
Freedom is not simple - pcr910303
https://www.arp242.net/freedom.html
======
DanielBMarkham
"My neighbour’s freedom to play music at 4am limits my freedom to have a good
night’s rest. Does this increase or decrease freedom?"

Freedom != Liberty

This concept is easily over 200 years old. I appreciate the author's interest
in the subject. It might be good to start much nearer to where others left
off.

~~~
arp242
I feel the distinction between freedom and liberty is one of those things
that's rather academic. While perhaps some would argue there's a difference
and that this difference might be useful to make for some discussions, most
people use it as a synonym in every-day use.

Either way, the article wasn't intended as a complete in-depth examination of
the concepts of freedom and liberty (and the possible distinction between
them), but rather offer some commentary on the state of the public debate
surrounding these things as I see it.

~~~
esrauch
> most people use it as a synonym in every-day use.

I'd say it's beyond just every-day use; the second sentence of the Liberty
wikipedia page is verbatim "It is a synonym for the word freedom."

------
webreac
A long text very well written in which he nuances the notion of freedom and in
which he attacks the free software foundation claiming that the FSF does not
understand these nuances:

"Indeed, the entire Free Software movement seems like a typical failure of
appreciating these kind of trade-offs when it comes to freedom."

I find this extremely pretentious and very poorly argumented. I wish I could
mod down this article. This looks like the beginning of an FSF smear campaign.

~~~
arp242
The main reason I wrote this was to counter some libertarian ideas/zeitgeist.
The original draft (from, ehm, maybe 2 years ago) was titled "The libertarian
fallacy", but I felt this didn't do service since libertarianism is quite
broad (indeed, I have quite a few libertarian leanings myself).

The second reason is indeed that I _do_ plan to write some other things to
point out some of the FSFs failings as I see them, both in their philosophy
and some more pragmatical things, and the appreciation of the complexity of
"freedom" is one of them.

I agree that as it stands it's not well argumented, but this will be an
article on its own (soon™, although a kind of proto-draft is available as some
comments I made at [1]). I have this kind of complex dependency tree in my
head on what to write in what order.

I hate how you phrase this as a "smear campaign" though. I don't expect
everyone to agree with me, but I do expect people to recognise I'm arguing in
good faith, and "smear campaign" implies that I don't.

[1]:
[https://lobste.rs/s/gywiju/freedom_isn_t_free#c_73fmon](https://lobste.rs/s/gywiju/freedom_isn_t_free#c_73fmon)

~~~
icebraining
I think you if target a specific organization or movement, you should put more
effort into portraying their position fairly if you want to be taken in good
faith. The Free Software movement doesn't just say "GPL increases freedom", it
has a whole Philosophy section which is easily available at the GNU website,
describing why they think the Four Freedoms are essential and override the
others.

~~~
arp242
I'm quite familiar with the various writings on the topic, and if there is an
in-depth examination of the various trade-offs involved with Free Software
then I have not read it. Much of it seems, quite frankly, rather dismissive.

> I think you if target a specific organization or movement, you should put
> more effort into portraying their position fairly

I think that's not an unfair point. I have commented out this sentence until
such a time I have written a more extensive article on it that can be linked.
I also don't really want to focus on the details of specific examples with
this, but rather on the bigger picture (I was very hesitant to include it as
an example at all, as it's not a debate well known outside of the programming
community; I may change my mind and remove it altogether).

~~~
ran3824692
> I have not read it

Then try reading instead of typing, especially
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-
power.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html)

~~~
arp242
I have read that. I have read most things I could find on the FSF and GNU
websites about this years ago already, and again several weeks ago. And I
think that's exactly the kind of casual dismissiveness I'm talking about which
barely even recognizes that there are any trade-offs involved at all, much
less address them.

~~~
bmn__
The introductory philosophic essay lays it out very clearly:

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html)

> we should perform a cost-benefit analysis on behalf of society as a whole,
> taking account of individual freedom as well as production of material
> goods.

You cannot say in good faith that the essays fail to recognise or address the
existence of trade-offs. Please take note.

------
drchiu
I remember some of the most mind bending topics in med school were courses
surrounding consent and ethics. The superficial perspectives never seem to do
these topics justice once one actually performs deep analysis into them.

It seems that societally, we must decide where we draw the lines on things
(ie. what is acceptable and reasonable vs what is not). The professor seemed
to enjoy working us into a conundrum and then throwing that as the analysis.

------
tony
To anyone who finds this interesting:
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/)

The Form of Rights: The Hohfeldian Analytical System [1]

The Function of Rights: The Will Theory and the Interest Theory [2]

Interesting read, "Hohfeld's cube":
[https://www.uakron.edu/dotAsset/65177fc7-9161-44a4-9a8e-1631...](https://www.uakron.edu/dotAsset/65177fc7-9161-44a4-9a8e-163197ca9863.pdf)

[1]
[http://www.kentlaw.edu/perritt/courses/property/Hohfeld.htm](http://www.kentlaw.edu/perritt/courses/property/Hohfeld.htm)

[2]
[http://core.ecu.edu/phil/mccartyr/1175docs/TheoriesofRights....](http://core.ecu.edu/phil/mccartyr/1175docs/TheoriesofRights.pdf)

------
AndrewKemendo
Song as old as time: Positive and Negative Rights debate [1]

[1][https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-
negative...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/)

------
krzepah
Hi man, the article seems nice, i couldn't read it all yet but I spotted a
mistake "This is often now (should be not ?) the case"

~~~
arp242
Oops, thanks. Amazing how I miss these silly typos even after proof-reading it
carefully a week apart :-/

------
raxxorrax
I don't think it fits the paradox of tolerance, which I believe the author
didn't even like that much later in life. But the main principle of that is
that you have to compromise your position to face your adversaries at some
point or you will loose all tolerance. I don't think this should be used as a
template. I am against the death penalty for instance, which the concept could
very well be applied to. I think Popper wouldn't like how the argument is used
today.

That said, a premise of the article is that freedom should be maximized for
everyone. The reason many people are skeptical when the topic of freedom being
relative is brought up may indeed be influenced by developments in tech.
Because sadly, we had a long stretch of paternalism and restricting choice
"for the benefit of all" (mostly corporate lock in). In that case, you are not
maximizing freedom, even if there can be other kinds of arguments for said
approach.

------
efitz
Half the comments here are about FSF rather than about the article. Why is FSF
such a sacred cow that mere observation that they have made a trade-off in
freedoms, is somehow objectionable? I didn’t take anything that was in the
original unedited article as an attack on FSF.

------
mensetmanusman
Fun topic, philosophers have been debating this for millennia.

It is really important to discuss what you think freedom means before delving
into an argument.

E.g. Your freedom to drink big gulp sugar drinks every day and sit around and
become morbidly obese does decrease other people’s freedom when they are
paying for your healthcare costs. (If you believe this is true, it follows and
is also true that massively increasing your risk of STDs also decreases
society’s freedom due to increased cost associated with an unhealthy
populace.)

------
motohagiography
What tends to be missing from the ontology of these ideas is that a positive
right without an inextricable and commensurate or contrapositive
responsibility is just an arbitrary privilege, with the implication of some
paternalistic guarantor who hands them out. This is why I treat activism as a
tactic with skepticism, because people rarely organize and agitate to obtain
more responsibility. I would argue a right without an associated
responsibility just means privilege. Freedom is separate.

When people demand rights, they beg the question of first from whom, and
second of what responsibility they must necessarily be taking on. When they
demand freedom, they are rolling back the scope or domain of external
authorities. Software freedom means using software without requiring
permission. Freedom becomes an artifact of a private sphere of experience.
This private sphere can be individual, it can be based on association,
distance, or any number of other dimensions, but the existence of a private
domain is the necessary condition for freedom. Rights on the other hand, are a
public phenomenon, in that they are artifacts of an externally governed
domain.

In this model, freedom is something outside the scope of governed rights, over
which there is neither a guarantee or oversight. Freedom has a scope, and it
can only exist within a perimeter that secures it from the external rights and
privileges granted by authorities. All freedom is a limit on the sovereignty
and dominion of external authorities, which is what makes it so provocative.
It's also why "the rights of man," and "human rights," were so controversial
initially, because they require a universal authority to enforce them.

The question of whether my exercising freedom may infringe on someones rights
or their privileges becomes clearer when we measure it against whether it
interferes with their responsibilities. When rights collide, the law is the
tool we use to reconcile them. When freedoms collide, typically we either
resort to negotiating rights, or defer to the principle of freedom and move
on. When freedom collides with rights, we tend to negotiate an exception or
set a precedent. But when freedom collides with privilege, neither can bear
co-existence with the other.

This models why some people think others' freedom is privilege (because it is
not a function of prescribed rights or responsibilities), and that rights and
privileges for others breach their freedom (by expanding the domain of
authority with imposed or without commensurate responsibilities). Hence
playing loud music at 4am in a neighbourhood is a rights violation, and not an
exercise of freedom, because it does not occur in a private domain, which is
the necessary condition of freedom.

------
esnard
I'm currently reading a manga named Attack on Titan, in which freedom (and its
implications) takes a very important part, and I couldn't emphasize how good
the writing is.

The anime is also available on Netflix in most countries, if you prefer that
format.

------
vjvj
I like the way the author has articulated this.

It can be built on by applying the economics concept of "externalities" \-
i.e. side effects (positive or negative) from a particular action such as the
exercising of a right or freedom.

To get us closer to a perfect world, we need to start measuring the value of
externalities (arguably not always easy to get right but possible to estimate)
and to whom this gain or loss in value occurs so that they can be compensated
by the externality creator(s).

I agree with the author that most people do not consider the negative
externalities of a particular freedom being exercised.

We should require our legislators to more clearly articulate and value
externalities from a given policy and identify groups it creates negative
externalities for, and how they should be compensated (or why they do not
deserve to be compensated).

~~~
bluetomcat
> We should require our legislators to more clearly articulate and value
> externalities from a given policy and identify groups it creates negative
> externalities for, and how they should be compensated (or why they do not
> deserve to be compensated).

That would be identity politics 2.0 and the end of nation states. Not only
lawmakers targeting different groups of society to pass legislation, but also
identifying (highly subjectively) other groups to be compensated for 2nd and
3rd-order effects introduced by that legislation.

~~~
veridies
I realize the practical difficulties here, but the actual concept (identifying
who's going to be impacted, and offering targeted solutions) sounds like a
pretty good idea in theory. Calling it 'identity politics 2.0' is an easy way
to dismiss it, but it doesn't respond to the actual argument.

~~~
bluetomcat
Consider the following situation with parties A, B and C involved. "A" wants
to do something that negatively affects B, while C is unaffected. The
legislator would decide to compensate B, but who is taxed for that? In case of
taxing A and C, C's freedom as a group would be compromised. In case of taxing
only A, the cost would be prohibitive and could discourage A from wanting to
do its thing in the first place.

~~~
katbyte
Then maybe A just shouldn’t do the thing that’s going to harm B to a
prohibitive amount?

~~~
mensetmanusman
Inventing the car hurt horse breeders and kicked off global climate change, I
don’t think people would argue that their life would be better without the
invention of the vehicle.

------
OliverJones
There's the Hunter S. Thompson kind of freedom: to sit on his back porch in
his underwear and shoot field mice with his .45 pistol. That's not a very
interesting freedom for those of us who would threaten neighborhood safety by
discharging firearms on our back porches.

Then, there's the freedom that's intertwined with responsibility. We can,
without regulation, do things for ourselves and our communities. Free and Open
Source Software is a good example of the work-product of that kind of freedom.

Sexual freedom between "consenting adults" is in fact an example of freedom
intertwined with responsibility.

My point: considering "freedom" as a standalone concept leads to all kinds of
category confusion.

~~~
arp242
> Sexual freedom between "consenting adults" is in fact an example of freedom
> intertwined with responsibility.

How is that the case?

~~~
KSteffensen
Sex between consenting adults of opposite genders might lead to lifelong
responsibility.

------
maedla
We need democracy in the workplace :)

------
tboyd47
Analyzing social movements, taken on face value, with pure logic alone isn't
good enough. You have to learn their history as well; otherwise you're only
comparing empty slogans against each other.

Libertarianism and the free software movement are two social movements that
have very little in common except the word "freedom."

Libertarian philosophers like Hayek, and even those who would describe
themselves as anarchists like Rothbard, do not advocate a lawless society.
They accept the bottom-up process of building up common and constitutional law
through court precedent and reject the top-down imposition of laws by fiat.

To your specific points, American society has already worked out which
"freedoms" impinge on others' freedoms over the course of 200+ years of
constitutional law, building on many more centuries of British common law. The
idea that a single person can sit at a desk and calculate "trade-offs" between
civil rights enshrined by law and enjoyed by large groups of people over many
hundreds of years would be absurd to a libertarian, though commonplace today.
Who is allowed to make such a decision, and why?

The free software movement emerged as a defense of pre-existing collaboration
networks between academics from the threat an attempted corporate takeover in
a very specialized area of computing at a specific point in time, i.e. OS
development in the 1980s.

I find that few developers understand the forces the original software freedom
movement was fighting against, although such forces are stronger than ever.
This is only because the software freedom movement so thoroughly wiped out its
opposition within its own limited domain that those looking from the outside
can't understand the point of it anymore. Perhaps that's what true victory
looks like in the historical record; when the opposition is not only defeated
but silent, the victors look like a bunch of loud extremists going on and on
about something irrelevant.

~~~
icebraining
I have to say I find it hard to follow your argument. How can the forces be
stronger than ever if the opposition was defeated and wiped out?

According to lore, Stallman started the movement due to a closed-source
appliance (a printer) he used and which he wanted to improve. Closed devices
continued to be and are still the norm, so I don't see how the opposition was
defeated, let alone wiped out.

~~~
tboyd47
Corporate influence stronger than ever outside of the limited domain of
operating systems for mainframe computers at universities.

The opposition that was wiped out was closed-source, proprietary operating
systems for the PDP-11.

It may seem an insignificant footnote to us, but if we look at everything
built on Unix -- Mac OS, Linux, practically the entire internet -- the battle
was universe shaping for computing.

Despite the huge influence, the moral and legal arguments made by free
software proponents fall on deaf ears in 2020. My view is that those arguments
don't have the same meaning outside of the specific context they arose in.
Stipulating that people who extend your open source software make their
extensions open source is meaningless in the context of 10,000,000 JS
libraries that take a developer a few weeks to create, all are delivered in
plaintext anyway, and all intended to run on Google Chrome or Safari.

It's more meaningful in the context of an operating system designed to run on
100s of computers and interface with 1,000s of peripherals, most of which are
not known to the OS developer, which the OS developer wouldn't even have
access to if they knew about it, and would take said developer months or years
to support if they did have access to it. The GPL and other legal tools were
developed for that context, and they succeeded to a revolutionary degree in
that and to evaluate them in a different context is to miss the forest for the
trees.

One of the best accounts of the movement I've read is "Open Sources." Highly
recommend it!

------
FeepingCreature
> There are also many cases where increased freedom doesn’t limit other
> people’s freedom; for example my freedom to have consensual sexual
> relationships with whomever I choose doesn’t limit anyone else’s freedom.

A bit earlier in the article:

> Things like freedom or speech or religion can infringe on other people’s
> freedoms. If I say that all Jews should be kicked in the face whenever you
> see one this limits Jewish people’s freedom live a life without fear of
> being kicked in the face.

No, no. You already made the typical mistake. If I kick a jew in the face, I
infringe on their freedom to live a life without _actually_ getting kicked in
the face. But if I _say_ jews should be kicked in the face, I infringe on
their freedom to live a life without _fear_ of getting kicked in the face - a
freedom, you may note, that libertarians don't actually believe in, because
anyone with a smidgen of security mindset can see that it's completely
exploitable.

For instance: you say your freedom to have consensual sexual relationships
with whomever you want doesn't infringe my freedom, but what about my freedom
to be free of fear about the gay agenda? What about my fear about the
breakdown of society? My fear of the decline of traditional marriage?

Fear, as opposed to outcomes, does not need to be rational or grounded in
reality. Once you acknowledge a right to be free from fear, you are able to
justify any tradeoff. I say - no! There is no right to be free of fear.
Everybody has the right to _be_ safe, but nobody has the right to _feel_ safe.
Adjusting your feeling to reality is everyone's own responsibility. We must
not allow people to abdicate the responsibility for their own feelings and
create a guilt of others not to cause upset. A free society cannot and must
not take responsibility for fears - only for outcomes. Always for outcomes! No
jew should ever be kicked in the face, we are completely agreed. But society's
obligation to protect Jewish rights ends at their cranium. What happens inside
people's heads is nobody's business but their own - for good or for ill.

(Which is of course not to be understood as arguing against mental health
services. One must be mentally healthy to be mentally responsible - if and
exactly if.)

~~~
D895n9o33436N42
> My fear of the decline of traditional marriage?

The only marriage you have the right to be concerned about is your own, if
any. If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get gay married. It’s that simple.

The whole “traditional marriage” mindset stems from religion. When forced upon
others by law it’s just another way to limit individual freedoms. It’s
disgusting and has to stop.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
Religion is basically just the public policy of 1000+yr ago. If you look at
the economics and societal mechanics of subsistence farming societies it's
pretty clear why homosexual marriage throws a wrench into all the various
mechanisms (inheritance, training the next generation in the skills they will
need) that keep things moving from generation to generation and increases risk
by reducing the future labor supply (kids). Disallowing homosexuality screws
~10% of the population but over the course of multiple generations and with
the slim margins that agrarian societies exist on forcing that 10% of the
population to find a heterosexual partner and raise a family and act like
everyone else may very well be enough of a boost to keep your community intact
when the next 50yr drought hits.

Forcing Steve and Stan to find wives and raise kids is just the 50AD version
of "your rights end where the community's ability to survive the next famine
begins". Remember, there was a lot more suffering back then so people not
being able to marry and live with who you want mostly didn't make the short
list of problems these people had.

Of course, over the past 1000yrs things changed. Famine mostly isn't an issue.
Modern families don't need to pump out a bunch of kids to ensure they will
have enough labor to work the fields when half of them die before age 5. We
have ubiquitous written communication so that Steve and Stan can write their
wills and their families won't feud over who gets the farm when they both meet
an untimely end in an ox drawn cart accident.

So while disallowing homosexual marriage seems nonsensical to us now they were
actually optimizing for something 1000yr ago when the legacy code was written
(written by people with information that mostly only consisted of what could
be observed in a human lifetime no less).

Traditional marriage as in "pegs minus holes = 0" doesn't really make sense as
a sticking point in the modern world. "Traditional marriage" as in "for life
unless something exceptional happens" is still accepted as the gold standard
for child rearing (or all the public health experts and sociologists are
wrong). So we definitely shouldn't trivialize marriage and unless something
changes we should probably continue to have public policy carrots/sticks that
keep child rearing parents together.

~~~
cycloptic
>Forcing Steve and Stan to find wives and raise kids is just the 50AD version
of "your rights end where the community's ability to survive the next famine
begins". Remember, there was a lot more suffering back then so people not
being able to marry and live with who you want mostly didn't make the short
list of problems these people had.

This seems to be a non-sequitur and not based in any historical fact. The only
viable "community enforcement method" in that situation would have been
excommunication, which would not have solved any problems of famine and
probably would have exacerbated them.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>The only viable "community enforcement method" in that situation would have
been excommunication,

Ostracizing them works too. Excommunication is basically the religious
equivalent to capital punishment. No need to jump straight to that for petty
stuff and first offenses.

> which would not have solved any problems of famine and probably would have
> exacerbated them.

Deterrence. They wanted people to keep it in the closet and live just like
everyone else.

The broader goal of religion is to get everybody to partake in a system of
practices that the society knows works (and if you read history you'll see
that the definition of "works" expands as societies become richer and more
secure). Work hard, have a family, be honest, don't screw your neighbors wife
or steal his stuff, and all that other stuff that basically every religion
tells people to do. It's basically all about stability and the closer to the
edge a society is the less tolerance they're gonna have for things that cause
problems and/or deviance from what works.

------
sradman
> ...my big gripe with hardline “big-L” Libertarianism is that it seems to
> pretend these trade-offs don’t exist and that “freedom” is some sort of
> thing you can just assign a number to.

This statement would not pass the Ideological Turing Test [1]. Freedom is
doing what one wants as long as it does not impinge on the ability of others
to do the same; "live and let live". The grey areas and trade-offs live in
interpreting Golden Rule [2] violations. Violations implemented to further The
Greater Good [3] also complicate matters.

Each political preference, be it progressive, conservative, or libertarian,
tends to apply the Precautionary Principle [4] to what they view as ruinous
behavior (oppression/exploitation, individual decadence, and government
overreach respectively). Each group is blind to their own application of the
Precautionary Principle that different outgroups view as a Golden Rule
violation.

[1]
[https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.htm...](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle)

------
tecnocriollo
Libertarianism doesn't advocate for do whatever you want. They advocates the
principle of non aggression where your freedom last until you interfere with
another person freedom. Classical libertarianism advocates that freedoms comes
with responsibility and is not free. The socialists likes freedom without
costs using the state as a medium for liberating you from dutys. Libertarians
advocates for the rule of law and respect for every individual.

------
nickthemagicman
I think big L libertarians are aware of the idea that freedom is full of
trade-offs.

The issue is that someone has to make these decisions and libertarians don't
think the government is the group to do it.

The most important institutions in human society — language, law, money, and
markets — all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil
society — the complex network of associations and connections among people —
is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society
are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and
does not have a purpose of its own.

Government is the big hammer and when you start using government casually
instead of letting people decide at their own direction that's when you start
running into massive problems. Because the government could give you what you
want one day but then with that same power take away everything the next.

~~~
arp242
> I think big L libertarians are aware of the idea that freedom is full of
> trade-offs.

Perhaps; but I don't often see it recognized in Libertarian discourse and
writings. This is possibly a failing on my part on reading the right kind of
libertarian things.

It's hard to write something generic about an entire ideology since it's
always comprised of different views and priorities; and no matter what you
write it'll do an injustice to _some_ views. I've added the word "often" to
emphasize this a bit.

~~~
unishark
My understanding of libertarianism is as basically generalizing on the idea of
freedom from slavery as the most fundamental right. "Liberty" is then the
narrowly-defined freedom from having force used against you. And you are only
justified in using force against others to stop them from using force against
you. As to whether loud noise or sulfur dioxide count as sufficient force
against you seems arguable.

~~~
nickthemagicman
That's not very accurate.

Libertarians believe in collective reason over centralized authority.

Here's a good run down.

[https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/key-concepts-
li...](https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/key-concepts-
libertarianism)

~~~
arp242
This is all very fine, but what it misses are the power imbalances we have.
This is not inherently a bad thing, but if I don't have the freedom to
disagree with my landlord out of fear of being evicted then I'm not living a
very "free" life. "Collective reason" sounds great, but in practice it doesn't
really work. I feel it's very naïve.

~~~
amscanne
You are absolutely free to disagree with your landlord by moving out and
finding another place to live. Ideally there are no government constraints on
either party (e.g. housing assignments, rental limitations and controls,
etc.). I don’t really understand the rest of the point being made here. You
wouldn’t have such a choice with a central authority giving you a housing
assignment.

------
crocko
Yes freedom is very simple. All freedoms are drawn from respecting property
rights.

You have a right to your intellectual property and do with it as you wish. If
people don't wish to use software because of the license (and potentially the
cost of obtaining a license) they are free not to use it.

It really is that simple.

