It varies a lot by where you live and how much premium you personally care about following the letter of the law. I think HN tends to assume nobody has any fre

It varies a lot by where you live and how much premium you personally care about following the letter of the law. I think HN tends to assume nobody has any freedom because most of HN lives in "nice" suburbs or "nice" parts of cities where law enforcement is being used in a backhand manner to enforce conformity and also comes from a life where obeying basically all the laws basically all the time is considered default behavior. The lower classes are far, far free-er on a day to day basis than HN is. Nobody cares if you smoke weed on your porch in any neighborhood where a Ford E350 is a more common driveway adornment than a Mercedes E350. I walk my dog beer in hand two days a week. Kids ride dirt bikes on the street. The section 8 people play loud music in languages I don't speak. Nobody gets hassled by the powers that be, as far as I can tell. And this isn't some rural area in a small government red state, it's working class neighborhood in a blue state.