I tried to post this in the comments section at Marginal Revolution, but either a glitch or some tomfuckery prevented me from posting it. I put a lot of thought into it, and I hate to waste it. Here it is:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/04/are-women-freer-today-than-in-1890.html
There is a lot of pointless back and forth on this issue that my eyes are strained in trying to read all the nonsense.
I can agree that negative liberty also needs positive liberty. What I find disingenuous is how people try to slip some form of welfare state or regulatory state in the back door as a necessary consequence of this reality. For instance, I hear the argument all the time that if I don't like the present state of affairs that I am free to go live as a hermit in the wilderness. Depriving myself of the positive liberty of living in society with all its benefits is harsh enough to make me tolerate the infringements on my negative liberty. But ultimately, I want my negative liberty in addition to my positive liberty.
I can bash on the government all day on my blog thanks to the First Amendment, but I do not do the same with my employer. That is because I want to keep my job and the paycheck that goes with it. But to be able to bash on my employer and also keep my job would be very liberating indeed. Unfortunately, a law requiring my employer to tolerate me bashing his business and continuing to pay me would deprive him of his negative liberty. OTOH, I could become my own boss and achieve the same end without depriving anyone of their negative liberty. Plus, I could become much richer as a result.
In social terms, there is a social cost to practicing negative liberty. You may be deprived of employment, housing, loans, and reputation as a consequence of your freedom. This social cost can be huge and not infringe on your life, liberty, or property. But the deprivation is every bit as severe as if you had everything you owned confiscated from you. Should the government remedy this? I don't think so. Here's why.
Under Jim Crow, privately owned businesses could deny service to blacks. We may find this repugnant today, but we must also acknowledge that it is perfectly acceptable under the negative liberty framework. But the positive aspect of this era was the creation of flourishing black communities like Harlem and a chance for black owned businesses to prosper and thrive as they served black patrons that the white establishment shunned or harassed. A modern parallel would be the thriving of Silicon Valley as a result of IBM only hiring starched collared types instead of Birkenstock wearing hippies like Jobs and Woz.
I think we should counterbalance our view of positive and negative liberty with the concepts of positive and negative tyranny. Positive tyranny would be the deprivation of negative liberty while negative tyranny would be the deprivation of positive liberty. I would make the argument that negative tyranny is actually beneficial in many ways. It may be unpleasant but necessary. For instance, it is the negative tyranny of the owners of this forum that keeps me from turning this post into an expletive laden diatribe.
To make these choices of positive and negative liberty and positive and negative tyranny requires a choice of values. We may find some repugnant in the same way that IBM found hippies repugnant. Or we may find some repugnant in the way that we find supporters of NAMBLA repugnant. The result of these clashes over values and which will predominate yields more negative results than positive results. (Imagine if IBM had been required to give employment to Jobs and Woz. Imagine a world without Motown or Stax records. Imagine a world without Playboy!)
Arguing that government should promote positive liberty is akin to arguing that a referee should prefer one team over another. This might be favorable to the preferred team, but it is bad for the game as a whole.
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