Freedom is one of those words that we use a lot in this country. It’s one of those words that many use assuming that we’re all talking about the same thing, when in reality we are probably not. Many people will argue that one of the great strengths of America is the Freedom of her people. That is about as far as the consensus goes however.
As a touchstone, here is how Webster’s Dictionary defines Freedom:
The quality or state of being free: as
a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence
c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous
On the most basic level Freedom fundamentally means the ability to do something or a variety of things unrestrained by external forces. (While we may be restrained by internal forces from doing something, the necessity of exercising that restraint suggests we have the freedom to do otherwise.)
If one were to ask Americans today whether or not if they are free, i.e. if they have freedom, most would likely say yes. They might suggest they have Freedom of Speech which allows them to say almost anything they want. Absent most college campuses this is largely true. They might suggest that they enjoy a Freedom of Religion and can worship whatever god they choose or choose not to worship at all. This too is for the most part true. Unfortunately, however, if one were to dig just below the surface of Speech and Religion things become murky quite rapidly.
Fundamental to the founding of this country and enshrined in the 9th Amendment to the Constitution is the notion that the rights of the people are boundless: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Basically, while the freedoms of Speech, Religion, Press etc. are explicitly stated, the people have many more and the absence of their explicit inclusion in the Constitution does not mean they don’t exist.
Why does any of this matter? Because many of those other freedoms are being diminished each day slowly but surely.
How? It’s not as blatant as Congress or state legislatures passing a law that says “Americans no longer have a right to do XXX”. That might spark a rebellion. No, it’s far more subtle, but the result is the same. And the tool with which government slowly takes your freedom? Regulation. Make no mistake about it, regulation means control. And their control means less freedom for you. Of course the regulations themselves rarely highlight the freedoms they are diminishing. A perfect example is the 822 page 2007 Energy Bill signed into law by President Bush. The legislation doesn’t explicitly outlaw regular incandescent light bulbs, but it sets energy requirements such that for all intents and purposes they are outlawed by 2014. You might say, what freedom is being limited there? Well, for one your willingness to pay $.50 for a light bulb rather than $2.00. A manufacturer’s freedom to continue to use their current facilities to manufacture incandescent light bulbs (and ideally return profits to shareholders) verses having to invest tens of millions of dollars in R&D and building new facilities for the new bulbs, resulting of course in reduced dividends to shareholders.
Light bulbs… how often do you buy one? Not too often, and in the big picture it’s not that much of an expense. True enough, but unfortunately light bulbs represent but one tiny filament in the regulatory straitjacket Americans find themselves wrapped in. Mileage standards for cars. Ethanol regulations. Minimum wage laws. Happy Meal bans. License requirement in Texas for the right to call oneself an Interior Designer. The 1099 requirements in ObamaCare. ADA. McCain Feingold. Forced unionism.
Individually any one of these laws might be tolerable. The problem however is that they do not operate individually. They all operate simultaneously. Layer upon layer. What’s worse, each of these regulations has a bureaucracy behind them who’s main purpose in life is to grow its power and serve its constituency. The Texas Board of Architectural Examiners exists to serve the Texas chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers. The Ethanol bureaucracy (Departments of Energy & Agriculture) serve the desires of the environmentalists and farmers. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors was serving the “We know better what’s good for your kids than you do” cabal when they passed the Happy Meal ban.
The problem is that there is a degree of separation between many of the industries and the citizens themselves. The EPA would be loathe to pass a regulation that says “We are going to force Americans to pay $100 billion more for electricity over the next six years.” They did however issue C02 regulations that will have just that impact, only the regulations focus on industry. This way, when the public sees their bills rise the utility companies get to feel their wrath… not the regulators. Perhaps the energy companies can tell the public why their energy bills are increasing? Not likely. When insurance companies tried to do just that with ObamaCare the administration thugs threatened their very livelihoods.
If freedom means anything, it means more than just being able to say what’s on your mind and attend church of your choice. How often are any of us called on to stand on a soapbox with an impassioned plea in support of some divisive issue? How often are we forced to defend our worship of God in whatever form we think he takes? How often are newspapers threatened by censorship? Not so often. On the other hand there are myriad things we do each day where our freedoms are impacted by a plethora of regulations, from who can sell us lemonade to what we can earn to the cost of both our car and it’s gasoline to what our kids learn in school. More regulation means less freedom.
The fight against overregulation will be neither easy nor short but the first step in taking on that battle is understanding what’s really at stake. Regulation means control – control means fewer choices – fewer choices mean less freedom in our lives. Today it’s just the Happy Meals in San Francisco. Before long McDonalds and the rest of the obesity inducing profiteers will be put out of business and we will all be eating tofu burgers garnished with organic tomatoes on pita bread. Yummy!
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Vince,
Very worthwhile article. On Ethanol, you’ll enjoy this one: U.S. corn ethanol “was not a good policy”-Gore
“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small. ……. It’s hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.”
The rationalization from that wastrel goof-and-inventor-of-the-internet underlines just how harmful and expensive misguided legislation can become, but once in place, almost impossible to reverse. It’s always a disaster waiting to happen when the legislation is energized primarily by political motivation. Cap and Trade anyone?
Meanwhile, the total U.S. ethanol subsidies paid out of taxpayer borrowed funds reached $7.7 billion last year. What does Gore care – he’s cashed his check already.
Nice article… I agree with the underlying sentiment that too much regulation erodes at our freedoms, but I wonder if it overly simplifies. In your essay, you do not bemoan your lack of freedom to purchase, say, authentic African elephant ivory jewelry in an open market. Do you sincerely think there ought to be no government regulations on the trade of ivory jewlery? If not, then your pronouncement “Regulation means control – control means fewer choices – fewer choices mean less freedom in our lives” seems to paint an overly clear-cut picture that “regulation == bad”.
I’m not trying to be argumentative here – just trying make the point that this doesn’t seem to be a nuance-free black and white issue; that the “right” argument to be had may not be whether the freedom of the market should be limited, but rather to what extent that freedom should be limited.
To that end, I ask two questions:
1) Should the government mandate any freedom-infringing regulations?
2) If so, can you articulate where the line should be drawn, and why?
Thanks James,
Kevin, you make a good point on the African elephant… which might equally apply to the Indonesian elephant, five of which were killed just this week by farmers because they were trampling farmland and eating crops.
I would say that the default position should be a no in terms of your question. People should have the freedom to do virtually anything they want other than those things that harm others or trample on other’s rights. Smoking regulation is a perfect example. I’m against laws that prohibit smoking in restaurants. While I don’t smoke and hate the smell of smoke, I think that restaurants should be able to make the choice for themselves. Eventually customers will dictate what policies should be in place and my guess is that eventually the establishments that chose not to allow it would prosper.
Where the line should be drawn, I’d suggest where public safety is involved (actual public safety… not much of what OSHA regulates or towns requiring license’s to be a waiter) and the enforcement of contracts and rights. Beyond that the bar for where regulation is allowed should be very high. Fundamentally government does few things well… as experience I think demonstrates. Sure there would be some pain in the short run as people made bad choices. But if people understood that choices had consequences they would probably pay closer attention to those choices. After a while they would shy away from doing their own research for every transaction they might undertake, for every choice they might make and eventually they would come to rely on organizations like Angies’ list, Underwriters Laboratories or Consumer Reports to help them make choices. That’s self direction, not regulation. I’d suggest it would be far more productive and the country would be far more prosperous as a result.
Not a perfect answer but there’s never enough time in the day!
Hi Vince. Nice article, and I agree in large part. However,:
200 years ago, we might have had the same discussion about slavery. Just because I don’t support it doesn’t do enough harm to the market to end the practice. Do I wait until my moral choice to eschew slavery becomes commonplace, demand dries up and thus supply ceases? Or do we regulate it from the top down, and force supply to cease, and force our morality on everyone?
A true libertarian society, which relied on the free market to solve all problems, would likely still be a society with slavery. Abortions would certainly be available, as would prostitutes, drugs and gay marriage. Anything that some portion of the population would pay for, moral or not, would be available.
So, should we legislate morality? If so, who chooses which side is right or wrong? Where do you draw the line? I think we can all agree that abolishing slavery was a good idea. That civil rights are a good idea. But should we regulate carbon emissions via cap and trade? On face value, that seems an easily equivalent regulation to slavery; Rich people are polluting the air for everyone without consequence. Cap and trade would create a consequence, right?
In the end, it’s about the government protecting everyone equally under the law (in theory), and not about the government taking more power for itself. So, civil rights and the abolition of slavery was done to protect fellow human beings from being exploited by other humans (who, previously, had held a superior position in the eyes of the law).
But to go back to cap-and-trade, the “rich polluters” are exploiting the “poor everyone else”, so the law should punish those who are exploiting. Right? Should those regulations also protect elephants? How about baby cows (veal)? How about the non-smoking employees in a smoking-allowed restaurant?
This is a very complex issue. I’d prefer to come down on the side of ‘the government shouldn’t regulate morality’, but I can’t get there logically.
@Nuada,
A liertarian society with the protections delineated in our Constitution (including amendments) would not still “be a society with slavery.” I believe a truly free market is best described as “the voluntary exchange of monetary and other compensation for goods and services.” Some laws protecting individual civil and property rights must be maintained (again, as outlined in our Constitution,) and therein lie the responsibilities given to the government by the people to ensure that polluters and slave-traders do not usurp individual rights.
The issues surrounding smoking exist primarily because of the tobacco industry’s desire to keep profitable, despite knowing full well that their product is injurious to the health of the consumer and quite possibly to that of those individuals exposed to second-hand smoke (especially in poorly ventilated areas.) If such an industry were to try to start today, it would be very hard-pressed to exist without paying off public officials. If our politicians truly cared to do the right thing for the citizens they are elected to represent, they would treat tobacco as the poison it is, and enact legislature to phase out tobacco use and make it illegal until the tobacco industry made smoking safe for consumers and the rest of the affected public. But because the tobacco industry makes big contributions to law-makers’ campaign coffers and provides a considerable amount of tax revenue for local, state, and federal governments, it is too deeply entrenched in our politico-economic society to die at the hands of law-makers.
As for the industrial polluters, we haven’t evolved our energy industries sufficiently to eliminate all potential harm to the environment and world’s population. I don’t know if there is a solution that would be “universally acceptable” at this time, but I think it would be reasonable to involved the public as much as possible inthe decision-making process.
Jeff
@Nuada:
I share your dislike for governments trying to legislate morality. Indeed prostitution, drug use and the like would find their equilibrium were it not for government intervention. That level would be higher than some would like and lower than others. Either way it would cause less destruction than the cost of regulating them does. The key to the free exercise however is the swift and sure punishment of any crimes committed under the influence under such freely available vices.
A libertarian society can only exist within the confines of a constitutional government, otherwise it devolves into anarchy. As such, a libertarian society does not mean that slavery would exist. Indeed, in the US the 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery and America remained a relatively free place for the next 100 years or at least the next 50.
The progressive agenda of smothering freedom in the swaddling clothes of regulation has little to do with protecting the little guy… at the end of the day it’s all about control. The perfect example is Michelle Rhee’s new contract for the teachers in Washington. She offered teachers the choice between significant pay raises and increased earning potential (based partially on performance) or staying with the current tenure (guaranteed employment) contract with lower earning potential. The union worked every possible angle to keep the vote from coming to a vote for their members, and when it finally did come to a vote somewhere between 60% & 80% of the teachers voted yes.
Protecting individual rights is merely the camouflage progressives use to disguise their hammers and sickles in an effort to hide their desire to control the nation and destroy capitalism and freedom.