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Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

"Government regulation of personal freedom is a fine gauge for overall freedom."

Some of us disagree.

"How would you have done it? What issues would you have selected?"

The most important things I would look at are education outcomes of the first and second quartile (of household income) and the diversity of employment available.

I would also look at pollution levels, highway fatality rates, incarceration rates, certain crime rates, certain disease rates, services received for those dreaded taxes, entertainment and cuisine options, we could go on...

Big towns don't become cities and cities don't become big cities and big cities don't turn into metropolii through coercion. They're big because people run away from South Dakota and never go back. Freely.

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You seem to be listing a variety of quality of life issues, which I don't think is quite the same as 'freedom'. I'm not suggesting that it wouldn't be worthwhile to investigate those issues, just that it seems to be a different focus than the linked report. Your focus would seem to compliment rather than refute the goals of that report.

I think you're totally missing my point. Not only the government encroaches on your freedom. You can't just look at the highway regulations as encroaching on your freedom without also looking at the guy slamming into your car* as encroaching on your freedom too.

* which may be the direct result of a lack of regulation. See: Montana.

The corporation polluting your water source is encroaching on my freedoms. People that break into your house encroach on your freedoms. People that breath smoke in public areas that give other people cancer encroach on our freedom.

More saliently for me freedom involves fundamental choices. People want to say what they want, read what they want, go where they want, do what they want, eat what they want. Kids that are undereducated have their choices (read: freedom) massively curtailed. People that live in an area where everyone is a farmer have their choices (read: freedom) massively curtailed. If I want to get thai food for dinner and there's no thai restaurant for 300 miles my choices have been curtailed. If the local library doesn't stock Harry Potter my freedoms have been limited. If the internet is too crappy for netflix my freedom is limited compared to elsewhere.

I don't think that equating "choice" with "freedom" is all that helpful in understanding choices or freedom.

They aren't the same thing and insisting that they are just makes it hard to talk about either concept.

Generally when people talk about 'freedom' in a political sense (which is what the original report was about) they are talking about the way government limits actions and not about how your particular circumstances are different than someone else's.

I don't see a freedom listed anywhere in these comments that doesn't come down to the ability to make a choice. In fact, I think a pretty good working definition for "a freedom" is "the ability to make a choice".

Furthermore, the government plays a big role in _increasing_ the number of choices available to people in the first and second income quartiles, as Steko suggested. Looking only at limitations that government places on freedom reveals your bias.

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