two people disagree, at least one will always say that the other's political philosophy is "unworkable." Or they accuse them of being "obstructionists." I'm sorry, but regardless of how somebody disagrees with you, their disagreement is still valid until you can convince them that you are right. Even if somebody is "wrong" in your view, that doesn't give you the right to push rules onto them. I say that everybody should just put their guns away and learn how to live with eachother without childish disagreement turning to bloodshed. A good measure of a human being is how well they put up with those who disagree with them. Personally, I'm a minarchist, so whatever you want to do is fine with me. Just stay away from me and my property and we're cool.

If you're a climate alarmist and you believe that climate "deniers" are all full of it, is it right to uproot somebody's life and force your view upon them when they just don't see things your way? Even assuming that they ARE wrong, it's still not right. If they were a direct threat, that's one thing, but global warming isn't even technically an externality in the traditional sense. Interconnectedness isn't an argument for control.

I think that Penn Jillette made a good comment about laws and freedom in the !$%*!$%*! episode done about the ADA, "When you pass a law, we all lose a bit of our freedom. When you make murder illegal, i lose my freedom to kill you and you lose your freedom to kill me. That's worth the trade off. But when you use the law to punish one group of citizens or enrich another, that's not the same thing." That's not an exact quote, but hey, this is just a comment on a website......

Freedom and civilization aren't really compatible. Everybody has to give up a large degree of liberty for even a family unit to survive. The best you can hope for is people agreeing to accept reasonably equitable shares of the burdens.

The biggest problem is not so much much self-indulgent jerks -- many of whom can't survive outside the societies they condemn for necessary concessions -- as the ones who, for whatever reason, decide the mere existence of something they don't like is a violation of their freedom. Religious fundamentalists of all stripes feel oppressed when not permitted to oppress nonbelievers. Followers of unworkable political philosophies or discredited "science" are lower on the list, but what they lack in danger they make up for in obstructionism.

Total freedom means you're at the mercy anyone else who exercises their total freedom first. It's worthwhile to note that many who cry for more freedom make very emphatic exceptions for others whose own freedom might be troublesome

To define freedom, you have to come up with some concept of private property. You don't have the "freedom" to steal my stereo, as that would be depriving me of the right, or "freedom," to use my own property.

Even if people have the freedom to do really stupid things, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will. Cultural mores play a big role in keeping people from doing stupid things just because they can. It's not just social mores either, there's also common sense as well as unspoken agreements between free individuals. Freedom isn't a measurable substance, or "thing," so you're theory is already moot from any kind of analytical standpoint.