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I’m not sure this is totally true in every case. Usually negative freedoms prevent others from interacting with you in some way, while positive freedoms force s

by tines 2y ago

I’m not sure this is totally true in every case. Usually negative freedoms prevent others from interacting with you in some way, while positive freedoms force someone to interact with you in a certain way. For example, trying to phrase “the freedom to eat as many hot dogs as I want for free” can’t really be expressed as a negative right “the freedom from people not giving me unlimited hot dogs” because “giving me a hot dog” is a forced interaction, not a forced non-interaction. It’s not as simple as “negative rights include the word ‘not’” so you just add “not not” and call everything a negative right.

harrall 2y ago
Freedom from someone stopping me from owning cannabis plants (“negative”) vs. freedom to sow and plant cannabis seeds (“positive”). The distinction between negative vs. positive freedom sounds like word play to me.
philipov 2y ago
It doesn't have to work in every case, and it doesn't have to be simple, but nevertheless there remains significant disagreement and ambiguity that gets to be decided by the person in power. In the end, it's a false dichotomy. Consider the freedom from being infected by disease. Does your positive freedom to use a public space trump my negative freedom from you interfering with me by bringing a contagious disease to it?
card_zero 2y ago
The freedom from having to pay for hot dogs, duh. But I agree that some things are obstacles, and others are creative acts. But so what, I'm not going to let you or somebody called Snyder tell me that one of these is virtuous and the other is mean-spirited, because that's bullshit, and the two sides of it go together, and he's only trying to prise them apart because he's more comfortable in a world where people declare their intentions in advance so that they can be vetted for constructiveness by some overbearing authority. And you can definitely virtuously overcome obstacles, or be creatively evil.
- philipov 2y ago
  One clarification to make - While I haven't read On Freedom, Tim Snyder is a scholar of Ukrainian (and slavic) history who is a major opponent of the far right's agenda. One of his big ideas is the different approach to time promoted by authoritarian vs liberal regimes, to try to inoculate people against the talking points of the authoritarian view. I might disagree with the positive/negative freedom argument on a more fundamental level than he does, but he's not engaging with it because he's trying to promote it. His lecture series on the Making of Modern Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Eh, I haven't visited Youtube in ten years, don't want to break a winning streak. What's that about time? Time, as a concept, you mean?
    - philipov 2y ago
      It's about our attitudes towards time, and the stories we tell about our relationship to it. For example, authoritarian regimes tend to eliminate the future from discourse - the future is not possible because we are beset by enemies and danger surrounds us. All we can do is aspire to restore some mythical past. By contrast, the one idea that ties together disparate definitions of Progressivism across history is the belief that a better future is possible. Snyder has a framework for discussing how ideologies relate to time in these sorts of ways.
      - card_zero 2y ago
        Well yes, kind of, and in conclusion no. Certainly the mythical golden past is a component of populism, and can be seen in Mussolini wanting continuity with Romans, and Putin weaving his own myths about Russian history - I forget the details, but it entails more territory for Russia because historicist destiny - and "Little Englanders" (the look-backward, xenophobic kind, not the original ones who were just isolationists). On the other hand, Musk kind of likes looking toward the future. So this thing about a mythologized past is at most a tendancy, and a way of stirring up a sense of injustice, while your non-authoritarians don't have the monopoly on looking to the future. In fact I don't see that these are even polar opposites, I think authoritarian progressives would make sense as a concept, and we may be seeing a bunch of them rise to power.

by tines 2y ago

harrall 2y ago

Freedom from someone stopping me from owning cannabis plants (“negative”) vs. freedom to sow and plant cannabis seeds (“positive”). The distinction between negative vs. positive freedom sounds like word play to me.

philipov 2y ago

It doesn't have to work in every case, and it doesn't have to be simple, but nevertheless there remains significant disagreement and ambiguity that gets to be decided by the person in power. In the end, it's a false dichotomy. Consider the freedom from being infected by disease. Does your positive freedom to use a public space trump my negative freedom from you interfering with me by bringing a contagious disease to it?

card_zero 2y ago

The freedom from having to pay for hot dogs, duh. But I agree that some things are obstacles, and others are creative acts. But so what, I'm not going to let you or somebody called Snyder tell me that one of these is virtuous and the other is mean-spirited, because that's bullshit, and the two sides of it go together, and he's only trying to prise them apart because he's more comfortable in a world where people declare their intentions in advance so that they can be vetted for constructiveness by some overbearing authority. And you can definitely virtuously overcome obstacles, or be creatively evil.

philipov 2y ago
One clarification to make - While I haven't read On Freedom, Tim Snyder is a scholar of Ukrainian (and slavic) history who is a major opponent of the far right's agenda. One of his big ideas is the different approach to time promoted by authoritarian vs liberal regimes, to try to inoculate people against the talking points of the authoritarian view. I might disagree with the positive/negative freedom argument on a more fundamental level than he does, but he's not engaging with it because he's trying to promote it. His lecture series on the Making of Modern Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...
- card_zero 2y ago
  Eh, I haven't visited Youtube in ten years, don't want to break a winning streak. What's that about time? Time, as a concept, you mean?
  - philipov 2y ago
    It's about our attitudes towards time, and the stories we tell about our relationship to it. For example, authoritarian regimes tend to eliminate the future from discourse - the future is not possible because we are beset by enemies and danger surrounds us. All we can do is aspire to restore some mythical past. By contrast, the one idea that ties together disparate definitions of Progressivism across history is the belief that a better future is possible. Snyder has a framework for discussing how ideologies relate to time in these sorts of ways.
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Well yes, kind of, and in conclusion no. Certainly the mythical golden past is a component of populism, and can be seen in Mussolini wanting continuity with Romans, and Putin weaving his own myths about Russian history - I forget the details, but it entails more territory for Russia because historicist destiny - and "Little Englanders" (the look-backward, xenophobic kind, not the original ones who were just isolationists). On the other hand, Musk kind of likes looking toward the future. So this thing about a mythologized past is at most a tendancy, and a way of stirring up a sense of injustice, while your non-authoritarians don't have the monopoly on looking to the future. In fact I don't see that these are even polar opposites, I think authoritarian progressives would make sense as a concept, and we may be seeing a bunch of them rise to power.