What is "freedom"?
 

Answer this question in your own words.

Doing what you want to do in an environment where everyone else doing likewise doesn't impede your ability to do the same.

Doing whatever Ashcroft says.

One of the best improvised pieces Richie Havens ever did.:)

Man, geez...I'd tell you but the title of this thread combined with my personal views pisses me off so much I cannot type.

We live in the greatest country on the planet, but brother we are not free.

So I'll check back later after I ride helmet free down my county road past my welfare neighbors wondering If I could call some dude in India to fix my fucking crap stuff that I got a good deal on from China.

Nice! That's a fine cut. :)

OK, check...I veered way too hell over the fence into other crap there.

We are not free, maybe never will be.....maybe the militia guys are right? If any one of you here truly feels free I'd love to hear why.

Because here you can write what you wrote and not have to hide under the bed tonight....at least for now.:worried:

About two years ago, my wife decided that she wanted to start a new business, designing and arranging flowers for large events.

This morning, at 4 am, she went to the Los Angeles flower market, where people from dozens of countries, many not speaking any english, offered to sell her flowers. If she thought the price was fair, she bought them. If not, she walked past. No one intervened.

All day, she's been using her skills to place the flowers she bought in arrangments so that the final product is worth more than the raw materials. She will sell that arrangment to a mexican-american family that is celebrating their daughter's quinceniera. No one will intervene.

Later tonight, we'll use that money to take a friend out to dinner. He's leaving the country for 7 months to go play drums in Japan. No one knocked on the door to ask him why he was leaving, and no one will try to shoot him in the back at the border. He will live by the consequences of his decision, and when he is done, will come home. No one will intervene.

What is freedom? We make choices about how to use our time and skills to make ourselves useful to society, and we live by the consequences of those decisions. By and large, no one intervenes. We make choices about how to engage in moral behavior, and except where those moral decisions intefere with the rights of others, we live by the consequences of those decisions. By and large, with a few notable exceptions (prostitutions and drug use, maybe?), no one intervenes.

-sm

i got 20 bucks that says you didn't get up at 4 in the morning with her...

blue58...um wouldn't the success of outsourcing imply greater freedom?

The fact I can look up any subject I want unimpeded on the net.
The fact I can walk out the door with my wallet and fly to almost any country on earth without notice or intervention.

Absolute freedom is slippery, in reality it's closer to a paradox. If I'm free to blow your head off you're not all that free anymore. Stupid anarchists. Always felt anarchists were people too apathetic to form political opinions. Either that or clever fellow who sell anarchists 'smash capitalism' stickers. /offtopic.

No one preventing you from taking the chances that make life worth living.

ex: Not long ago in rural PA you could buy a piece of land, throw up your cabin and nobody would try to control your project in any meaningful way. When I did my place, the main state obstacle was the septic system. The state demanded a sand mound whether you were using composting toilets or not. Now they want to inspect your home throughout the building process and prevent you from building in any manner which they don't find code worthy. If you haven't figured it out yet this legislation is a nice little gift to the construction industry, since many folks can build on their own but few are willing to jump through the hoops.

edit Engrish

I'm still agnostic as to whether the other 4 o'clock exists, or if it's just a metaphor.

the existence of 4 a.m. is contingent on whether or not it happens to be poker night.

oh, hot damn. Sorry Beavis, I didn't recognize you. Welcome to this little corner of the web.

Yeah, staying up till 4 am playing hold'em is a very, very different thing than waking up at 4 am to go be a productive member of society.

-sm

I came to believe that "freedom" is a commodity. The more freedom you have, the more freedom you need. Oh, and the more money you have, the more freedom you can buy :)

Damn, that's an interesting position. I'm going to think on the first part, but the second is right on the money (no pun) (well, maybe a pun) (ok, a pun).
Hey welcome to the Cellar, string.:)

It's true on one level and false on another. You can indeed do many things that you otherwise can't but you have a whole new set of limitations. Wanna marry someone? How do you know they aren't just in it for the dough. Now you can't trust anyone. People become attached to money too, they become paranoid about people trying to take it and in the process, loose nearly all their freedom.

On the other hand if you have the head for it the ability to say, buy an island, own your own Gulfstream 5 or spend your days sailing the world on a custom built 60' cruiser.....

In short, with money comes power but power is not freedom. Alan greenspan is one of the most powerful men on earth but knowing if you mouth off you might cause a global depression must be fairly limiting.

Sometimes I think freedom is not giving a fuck about *anything*, family, country, money, possessions....

I think he probably gets off on that.

Who knows what he has done to the economy "for fun" or "just to see what would happen" ...

Judging by your dollar I'd say a fair bit.
That's not entirely fair though, questionable as his performance has been at times the dollar's slide is the market fucking your currency for not producing any new jobs.

Thank you, Bruce. I'll do my best to be the least annoying I can be :)
I agree. But I would think that you can opt out of power. Up to a certain point, of course.

Well yes and no. Depends how you get the money. I mean you can have say, 500m invested in a managed portfolio with any of the private or investment banks and technically you've got no more power than the average person. From another perspective though it's the money itself that has power, even if you're not directing that half a bil around it's still having an effect on markets.

That influence itself is power is it not? Even if you don't wield it you still have it.
Surely latent power still counts. Speak softly and all that.
Just some random perspectives to mull on.

Freedom might just be one of those things ... you know, like prices on a French Restaurant Menu? If you have to ask, you can't afford it ...

Or like love. The more you try to define it, the clearer it is that you don't actually have it?

Freedom is the absence of other people. Obviously, it must be tempered with society.

Freedom is the ability to do ANYTHING you choose as long as your actions don't PYSICALLY harm or endanger the person, property, or rights of a non-consenting other.

Freedom means you can buy land and build anything you want on it without consulting your neighbors. It means you don't require permission from government to have any number of any type of guns you want with any amount of any type of ammunition. It means you can walk down the street saying "Fuck Fuckity Fuck Fuck Fuck" and not be charged with a crime. It means you can take any medicines you want, have any medical procedure you want, eat what you want, drink what you want, have sex with whomever you want, marry who you want, hire a prostitute, commit suicide, etc. as long as you've got consent from others taking part in any activities that involve more than one person, and you've obtained the services or products you want to use honestly without force or coersion.

Freedom means I can wake up in the morning after an all night orgy with my 5 wives and 5 husbands, use some heroin, go to a casino to gamble, come home and home school my kids, visit a prostitute and her sheep, have an abortion, and ride my motorcycle without a helmet into the brick wall of my adult bookstore I've built next to an elementary school.

It also means I can do less offensive things such as raise my children with my own values at home without testing from the government. It means I can grow my own food or medicine. It means I am responsible for any harm I do to others or thier property. It means I'm responsible for my own healthcare, retirement, education, and charity. It means that when I make stupid decisions, I must live with the consequences of those decisions. It means I'm not entitled to steal from my neighbor to pay for my percieved needs.

You can not separate freedom and responsibility. They are one in the same.

Most of those things in your tongue-in-cheek description of freedom do cause harm to others or their property.

None of those things cause physical harm to any non-consenting others or their property; not one.

Oh, I don't know. When he said "irrational exuberance" nobody listened.;)

If your kid was molested by the heroin dealer on his way home from school while walking past the adult bookstore (I thought you were home-schooling them? Oh well.) I think you would feel your freedom to live peacefully had been infringed on just a skosh. Of course, you wouldn't find out about it until you got back from giving head in restrooms to get money to pay off the mobster who gave you credit at the casino. What a sad world that would be. Freedom would be gone forever for anyone except the lowlifes who spring up around the kinds of activities you describe.

Oh well, thank goodness no one was tainted by some kind of narrow-minded, confining religious belief. THAT would be the real nightmare.

No, I'd feel like I was the victim of a crime just as I do now when the government illegally violates my rights. And I'd seek justice against that criminal. Selling heroin isn't a crime because it doesn't harm any non-consenting others. Selling adult books, movies, toys, etc. isn't a crime regardless of the location of the store because that too, doesn't harm any non-consenting others. Home schooling isn't a crime because again it doesn't harm any non-consenting others. Child molesting is a crime because it does harm non-consenting others and it's completely unrelated to drug or porn sales.

Giving head in restrooms is not a crime. Borrowing and lending money isn't a crime. The term "mobster" suggests criminals and criminals don't run casinos. At least not since the 70's. I grew up in Vegas and worked in Casinos. It's unfair to suggest that someone running a casino is a criminal or a "mobster".

It would be a much happier world to those who value freedom. It would be a happier world to the founding fathers. When people offend others they haven't committed a crime, but they may be ostracized in the community. Some might not want to do business with them. Some won't want to associate with them. That should be thier only punishment.

As I said we are each responsible for our own decisions and as long as those decisions don't physically harm or endanger a non-consenting other, their property, or their rights, a crime has not been committed. But we will still have to face the consequences of our actions even if they are not crimes. If someone makes a poor decision not to pay for their retirement, they will have to face the fact that they are starving when they get old or that they can never retire. If someone makes a poor decision to quit school they will have to live with the fact that they can't find work, or at least none that pays well. If someone chooses to use drugs, they will have to live with health problems (high doctor bills), addiction, and a stigma attached to them in the community. If someone decides to mow their lawn naked, sells heroin, prostitutes themselves, etc. they will learn quickly that they don't have many friends and have a hard time within the community. And all of these people will serve as examples to others of what not to do and suffer the consequences of their decisions without infringing on thier freedoms.

It certainly would. I'd rather deal with prostitutes, heroin dealers, etc. than have someone force their arbitrary morality down my throat with legislation. I find the religious right to be far more offensive than crack whores.

Your world can't exist. Crime goes hand in hand with all those activities, because they appeal to our basest nature. For the sake of space, I'll just address the heroin aspect. People addicted to heroin become unable to function without being high, and lose the strength they need to deal with life outside of dope. Therefore they can no longer stay gainfully employed, and can't supply themselves with heroin. So they steal what others have in order to get a fix. If you arrest them for their crimes (we'll assume the judicial system supports rehabilitation of criminals), the rest of society has to pay for their room and board while they get cleaned up from their heroin habit, which infringes on our freedom to spend our money as we choose. For that matter, rehabilitating the heroin user deprives the heroin distributor of income. Can't have the government regulate heroin either -- rights would necessarily be infringed.

For all the "realistic"-sounding trimmings on your arguments, they spring from the juvenile fantasies of someone who just doesn't like being told what to do.

But you're so damned intelligent. I hope you're using that brain for something more than utopian rants. :eek:

Explain that to your wife when you give her the clap, chlymidia, and HIV that you got from your whore.

I just noticed it's mutating sting, not mutated. Get the cage, we've got a live one here and it's trying to crawl behind the oven, quick!
Sorry.

In response to Radar's delightfully idealistic view I'll reiterate what I said earlier. Absolute freedom is never possible because you start infringing on other people's freedom. Think of it this way, each person has a an area around them, kinda like personal space. If that space is infinitely big, they're gonna start overlapping.

"Freedom comes with a price. Money = freedom. If I had MONEY, I could fly to Nevada, pay a guy to stand in line for me at the DMV (they have those in Vegas, because ANY time you go to DMV you're there for 3 hours) while I go out to a nice long lunch at Emeril's in the MGM, and when I'm done, I pick up my tags, and fly back to NC, put the tag on my car, and be done. Of course, if I had MONEY I wouldn't have left in the circumstances I did, and would have had furniture and all my documents and this still wouldn't be a problem."

Money just give you possibilities to get what you'd like. It's not bad at all:)

Yes,freedom comes with a price, but it's not money. You can do whatever you want, but always be prepared to pay the price for it. If you admit everything what you're doing with your life is only your responsibility, if you're ready to pay the price for that, you are almost get a freedom. Almost.

The absolute freedom doesn't exist.:)

I think it's bad you know who I am. You're just talking with an immigrant. Not with ME.

That is absolutely false. First off not all drug users are drug abusers. Secondly many people are functioning addicts. One of the top heart surgeons of the 50's and 60's was addicted to heroin for most of his professional career and none of his colleagues or friends knew about it until he retired and published it in his memoires. He held his job for 30 years without stealing and he did it well.

Also if heroin were legal it would be so cheap, addicts could support their habit even with a low paying burger flipping job just as they do with cigs right now.

How is that different than what we have now? I'll tell you. It's different because the jails won't be filled with non-violent drug users, sellers, or buyers. They won't be filled to the brim with non-criminals as they are now, so even if a few addicts steal, there would be much fewer stealing to support their habits and the cost to jail them would be a tiny fraction of what we're paying right not to jail more people than any other industrialized nation.

The government regulates alcohol. Whose rights are being infringed? The government regulates prescription drugs, cigs, etc. Whose rights are being infringed? With dosages measured and controlled, less people would become addicted and those who did use it would be less likely to overdose because they'd know the strength of what they were taking.

Every single thing I said is realistic, appropriate, and represents freedom. In fact everything I said was legal in America. Up until 1913 you could sent your 12 year old daughter to the drug store to get you some heroin. Were the streets filled with heroin users robbing people? No. Was there more or less crime in 1913? Far less.

History proves that when a substance is prohibited, the public uses more of it. During Prohibition, alcohol use skyrocketed, organized crime was created in America, judges, politicians, and police were corrupted, innocent men, women, and children were mowed down in the street in gang wars, people went blind and died from uncontrolled bathtub gin, etc.

What I'm talking about is reality, not utopia. It's cold, hard, indisputable facts. If you had a grasp on reality, you would know this. I'm not the one with fantasies, but you seem to have fantasies of a nanny state that controls everyone. I have dreams of returning America to the freedom we had when this nation was created (but this time for all citizens) but you promote a twisted Orwellian nightmare of government control on our private lives.

In the more than 30 years of legalized prostitution in the state of Nevada, not one case of any disease of any kind has ever been reported. The women are checked out twice a week and can't even work if they have a cold. Everyone must use a condom, nobody can kiss, insert fingers, etc. Nobody has gotten a cold from them, let alone HIV. Try again.

I've always said, one person's rights end where another person's begin. The old saying, "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." is apt. You may do ANYTHING you want as long as what your doing doesn't infringe or physically harm the person, property, or rights of a non-consenting other. Not one thing I mentioned violates the rights, person, or property of non-consenting others so it doesn't invade their "space".

"So? How does that change what I wrote?"

A lot:) I'm talking about philosophy.I mean, about philosophical definitions.

One component people leave out of freedom is the freedom to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Contradictory I'm half with Radar on the drugs. Frankly I think the best thing that could happen to the world would be the legalization of all substances. Firstly, you'd wipe out more than half of crime and most of the major crime syndicated overnight. Poof, there goes the big 3 cartels in mexico, most of the triads, most of the mafia operations, most of all the iron triangle shit. Secondly, you can't treat people who are living outside the law effectively, they become extremely vulnerable and as we have well seen, tend to go downhill very rapidly. Whether it's possible to be a recreational user of something like heroin I don't know and I don't intend to try (bad enough on the smokes - see hinterland for that thread) but even is some can, most won't. Good luck arguing that all drug addicts would not be addicts if the stuff was legal. The way I see it if they get it along with mandatory counseling etc it's the best possible outcome for society.

http://www.plif.com/archive/wc218.gif

I'm looking forward to the terminal benders people would go on if everything was made legal.

Just imagining the body count gives me chills.

You'll note I didn't leave that out. I specifically mentioned it because there is no freedom without responsibility.

Let's say you're right and most users of heroin become addicted. Those are the consequences they must deal with for their decision to use heroin. Government is not here to protect us from our own poor decisions. That is impossible and even an attempt to do so would make sure we had no freedom what-so-ever. Whether or not we would still have addicts is not the question. The question is whether we should spend trillions locking up non-criminals and violate the freedom of all Americans because a relatively few people were irresponsible.

If someone uses crack and kills someone, using crack wasn't the crime, killing someone was. If someone takes heroin, gets behind the wheel of a car and kills someone, using heroin wasn't the crime, getting behind the wheel of a car while under the influence was, and if someone is smoking weed and steals all your M&M's, theft was the crime, not getting high.

It becomes more grey than you're willing to admit. It's fairly hard to ignore the link between hard drug use and participation is various crimes. Pretending they're not linked and treating them such is to be too blinkered to see the bigger picture.

On the other hand if i follow my own logic all the way through you are, at least on a theoretical level, correct.

I need to get some thick socks, the floor just froze.

If there is a causal link between drug use and community harm, then it no longer becomes a simple case of personal freedom.

If 90% of heroin users reach a state where they do damage to someone else's person or property (theft, etc.) or to where they require the resources of the community to sustain them (welfare, medicare, emergency room care), which they cannot pay for, then their expression of freedom comes at a cost to the community. At that point the community has the right to limit the activity that leads to the violation.

-sm

The link between hard drug users and crime is almost entirely due to the fact that those drugs are prohibited. Black markets normally made up of criminals are more than happy to supply people because prohibition drives the cost of these drugs to 14,000% or more of the price they would be if they were legal. Addicts can't afford these prices and commit crimes so they can pay for what they need.

If drugs were legal, the criminal element would be removed, drugs would be safer, and the price of drugs would be so cheap that those addicted to them would be able to afford them without stealing or committing crimes against others.

So any link between drug use that might exist is irrelevant because it would be gone were drugs legal. And as far as medical costs, treatment, etc. go, I'm against the government forcing anyone to provide healthcare. Healthcare is not a right. Nobody has a right to any product or service they don't pay for. But even if we did have government treat addicts, it would cost probably less than 10% of what we pay currently to jail them.

We are also skipping over the fact that inexpensive to produce, relatively benign drugs get replaced by dangerous crap when the benign stuff gets hard to find because it's illegal.

I wasn't speaking of you in particular, just in general. It's a major element of many of todays ideas leave out personal responsibilty for blind causality.