Another post over at Professor Bainbridge’s place centers around the definition of freedom. More specifically, he takes issue with Bruce Bartlett and James Joyner regarding a Heritage Foundation paper that “downgraded” our freedom status and now rates the US as less free than places like Singapore and Hong Kong. Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Joyner skoff at the notion, while Prof. Bainbridge is more apt to take this downgrade as a warning about our future.
In a political context, whenever the word “freedom” comes up, a quote from a high school English teacher comes to mind:
Freedom is our ability to move within the harness.
Or at least, that’s a close approximation.
I think Prof. Bainbridge’s point could have been more succinctly made by pointing out that Ipads, and technological advances in general, provide conveniences as opposed to freedoms and that Mr. Bartlett’s essay confuses the two. The bulk of Mr. Bartlett’s article revolves around the notion that technology and wealth have allowed us to solve large problems like how to feed lots of people, how to get to distant places in short order and being able to make a phone call from our car. My counter point is that these are not new freedoms. They are new conveniences that get confused when someone makes statements like “Today, a person is freer to make a trip to Florida than someone from 1880 was.”
This statement is true, but not in a governmental sense of freedom. The person from 1880 was just as free as a person from today to take a trip to Florida. The difference is that the person from 1880, depending on the starting point, was going to take a long time to get there. Practically speaking, weekend flings to Florida were impossible. Still, there wasn’t a Department of Transportation saying “Thou shalt not …” (Nor is that the case today.) However, just for fun, I’ll point out that many states have outlawed cellphone calls from a car. Oops.
From this viewpoint, I think Mr. Bartlett’s claim falls apart prett quickly. For instance, there was no income tax in the 1880’s. There was no FBI in the 1880’s. There was no FDA, EPA, CBO or whatever other alphabet soup comes to mind. Therefore, the laws those agencies enforced were not in existence. So people were free to do whatever little thing they wanted to try and make a living. And likely give people some new convenience in the process. Today’s Ipad and flight’s to Florida are a result of our freedoms to try. Each new law reduces our ability to try something new because laws can only take away options. The harness is tightened a little more.
The paper by the Heritage Foundation aside, it is undoubtedly true that we are less free today than the farmers of the late 1800’s. I’ll also add that while Ipads and the like are indeed pretty cool, they are not substitutes for freedom. Perhaps what we’ve lost has not had a noticeable affect on what we can accomplish; however, that’s another argument entirely. But it seems a sure bet that at some point, eroding freedoms will have an affect on our ability to improve our own lives.
I guess I’m wondering how much further are Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Joyner willing to go? in exchange for some new gadget, our course.