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Comment by samuelizdat | Hacker News Reader

Freedom is the degree to which you are able to navigate the power process. The power process is the ability to identify and change something within a system. For example, if there is a vending machine with coke and you want pepsi. Is there a process that you can use to make that happen? If there is, then you have freedom. This of course extends to bigger things than soda. "Sovereign is he who makes the exception"

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This covers positive freedoms, but what about negative freedoms? Contrast these two people:

- The first person lives in a prosperous and authoritarian state. They have high positive freedoms (access to resources, healthcare, etc, thanks to the bounties of their society) but low negative freedoms (no freedom of speech/thought, low freedom of movement, surveillance, etc).

- The second person is a survivalist nomad. They have access to very little resources, but otherwise have no external authority that is constraining them in a negative sense.

So I think there's orthogonal variables here, and each of them could rightly be considered to be "freedom" as it's often defined by different people.

To what extent are those positive freedoms associated with the government vs the free market?

My opinion is that most wealth is attributable to the market, but the government is necessary to the extent that it sets and enforces the rules, resolves disputes, and provides defence. The government does help build wealth more directly (e.g funding science research) but it is not the primary driver of it.

> For example, if there is a vending machine with coke and you want pepsi.

Sometimes, I think that western people are so constrained by some limits in their heads. Like "freedom" is a freedom to choose Pepsi or Cola. I want neither. Or I want tea. Or the drink that is traditional for my culture.

But most of the time I communicate with americans, for example, I becoming convinced that freedom for them is more like: "Everybody drinks Cola and can freely visit Disneyland".

They're so immersed in their heads with the notion that they're in some kind God-chosen people, that they refuse the right of any nation to live by their own rules.

It's hard to convey this thought to me, especially in English. It would be too hard for americans to get it (if someone thinks our american junk food, junk Cola and junk democracy isn't good, they must be madmen and/or China/Russia/Iran spies!).

One tiny example of this. Several years ago while I was still reading reddit, in /r/Cambodia there was a post from american that said something like:

"I came to Cambodia several days ago and I'm impressed that you have neutral attitude to gays. But I don't understand why you don't promote LGBT everywhere. You should have LGBT parades and LGBT signs everywhere!"

I don't remember exact words, nor am I willing to find this exact post on the overloaded site of reddit. It was a shock to me that he arrived just a few days ago and already suggests that people that belong to a culture that is several times older than his, that they should live by his own weird rules.

And it's only one tiny example. Everyone should have McDonalds, even on Mt. Everest. Everyone must drink Coca Cola even in the remote Chinese village. Everyone must have not have their own opinion, but conform to the opinion of the "God-chosen nation".

These Americans you've encountered seem especially sensitive to marketing. I haven't encountered anyone in the USA who wasn't skeptical of these kinds of promotions of consumer culture. My own definition of freedom would be the traditional Buddhist idea: freedom from greed, freedom of hatred, and freedom from delusion. All other freedoms are only valuable if they assist in those primary freedoms.

The things you mention people valuing are very counterproductive, and I think that most people in the USA have become aware of that, even if we live in a culture that's full of advertising. I think that in every country, there's an accepted level of surface-level deception that's tolerated publicly but privately criticized. Of course, these days people often publish their private criticisms, so the lines between public and private behavior are blurring.

Lee Kwan Yew gave an excellent speech on this topic, applied to how journalism works in the US (where it acts as a distributed force for accountability) vs Singapore, where he talks about how Singapore has found other ways to achieve accountability and how outsourcing accountability to the press comes with its own trade offs (the press has its own interests; they are usually for-profit players). He made a very compelling point that countries will arrive at different systems very naturally as a result of different initial starting conditions, that all systems have trade offs, etc. Then in the end the journalists proceed to ask him the most thoughtless questions imaginable which I recall reduced to “but how will you be free without a free press”.

It’s on YouTube somewhere.

> Like "freedom" is a freedom to choose Pepsi or Cola. I want neither. Or I want tea. Or the drink that is traditional for my culture.

This is a needless point - there is nothing in OP that would extend to whatever choice you have. You aren't supposed to fixate on the particulars of an example or metaphor, but abstract from it the point being made - which is the suitable abstract "change in a system" - any system, any change.

It feels like you taken this particular choice of example to dunk on Americans in particular.

> that they should live by his own weird rules

What "weird" rules? Parades and signs in particular, or the promotion of LGBT?

If the latter, why is this weird? It's hardly the same as your strawman-examples of promoting junk food and sugary beverages.

> Everyone should have McDonalds, even on Mt. Everest. Everyone must drink Coca Cola

says who?

I think that's a reasonable definition of freedom ... and not at all what Snowden is talking about. That underscores why it's so hard to discuss. The word itself is a Rorschach test.

I dunno, you're talking about what you can and cannot draw into your sphere of influence. You have, in your analogy, the option to refuse anyway. Probably cheaper to not use a vending machine anyway.

This equates power to freedom, where the degree of freedom correlates to the degree of power, and only the truly powerful are free. If that is your thesis, then you are in agreement with Snowden.

More power draws more responsibility so not necessarily. Yes, you have more freedoms as in choosing what to buy but material freedoms are only one branch in the many freedoms one can have. So I can agree with OP in that ability of one to manipulate power for freedom is a good definition of one's true potential for it. One can also give away certain powers or responsibilities for more freedom.

Interesting, but it should probaby be divided by the desire / expectations to navigate the power process too. Otherwise, it gets too far away from the common usage of the word.

And if there is no system?

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