What Is Your Definition of Liberty?

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We are all NPCs to one degree or another. We all outsource our thinking, especially when it comes to defining words.

Being a partial NPC, in turn, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Life is very complicated, and we are all awash in ignorance. Relying on experts is a time-honored way of hacking that ignorance. It gives us the ability to adroitly navigate a world that is far too complex for our brains to understand.

But what if the experts are corrupt? What if the experts don’t use words to reflect objective reality? What if they use words to manipulate, to push an agenda?

When the experts are honest stewards of the language, being an NPC isn’t a big problem. When the experts are corrupt, however, being an NPC is a big problem.

The position taken here is that our experts, broadly speaking, are abjectly corrupt and can’t be trusted. They use words not to sow competence and self-reliance but to sow ineptitude and dependency. And if you think I’m being overwrought, consider the most recent example of this foul manipulation. These dudes are all “women” as far as our best and brightest are concerned:

Now a question. Which population do you suppose will be less adept at managing their lives without the help of the government: a population where nearly everyone believes that sex is determined by biology? or a population where nearly everyone believes that sex is determined by feelings? If you said the latter, go straight to the head of the class. You can’t make gender-affirming surgery cheap (for the patient) and legally crush gender heretics without the tender mercies of government.

So what to do?

Well, the short answer is that we have to be less NPC. We can’t rely on experts as much as past generations did. We have to develop the habit of defining words for ourselves.

To that end, I will occasionally offer a blog post that is dedicated to the definition of a word. This is one such blog post, and the word I like to define today is liberty.

The Groovy Definition of Liberty

Many if not most Americans, experts included, equate freedom with liberty. This is a mistake.

Freedom is the absence of all external constraints. You can think and do whatever you want, whenever you want.

Liberty, on the other hand, is the absence of all unjust external constraints. You can think and do whatever you want, whenever you want, providing your actions never venture into two very specific—and very justified—no-go zones.

The first such no-go zone has to do with the sanctity of property. Pursuing happiness by learning to ballroom dance, attending a hockey game, or starting a plumbing business are all perfectly noble uses of one’s freedom. Pursuing happiness by stealing someone’s car or punching someone’s face, however, isn’t. No one should be free to vandalize, steal, or destroy someone else’s property—especially someone else’s corpus property. External constraints that deter or punish assaults on property are just limits on one’s freedom.

The second such no-go zone has to do with the necessity of government. Without government (the ultimate provider of external constraints), life would be needlessly harsh for all—but especially harsh for the weak and poor. We need government to 1) protect everyone’s property equally and 2) make sure universally needed goods and services that can’t be produced via voluntary cooperation are in fact produced (think roads, water treatment plants, a court system, a common currency, a rudimentary safety net, etc.). No one should thus be free to spend every dollar he or she makes as he or she sees fit. External constraints that force one to contribute to the upkeep of legitimate government are also just limits on one’s freedom.

When external constraints no longer have to do with protecting property or funding the refereeing and general welfare functions of government, however, we invariably start to restrict freedom unjustly. We go from imposing common decency and common sense on the governed to imposing common servitude on a portion of the governed—the politically strong start using the government to legally plunder the property of the politically weak.

The ways in which the politically strong use the government to legally plunder the property of the politically weak are far too numerous to catalog here. They range from the relatively benign plunder of forcing the great unwashed to pay for some billionaire’s football stadium all the way up to the horrific plunder of shipping people off to slave labor camps because they have the wrong skin color or practice the wrong religion. The point here is that unjust external constraints create victims. Just external constraints don’t. You aren’t harmed when you are forced to pay for a road you need and use. You are harmed when you are forced to pay for a football stadium you don’t need and don’t use.

Quick aside: For a more detailed look at how the politically strong use the government to legally plunder the property of the politically weak, I urge you to read my post on The Groovy Curve and pay particular attention to the section that explores the right half of the curve.

Okay, the preliminaries are done. I gave my spiel on how liberty isn’t just different from freedom, it’s preferable to freedom, and if you want to secure liberty, you have to be able to distinguish just external constraints from unjust external constraints. Here, then, at long last, is my definition of liberty:

Liberty is the absence of all unjust external constraints. You can think and do whatever you want, whenever you want, providing you respect the property of others and surrender a small amount of your income to the government so it can impartially protect everyone’s property and provide those small number of goods and services that are universally needed and coercion dependent.

Final Thoughts

I completely understand why we are all NPCs to one degree or another. Defining words is hard. My definition of liberty is sound, but it’s hardly free of ambiguity. What, for instance, is a “small amount of your income”? Ten percent? Fifteen percent? Forty percent? And how exactly is a good or service “coercion dependent”? Does that mean it wouldn’t exist at all unless the government stepped in? Or does it mean it wouldn’t exist in sufficient quantities unless the government stepped in? See what I mean when I say defining words is hard? One definition begets another definition which begets even more definitions. It’s crazy.

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Is my definition of liberty valid? Or do you have an even better definition of liberty? Let me know what you think when you get a chance. Peace.