9 ms·

America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as l

America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others". You were dealing with the latter. It of course sounds insane when you say it baldly like this, which is why it rarely gets stated openly. But a lot of traditional societal structures depend on harm to others, so there's a big constituency for the suffering of others when it benefits the speaker.

ithacaman 5y ago
The complexity is in proving what harm is being done and to whom.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Not generally. It mainly gets complex when the latter side wants to deny the harm. Then it's an ocean of motivated reasoning and endless arguments. We still have people arguing today that American slavery was good for the slaves.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - artificial 5y ago
    Excellent! Together we can ban fast food and sugar consumption for the greater good. Heart disease and diabetes from the scourge of empty calories finally eliminated. Hundreds of thousands saved each year from poor choices. Up next: sedentary lifestyle enablers :). It’s such a rabbit hole, who should know best?
    - Klinky 5y ago
      Are you saying it's not worthy of deeper inspection? I mean you kind of make an excellent point, the fast food and processed foods industries create a lot of waste selling an unhealthy product while paying unlivable wages. Their product increases healthcare costs while enabling a sedentary and stressful commuter lifestyle.
    - clusterfish 5y ago
      You can harm yourself with junk food and lack of exercise all you want, it doesn't affect others the same way pouring poison into our shared environment does. What you're doing is called whataboutism. Trying to muddy clear waters by bringing in muddy issues that aren't directly related, just for the sake of muddying.
      - artificial 5y ago
        All of these increase healthcare costs for everyone involved.
        clusterfish 5y ago
        And you commuting increases congestion for everyone else. And you buying food makes food more expensive for everyone else. So what. You honestly can't distinguish between this and pouring lead into the atmosphere? This seems like some demagoguery fetish at best.
        kybernetyk 5y ago
        > And you buying food makes food more expensive for everyone else. Not true. You raising the demand of a good enables the producers to employ economies of scale thus making food less expensive for all.
    - tialaramex 5y ago
      In my country drinks with added sugar are taxed extra. So, for example, all the no sugar Coke or Pepsi variants are one price, but "classic" Coke or Pepsi with sugar in it are more expensive in the same quantities. A small nudge. And I already noticed it impacts bars and restaurants. If you're only going to bother stocking one cola beverage, why carry the one with sugar, which costs extra, when a customer asks for "A Coke" it's no harder to train staff to say "Pepsi Max OK?" than "Pepsi OK?". As to "Who should know best?" that's exactly what we're paying our politicians to be on top of.
    - jbboehr 5y ago
      > Up next: sedentary lifestyle enablers We can start with the internet! :)
    - wpietri 5y ago
      I am for personal freedom as long as it doesn't harm others. So if people want to make a batch of cookies, I think that's a reasonable personal choice. But it's not as clear to me that junk food companies have an absolute right to hook others on harmful, addictive products. Especially given that addiction, by undermining choice, necessarily harms a person's freedom.
ByteJockey 5y ago
There's also an entire spectrum of what constitutes "enough" harm to others to be limited (in addition to how direct the harm is).
- wpietri 5y ago
  Sure, but that comes later. All serious discussions about rights involve balancing the practical consequences of different rights. But the two concepts of freedom are still quite distinct.
  - ByteJockey 5y ago
    I don't think it does come later. I don't think there is anyone who actually thinks of these things in terms of "regardless of the harm it causes others". Ok, this being the internet, we can probably find one, but I don't think there's any significant portion of the population. That position is basically a strawman. I do think, however, that there's people who draw the lines in very different places, or put different weight on different categories of harm. As an example, physical or financial harm are very easy to verify. There's not a lot of debate about if they qualify. Mental or emotional harm, on the other hand, is very hard to verify. This presents a significant problem for anyone who is worried about the system being abused. These groups will draw lines at very different places around any claim of harm within those categories. The end result is that you'll end up with one group being labeled as grifters who want to fleece the system, and the other as being completely insensitive to human suffering (sound familiar?) That's not even to get into the debate of what constitutes harm. For example, is not helping someone harming them? Is ceasing help once you've started helping someone harming them? These are too big of questions for the post, but I imagine you get the idea.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      I don't think they talk about it in those terms. But that is absolutely the behavior. A clear historical example is America's conflict around slavery. The primary southern justification for creating the Confederacy was freedom. That continued after the Civil War; see the UDC catechisms for example. "States' rights" they'll shout, meaning the right of the white people in power to treat black people like livestock and keeping that in that condition through systematic violent abuse. And you'll still find people today arguing the point. A modern example is public health. Everything from preventing toxic waste dumping to COVID mask mandates is met with cries of "FREEDOM!" Right now there is a large constituency in the US for the right to do whatever they please even if that means they will kill people by giving them a disease. I agree that what constitutes "harm" can be a tricky question for some issues. But I think we can agree that death qualifies. And that people who have never left the house unclothed having to wear another half-ounce of fabric in public is not.
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
That's a strawman. There's literally no-one on earth saying "I should be free to do as I want regardless of harm to others".
- jdgoesmarching 5y ago
  “I should be free to profit regardless of harm to others.” Better?
  - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    How is that better? Can you point to a single example where a person made such a claim? Just a single example. Go ahead, I'll wait.
    - yibg 5y ago
      Smoking in public? Fracking?
      - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
        > Smoking in public? Fracking? Are you saying that people who smoke openly state that they "should be free to profit regardless of harm to others"? Who said that? Where? I already asked you to point to a single example to support this claim that certain people think this way, and you couldn't do that. That's because there's literally no people who think like that.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one.
        baobabKoodaa 5y ago
        > The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one. You're the one pretending. There's a difference between these 2 things: 1) Taking actions (like smoking) that put others at some level of risk 2) Thinking that placing any level of harm onto others is justifiable as long as it's profitable You know very well there's a difference between those things, and yet you're pretending to not understand, while claiming that I'm "pretending not to understand". Or are you claiming that the average smoker cares so little about fellow humans that they'd be willing to push a person over a cliff ("any level of harm") in order to steal a half-empty beer can from them ("a profit")? Even if we assume a situation where they would be guaranteed to profit the half-empty beer can, I think it's safe to say almost no-one would think this level of harm would justify this level of profit. Yes, a smoker will put your life at risk by smoking near you. In related news, a driver will put your life at risk by driving near you. Doesn't mean that smokers or drivers will do literally any level of harm to humans in order to gain the tiniest of profit to themselves.
bckygldstn 5y ago
Are there any freedoms fought over in America that truly do no harm to others? Most discussions revolve around tradeoffs between harm and benefit. It seems like "as long as I don't harm others" means "I consider the small harm to others worthwhile for the benefits". And "regardless of harm to others" is using the same approach to come to a conclusion you disagree with. There's a lot of different ways to approach freedom, but I don't think "I don't care about others" and "I would never inconvenience others" is an accurate binary taxonomy.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > Are there any freedoms fought over in America that truly do no harm to others? One that comes to mind is gay marriage.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    For sure. And there are plenty more. Freedom to vote, freedom of religious belief, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom of thought. And then a bunch of freedom from. Freedom from slavery, from torture, from violence, from workplace exploitation, from domestic abuse.
Rexxar 5y ago
To make things more complex, some (small) harms are legitimate: If you open a new store you "harm" other store owners because they have less customers. When you build/repair your home there is some noises and dusts that can annoy other people but it's considered as a legitimate temporary problem. So the question is more where is the limit ?
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  There’s the conundrum for society, especially American society. When there are a million rules covering every minute operation of society, it feels a lot like living in a benevolent dictatorship. And that is very near the best outcome to hope for. But to not have those rules ultimately invites leaded gasoline 2.0 as technology progresses.
- jmcqk6 5y ago
  There isn't a global limit where you can draw a line and say "good things are on one side of the line and bad things are on the other side of the line" - not when it comes to things like this. It's too bad we like to act differently.
leoc 5y ago
Mind you, leaded gasoline was (AFAIK) approved everywhere else too, so this isn't just a story about US attitudes, specifically.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  It was all licensed from GM. You can’t reap the rewards of invention without the accountability that comes with it.

ithacaman 5y ago

The complexity is in proving what harm is being done and to whom.

wpietri 5y ago
Not generally. It mainly gets complex when the latter side wants to deny the harm. Then it's an ocean of motivated reasoning and endless arguments. We still have people arguing today that American slavery was good for the slaves.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- artificial 5y ago
  Excellent! Together we can ban fast food and sugar consumption for the greater good. Heart disease and diabetes from the scourge of empty calories finally eliminated. Hundreds of thousands saved each year from poor choices. Up next: sedentary lifestyle enablers :). It’s such a rabbit hole, who should know best?
  - Klinky 5y ago
    Are you saying it's not worthy of deeper inspection? I mean you kind of make an excellent point, the fast food and processed foods industries create a lot of waste selling an unhealthy product while paying unlivable wages. Their product increases healthcare costs while enabling a sedentary and stressful commuter lifestyle.
  - clusterfish 5y ago
    You can harm yourself with junk food and lack of exercise all you want, it doesn't affect others the same way pouring poison into our shared environment does. What you're doing is called whataboutism. Trying to muddy clear waters by bringing in muddy issues that aren't directly related, just for the sake of muddying.
    - artificial 5y ago
      All of these increase healthcare costs for everyone involved.
      - clusterfish 5y ago
        And you commuting increases congestion for everyone else. And you buying food makes food more expensive for everyone else. So what. You honestly can't distinguish between this and pouring lead into the atmosphere? This seems like some demagoguery fetish at best.
        kybernetyk 5y ago
        > And you buying food makes food more expensive for everyone else. Not true. You raising the demand of a good enables the producers to employ economies of scale thus making food less expensive for all.
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    In my country drinks with added sugar are taxed extra. So, for example, all the no sugar Coke or Pepsi variants are one price, but "classic" Coke or Pepsi with sugar in it are more expensive in the same quantities. A small nudge. And I already noticed it impacts bars and restaurants. If you're only going to bother stocking one cola beverage, why carry the one with sugar, which costs extra, when a customer asks for "A Coke" it's no harder to train staff to say "Pepsi Max OK?" than "Pepsi OK?". As to "Who should know best?" that's exactly what we're paying our politicians to be on top of.
  - jbboehr 5y ago
    > Up next: sedentary lifestyle enablers We can start with the internet! :)
  - wpietri 5y ago
    I am for personal freedom as long as it doesn't harm others. So if people want to make a batch of cookies, I think that's a reasonable personal choice. But it's not as clear to me that junk food companies have an absolute right to hook others on harmful, addictive products. Especially given that addiction, by undermining choice, necessarily harms a person's freedom.

ByteJockey 5y ago

There's also an entire spectrum of what constitutes "enough" harm to others to be limited (in addition to how direct the harm is).

wpietri 5y ago
Sure, but that comes later. All serious discussions about rights involve balancing the practical consequences of different rights. But the two concepts of freedom are still quite distinct.
- ByteJockey 5y ago
  I don't think it does come later. I don't think there is anyone who actually thinks of these things in terms of "regardless of the harm it causes others". Ok, this being the internet, we can probably find one, but I don't think there's any significant portion of the population. That position is basically a strawman. I do think, however, that there's people who draw the lines in very different places, or put different weight on different categories of harm. As an example, physical or financial harm are very easy to verify. There's not a lot of debate about if they qualify. Mental or emotional harm, on the other hand, is very hard to verify. This presents a significant problem for anyone who is worried about the system being abused. These groups will draw lines at very different places around any claim of harm within those categories. The end result is that you'll end up with one group being labeled as grifters who want to fleece the system, and the other as being completely insensitive to human suffering (sound familiar?) That's not even to get into the debate of what constitutes harm. For example, is not helping someone harming them? Is ceasing help once you've started helping someone harming them? These are too big of questions for the post, but I imagine you get the idea.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    I don't think they talk about it in those terms. But that is absolutely the behavior. A clear historical example is America's conflict around slavery. The primary southern justification for creating the Confederacy was freedom. That continued after the Civil War; see the UDC catechisms for example. "States' rights" they'll shout, meaning the right of the white people in power to treat black people like livestock and keeping that in that condition through systematic violent abuse. And you'll still find people today arguing the point. A modern example is public health. Everything from preventing toxic waste dumping to COVID mask mandates is met with cries of "FREEDOM!" Right now there is a large constituency in the US for the right to do whatever they please even if that means they will kill people by giving them a disease. I agree that what constitutes "harm" can be a tricky question for some issues. But I think we can agree that death qualifies. And that people who have never left the house unclothed having to wear another half-ounce of fabric in public is not.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago

That's a strawman. There's literally no-one on earth saying "I should be free to do as I want regardless of harm to others".

jdgoesmarching 5y ago
“I should be free to profit regardless of harm to others.” Better?
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  How is that better? Can you point to a single example where a person made such a claim? Just a single example. Go ahead, I'll wait.
  - yibg 5y ago
    Smoking in public? Fracking?
    - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
      > Smoking in public? Fracking? Are you saying that people who smoke openly state that they "should be free to profit regardless of harm to others"? Who said that? Where? I already asked you to point to a single example to support this claim that certain people think this way, and you couldn't do that. That's because there's literally no people who think like that.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one.
        baobabKoodaa 5y ago
        > The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one. You're the one pretending. There's a difference between these 2 things: 1) Taking actions (like smoking) that put others at some level of risk 2) Thinking that placing any level of harm onto others is justifiable as long as it's profitable You know very well there's a difference between those things, and yet you're pretending to not understand, while claiming that I'm "pretending not to understand". Or are you claiming that the average smoker cares so little about fellow humans that they'd be willing to push a person over a cliff ("any level of harm") in order to steal a half-empty beer can from them ("a profit")? Even if we assume a situation where they would be guaranteed to profit the half-empty beer can, I think it's safe to say almost no-one would think this level of harm would justify this level of profit. Yes, a smoker will put your life at risk by smoking near you. In related news, a driver will put your life at risk by driving near you. Doesn't mean that smokers or drivers will do literally any level of harm to humans in order to gain the tiniest of profit to themselves.

bckygldstn 5y ago

Are there any freedoms fought over in America that truly do no harm to others? Most discussions revolve around tradeoffs between harm and benefit. It seems like "as long as I don't harm others" means "I consider the small harm to others worthwhile for the benefits". And "regardless of harm to others" is using the same approach to come to a conclusion you disagree with. There's a lot of different ways to approach freedom, but I don't think "I don't care about others" and "I would never inconvenience others" is an accurate binary taxonomy.

shkkmo 5y ago
> Are there any freedoms fought over in America that truly do no harm to others? One that comes to mind is gay marriage.
- wpietri 5y ago
  For sure. And there are plenty more. Freedom to vote, freedom of religious belief, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom of thought. And then a bunch of freedom from. Freedom from slavery, from torture, from violence, from workplace exploitation, from domestic abuse.

Rexxar 5y ago

To make things more complex, some (small) harms are legitimate: If you open a new store you "harm" other store owners because they have less customers. When you build/repair your home there is some noises and dusts that can annoy other people but it's considered as a legitimate temporary problem. So the question is more where is the limit ?

MichaelZuo 5y ago
There’s the conundrum for society, especially American society. When there are a million rules covering every minute operation of society, it feels a lot like living in a benevolent dictatorship. And that is very near the best outcome to hope for. But to not have those rules ultimately invites leaded gasoline 2.0 as technology progresses.
jmcqk6 5y ago
There isn't a global limit where you can draw a line and say "good things are on one side of the line and bad things are on the other side of the line" - not when it comes to things like this. It's too bad we like to act differently.

leoc 5y ago

Mind you, leaded gasoline was (AFAIK) approved everywhere else too, so this isn't just a story about US attitudes, specifically.

Spooky23 5y ago
It was all licensed from GM. You can’t reap the rewards of invention without the accountability that comes with it.