Myth: Freedom is simply lack of coercion. Libertarianism requires human interaction to be voluntary.

To comment on this video, go to: http://beingism.org/community/?q=node/13

In which it is explained that real freedom means having choices, not just a lack of restraints.

Note: This video is part of a series which debunks myths pertinent to laissez-faire capitalism. Many points not addressed in this video can be found at the above link.

Myth: Freedom is simply lack of coercion. Libertarianism requires all trade to be between equals and all human interaction to be voluntary, substituting persuasion for force.

This myth defines as equals for purposes of trading people who have between them vast disparities in power. However, you can only have voluntary, non-coercive trade in a society where all people have enough power to start with that they can make actual, meaningful choices about their lives. If I have all the power and you have none, you cannot reasonably be said to be voluntarily entering into any agreement you make with me.

Those who believe this myth are not considering that there is no meaningful difference between physical and economic coercion—indeed, many fail to see the latter as coercion at all. The fact is, though, that whether someone walks into my house and takes all my water at gunpoint, or whether she legally owns all the drinking water and makes me pay almost all of my income to have any, I experience an equivalent amount of suffering. By the same token, suppose we could have devoted resources to ending the existence of tuberculosis in my country (thus saving the lives of my family members) but instead devote those resources to the investment of one rich person in another rich person's business. In this case, by any meaningful definition, my family has been coerced, in this case costing them their lives. This is true whether or not you call it coercion and no matter how much you pretend that free market principles have entirely to do with voluntary choices, or that only the people directly involved with a given transaction are affected by it.

A meaningful definition of freedom needs to take into account not merely the freedom from actively being restrained or coerced, but also the freedom to make choices that influence the course of ones life. Only in a very trivial semantic sense is a person who can choose between twenty jobs, none of which pay enough to afford basic needs, "free." If an unexpected earthquake results in my falling into a hole from which I cannot escape, I am in no meaningful way still free, even though no one is coercing me. This is the difference between negative liberty (freedom from active restraint) and positive liberty (having the tools to make choices about one's life); both are crucial components of real freedom.

For that matter, the world doesn't break down nearly so clearly as some people might claim into categories of "force" and "persuasion." When we come up with social systems that teach all people how to get along with each other, take care of themselves, share and cooperate, have proper personal boundaries, respect themselves and others, understand themselves, determine what their skills are, and find meaningful work doing what they enjoy, we neither force nor persuade anyone to do anything, and yet we create an interdependent society of happy people.

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[DarthKazi]

WOW! You are one walking, talking straw man fallacy.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Marx had less fallacies in his "arguments" than you have.

Nobody would "own" all the water in a free society, nor would government favors allow unbustable cartels. Cartels always fail in laissez-faire examples because competition is unlimited.

Even when somebody like Rockefeller owned the "monopoly" on oil in the 1880's he DEcreased prices 80+% which immensely helped the consumer.

You = fail.

[Beingism]

@JasonDamisch How does that even have anything to do with this argument? No one is saying that government can do no wrong, nor that in trying to do good it isn't possible accidentally to do bad. However, it's axiomatic that it's generally better to *try* to do good, rather than just allow events to unfold as they would have anyway.

(Incidentally, the idea that vaccines cause autism is about on par with creationism so far as a plausible theory.)

[InvincibleNumanist]

i dont want interaction with certain human beings. therefore I am authoritarian.

thumbed down

[FamilyCompanyJob]

 brilliant

[FreeEcon]

You have two flawed premises. The first is that you conflate economic power with political power. Second, you assume that you have an entitlement to someone else's property regardless how they obtained it.

[guidedmarkets]

@eeks78 Heh. I hadn't noticed that those events coincided.... :)

[eeks78]

I love how, right at the moment he says "proper personal boundaries", he is removing a cat from his lap. :) (cats have different ideas about that stuff)

[guidedmarkets]

@lordhighexecutioner Very well said. There's something very interesting and very strange going on, I think, in the psychology of a person who looks at the world's suffering and decides that the fundamental problem is that people who have vast resources aren't given the choice to keep a small percentage of those resources so that others who have nothing will suffer less. It's a little like watching the nature channel and feeling bad for the lion that stubbed her toe tearing apart the gazelle...

[lordhighexecutioner]

The Right seems to assume that our society is always at the brink of famine. There is massive surplus, the needs of most people are produced with very few people and with machines. This idea that people will be deprived if they are taxed a bit to pay for social security for the rest of society is nonsense. The US ultra-wealthy have made more money more in the last 30 years than any group of people in the history of the world. Why is it such a crime that they take a little less?

[RadioFreeWisconsin]

I'm coerced into breathing!

[thegillotine09]

@ineptsegue

Right, let's change the circumstances a bit. Let's say someone is living in poverty. Would you be justified in forcing 1000 people to pay $10 to improve that person's condition?

And I'm having a hard time with "Society's wealth", as if I am only a part of a social machine. I am an individual. The product of my labors is my own, and I will not hand over my individual liberty in exchange for some "allowance".

[thegillotine09]

@ineptsegue

... So if we wanted to 'free' the woman in the second situation, should we force someone to have sex with her? If we do, then we're trading one person's freedom for another's.

What if we could buy the woman a prostitute who would willingly have sex with her for money? What if it cost $100, so we forced 100 people to pay $1 to 'free' this woman? Would the minor coercion of a mass of people be worth the liberation of the woman?