> Therein lies the confusion. Freedom and the lack thereof is not a line, but a cone.
If I understand correctly, you’re saying that in a space of societies there is a point of anarchy – no rules whatsoever – and you can add various restrictions of freedom, leading to different societies. In particular there are various possible societies with a given level of freedom (which is the y-axis in your cone drawing).
Please correct me if I got it wrong.
> e.g. thorough environmental protection, public-dominant transportation, communal acoustic improvement
Arguably, freedom the practical sense is different from simply “fewer restrictions” or y-axis of the cone. Often you can frame decisions as “freedom to” vs “freedom from”: * Freedom to take and use anything vs freedom to own private property. * Freedom to enter binding contracts vs freedom to do whatever. * Freedom to punch people in the face vs freedom to walk around safely. * Freedom to have a loud party vs freedom to quietly enjoy your place. * Freedom to talk on the phone on a train vs freedom from such disturbance. * Freedom to cut down the forest vs freedom to walk in the forest. * Freedom to pass through the land (right of way) vs freedom to use the land exclusively.
In other words, some things naturally understood as “freedoms” are practically and sometimes logically in conflict and the boundary needs to be put somewhere. Some of your examples might be like that.
There are also cases where there is no such obvious trade-off against another kind of freedom (there might be other benefits – judgement is out of scope here), e.g.: * Restrictions for no reason whatsoever. Hypothetically tomorrow blue t-shirts could be banned. * Protecting you against yourself, e.g. in the UK you usually can’t just buy more than 2 small packs of Ibuprofen at a time (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/956857/Appendix_4.pdf). * Not being allowed to criticize your government.
Freedom understood this way is not a single thing – more like a possibility space which can take different shapes. It is still useful to think of the greater and lesser freedom, but it is not maximized by absolute anarchy (which would be extremely short-lived anyway without at least enforced non-violence).
> Freedom is only instrumentally valuable
It seems quite reasonable to hold freedom in a more practical sense as a terminal value or nearly terminal value – closely related to such things like staying true to oneself, taking responsibility, pursuing one’s own goals rather than someone else’s, roaming free instead of being caged, resisting oppression, self-governance.
> Therein lies the confusion. Freedom and the lack thereof is not a line, but a cone.
If I understand correctly, you’re saying that in a space of societies there is a point of anarchy – no rules whatsoever – and you can add various restrictions of freedom, leading to different societies. In particular there are various possible societies with a given level of freedom (which is the y-axis in your cone drawing).
Please correct me if I got it wrong.
> e.g. thorough environmental protection, public-dominant transportation, communal acoustic improvement
Arguably, freedom the practical sense is different from simply “fewer restrictions” or y-axis of the cone. Often you can frame decisions as “freedom to” vs “freedom from”:
* Freedom to take and use anything vs freedom to own private property.
* Freedom to enter binding contracts vs freedom to do whatever.
* Freedom to punch people in the face vs freedom to walk around safely.
* Freedom to have a loud party vs freedom to quietly enjoy your place.
* Freedom to talk on the phone on a train vs freedom from such disturbance.
* Freedom to cut down the forest vs freedom to walk in the forest.
* Freedom to pass through the land (right of way) vs freedom to use the land exclusively.
In other words, some things naturally understood as “freedoms” are practically and sometimes logically in conflict and the boundary needs to be put somewhere. Some of your examples might be like that.
There are also cases where there is no such obvious trade-off against another kind of freedom (there might be other benefits – judgement is out of scope here), e.g.:
* Restrictions for no reason whatsoever. Hypothetically tomorrow blue t-shirts could be banned.
* Protecting you against yourself, e.g. in the UK you usually can’t just buy more than 2 small packs of Ibuprofen at a time (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/956857/Appendix_4.pdf).
* Not being allowed to criticize your government.
Freedom understood this way is not a single thing – more like a possibility space which can take different shapes. It is still useful to think of the greater and lesser freedom, but it is not maximized by absolute anarchy (which would be extremely short-lived anyway without at least enforced non-violence).
> Freedom is only instrumentally valuable
It seems quite reasonable to hold freedom in a more practical sense as a terminal value or nearly terminal value – closely related to such things like staying true to oneself, taking responsibility, pursuing one’s own goals rather than someone else’s, roaming free instead of being caged, resisting oppression, self-governance.