– Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Carrington (27 May 1788)
Politicians love to talk about liberty and freedom, even as they seek to restrain it. While select freedoms have been enshrined in the Bill of Rights (and even those are constantly under pressure), there remains the larger concept of freedom of action. Jefferson says it best in his letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (4 April 1819):
Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
The United States is far from the ideal of maximal liberty (the most liberty you can have without infringing on someone else’s equal rights and liberty), and it is likely to move even further away in the near future.
Although Thomas Jefferson could scarcely have imagined them, that are forces within the modern world that are slowly eroding our individual liberty. Here are five trends that reduce our liberty, both now and for future generations.
Environmentalism
In the past, one man’s property was his to do with as he pleased. If he wished to clear the forest and plant crops, that was his prerogative. If he wished to release sheep or cattle to graze, or divert water from a stream by building a dam, he had only to do it.
Within the last 30 years, we have been confronted with the fact that our actions have widespread destructive consequences on the Earth’s environment. Although each person’s actions may only contribute slightly to the overall problems, those problems can become catastrophic. Of course, “no single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.”
Jared Diamond talks about the conflict between individual liberty and environmental responsibility in rural Montana in the book Collapse:
Montanans are beginning to realize that two of their most cherished attitudes are in direct oppostion: their pro-individual-rights anti-government-regulation attitude, and their pride in their quality of life.
The way we choose to live has consequences that affect the world around us much more than in the past. Our ability to personally use energy and resources, pollute, and leave a ‘carbon footprint’ was unimaginable 200 years ago. Environmental change may require a change I how we live, and that change will mean a loss in liberty.
It may be that we decide, as a culture, that we are willing to trade some of our freedoms in order to preserve our environment (or if we fail to curtail liberty, we will all suffer). But we should be aware of the choice we are making, and the sacrifices that come with it.
Public Safety and Government Health Care
Cigarette use has been pushed into smaller and smaller corners. New York city recently banned trans-fat. The prisons are full of non-violent drug offenders. The nanny state seeks to regulate every aspect of our lives, from what we eat and drink, to who we have sex with to what we watch and say.
Much of the justification for laws intervening in people’s private lives has come from the idea of public health: the government has to control what people do in order to keep them safe and healthy.
In the past, it was possible to argue that one’s health is the concern only of the individual and his doctor. Now, it’s the concern of the individual, his doctor, and several bureaucrats at an HMO.
Many conservatives have argues that government-run health care would put a bureaucrat in charge of important health decisions, that people would have to wait for procedures, and that patients would be denied care. These would all be grave concerns if they weren’t already true under the current system of private insurance.
The main danger of government health care is that individual health would become the concern of the government. A major argument against the nanny state, that an individual’s health is no concern of the government, would be demolished, leaving little standing in the way of future ludicrous laws designed to protect us by stealing our liberty.
Overpopulation
At the present growth rate of 1.1% per year, the United States’ population will double to about 560 million in about the next 60 years, if current immigration and related trends continue. Each year over 3 million people are added to the U.S. population.
The world’s population will likely reach 9.2 billion in 2050, with virtually all new growth occurring in the developing world.
It stands to reason that each person has less freedom in a group than alone. When you are in a group, you have to take the rights and liberties of others into account. When you are alone, you can pretty much do whatever you want (except for the environmental constraints in part one).
The more people who are around, the less liberty you have. If you want to play loud music at 3:00 a.m. in a house in the country, no one cares. Doing it in a city apartment will get the cops called. If you want to wander around naked in the country, your main worry is poison ivy. Doing it in the city will get you arrested. If you want to have sex or do drugs or drink or smoke or gamble or eat fatty foods, doing it in privacy and isolation will rarely cause you any problems. Doing it in the presence of others will get you in serious trouble.
Even if you just want to sit in peace and quiet, it’s easy in the country, and impossible in the city.
As the population of the US and the world continues to grow, the areas of privacy and isolation will continue to shrink.
The freedom of movement is one of our most treasured ideals. Every Memorial Day, millions of people hit the road for a weekend at the lake or some time with friends. As the population increase, so too will the size of cities. Suburbs will expand, more people will drive longer and farther on the roads. As urban sprawl increases, so too will traffic delays, congestion, and accidents.
That quintessential American joy of heading out on the open road for exploration and adventure will slowly be choked off by sprawling cities and increasing population.
Technology
Say you go out to a party, get drunk, and act crazy. It’s an activity that many people enjoy from time to time, and it rarely effects them beyond a morning headache. If he is applying for a job, his drunken revelry won’t become known, and it certainly won’t hurt his chances of landing a job.
Unless someone took pictures and posted them on Facebook.
Privacy and liberty are similar concepts. Liberty describes your freedom of action, and privacy protects your choices from the judgement of others (particularly when it is none of their business). Technology is the enemy of privacy, and therefore liberty.
Pictures of you can be posted on networking sites without your knowledge or permission, and they can drastically effect your chances of getting a job (many people post their own pictures, and then act surprised when a prospective employer finds them).
Surveillance cameras are set up in stores (private property) and on city streets and sidewalks (public property). These cameras can record the license number of your car, and even record your face. In Wisconsin, police can attach a GPS tracking device to your car WITHOUT A WARRANT.
The internet allows anyone to collect and store vast amounts of information. While that can be handy when, say, writing an article, it also means that the government can record everything it wants to know about everybody.
I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist. The government is generally too bureaucratic to engage in such things. The point is that technology reduces our privacy, and with it our liberty.
The One Way Ticket
Once the government has a power, they never give it back. Once a right is lost, it cannot be reclaimed. Once a freedom is taken, it is never returned.
Most of the forces that will affect liberty in the 21st Century are beyond our control. There is little one can do about environmental danger, overpopulation or the capabilities of technology. Theoretically, enough concerned citizens could halt the government’s virulent intervention into every aspect of American life, but when has that ever happened?
– Justice George Sutherland, in his dissenting opinion on Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board, 301 US 141 (1938)
To quote Phillips, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. Sites like Facebook simply bring it to a more personal level, and such sites *do* allow you to untag yourself in a photo. All it takes to prevent embarrassing photos surfacing is an e-mail notification, and 2 minutes of effort. If you’re truly worried about this, then it requires simply not creating a Facebook account, as photos cannot be linked to your profile if your profile doesn’t exist. Effectively, by creating this account, you choose to exchange some amount of freedom for convenience, but this above all else is an individual choice.
The lack of freedom in a medical term is again a consequence of a choice we as individuals make. While it may be unwise, it is nonetheless possible to live without insurance, and thus be completely, personally responsible for your own health. Most of the population chooses not to do so, because they desire the luxury of a long, healthy life, but it seems folly to assume the “right” to long life as fundamental and without it’s own price.
The environmental danger and overpopulation that are cited as leading to encroachments on freedom are likewise consequences of our actions, although these are more consequences of a societal drive to excess. They do indeed have effects on freedom, but in all honesty, these consequences are fairly minor on a personal level (in terms of the environment, it simply requires some slight pragmatism on the part of the self, being mostly infringements of corporate freedoms, and if you truly want to blast music at 3 am, invest in a good pair of headphones.)
Lastly, the surveillance cameras. In the case of cameras on private property, these are intended pretty much solely as a protection of personal property (which, as you’ll recall, is another tenet of freedom: That I may own and protect personal property, so long as I do so without bringing harm to others), and in the case of public cameras, they are intended to ensure public safety. Again, society as a whole has chosen to sacrifice some level of freedom in exchange for something else of value.
My personal belief is that the most fundamental freedom will always be the freedom and necessity to accept the consequences of our own actions. All choices we make limit our future choices. If I choose to fly to Texas tomorrow, I will have lost the freedom to make the choice to stay home tomorrow. This doesn’t mean I’m “losing freedoms”, merely that I have made a decision, and must live with the consequences of that decision.
Ugh, that’s heinous. Chris, you’re espousing liberty with no blood or flesh in it. If our institutions create structured incentives to encourage you to “freely” make decisions, and those decisions give them leverage over your future activities, that’s not true freedom.
There are these old mining areas in the country. They’re chiefly populated by poor miners with a high incidence of disease, and yet these areas have the highest average per capita wealth in the country. That’s what your freedom looks like.
In the 70’s the courts sided against the mineworkers’ union and agreed with you. This is the only western country in the world where you can be legally compelled to enter a hole in the ground.
How realistic is it to actively resist our biology and for how long?
“Very realistic” and “until death.” How is that a question?
It’s called a job, Adam. The mining areas are an extreme of that spectrum, but the fact is that by choosing to work for pay, we are giving institutions leverage over our future actions. By purchasing a health insurance plan, you hand the insurance company leverage over you. By taking out a car loan, you hand the bank leverage over you. Every action you take gives someone else leverage over you. Freedom is the fact we may choose to whom we grant this leverage.
Also, Brian, that question’s something you have the freedom to answer for yourself, and to handle the consequences of the way you choose to answer. If you choose to live a life with a restricted diet, a set work-out schedule, and the like, you are choosing to value an elongated lifespan above the freedom you might otherwise have with your diet, and the time you spend working out. It has it’s benefits, and it has it’s detriments. Everyone dies, so the question: becomes precisely how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to live longer?
Apologies, the last sentence above should read as follows:
Everyone dies, so the question becomes: precisely how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to live longer?
We believe that we have this “power” and this “will” to resist biological urges and sociological pressures, but how practical is it?
How often does it actually happen?
To put it another way: When something hurts, how often do we endure it when there is a ready option available to alleviate it?
Likewise, when something is pleasurable, how often do we actually pursue it or continue its use?
The fact is, our brains are set up to pursue pleasure (as in eating is pleasurable) and avoid pain (even emotional pain). In nearly every conceivable scenario, we are a slave to this pain/pleasure system.
When we think that we are beating this system for an ideal such as freedom, we are actually playing to it.
If I made the “right choice” there is a pleasure response that reinforces it (i.e. pride/self-approval, social approval, good tasting).
Even the “wrong choice” can be a right one. A sociopath can “know” that breaking a certain law is “wrong”, but if it doesn’t register that way in his brain, he’s going to continue the behavior.
So, Adam, it is a question of probabilistic behavior based on a biological pain/pleasure model rather than one of illusory “choice”.
In the case of pursuing the “luxury, of a long healthy life”, the point is, most people do this not from choice, but rather the decided lack of choice.
It is not probable that people resist the survival urge/avoidance of pain that comes with death and disease when there is a real alternative to that. Which is modern medicine and the health care industry.
Chris, ditto. Now, there may very well be some measure of “free will” that helps makes these choices, but it not present or obvious in most people. And it is still subject to pain/pleasure.
Brian, the problem with the deterministic argument is the sheer complexity of the human brain, and further, the fact that our brains are not in a void. Because your brain happened to follow a certain path, which intersected with mine today on this website, it altered my own path.
So it feels to me that the deterministic viewpoint of “there is no free will” skirts the issue. Due to the incredible complexity of the universe, there’s enough randomness (or Chaos, if you choose to believe nothing is truly random) to make any given thought effectively the result of free will, and certainly to prevent the prediction of the thought patterns of even one single individual.
And I find that to be a terrifying sentiment. With some pragmatic exceptions, all actors should be able to rearrive at a fair bargain in light of changing circumstances, especially when the changing circumstances involve correcting the underrepresentation of actors in previous bargains. Traditional underrepresented groups have comprised not only labor, but also consumers and fragmented small businesses.
The fundamental notion that users should not be able to make demands of Facebook is absurd on its face given the magnitude of the importance of users as a reasonably discrete interest. Sadly, outside of government, our society has not matured enough to give us the instruments to organize a collective boycott.
Brian, I’ll accept the pragmatic point that the shape of our political process generally doesn’t allow well-reasoned arguments to interfere with the path of least resistance.
On the other hand, I think that the path of least resistance can actually fail, and that real leadership can at least create stepping stones that may prevent us from hurtling down a waterfall (if I might strain the analogy).
But that’s as far as I’ll allow. The free will argument really does skirt the issue. We can’t use it to gloss over the very real notion that small groups of people can make a difference. Sometimes they have to be in a position of power. Sometimes they just have to generate a really good meme. And discussions like this affect small groups of people. (Okay, there’s a categorical fallacy in there, but I appeal to your sense of scope.)
I don’t necessarily mean straight determinism per se, but rather probabilistic reactivity.
Successful appeal!
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Ben Franklin
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