Comment by tfourb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tfourb | Hacker News Reader

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You misunderstand my point. The juxtaposition is not between "individual" and "collective" liberties. That's a bit of a separate argument. It is about "your" liberty vs. "mine". You might feel that a ban on guns might limit your liberty. But giving you a gun limits my liberty, because I would feel threatened and unable to express myself fully in a society where I would have to assume that random people on the street carry guns.

It's about your individual liberties limiting someone else's personal liberties. Nothing collective about it. But in public discourse, it is always the liberties that powerful people benefit from disproportionately that are framed as "good". I.e. when there was a concerted push by black liberationists in the US to form armed militias, gun laws were tightened. Now that gun ownership is interpreted mostly as a right valued by disgruntled white people, it is expanded.

Same with equating of control over money and liberty. We live in an age of almost unparalleled wealth accumulation in the hands of the few. I'm sitting on my local council and I can tell you that if we have to increase the fees for school lunches due to low tax revenues, there is nothing "collective" about the ramifications. It will directly and forcefully impact a relatively small number of individual children, whose parents will have significantly (for them) less disposable income as a result, severely limiting their liberty to afford their children a decent start to life.

It is beside the point if I think that someone can or can't make good decisions about the use of their own money. Even if I assume that they'd make much more profit if they invest it on their own, I'd still argue that a healthy society should be based around the principle of solidarity and a wholistic view of individual freedoms, and not just advance the advantage of a select few that have the means to push for their favorite liberties to be prioritized over everyone else's.

> But giving you a gun limits my liberty, because I would feel threatened and unable to express myself fully in a society where I would have to assume that random people on the street carry guns.

Yes, I understand the point. There are others who feel threatened and affected by people of different sexual orientations, even if those people never interact with them different than everyone else. You'll protest, no doubt, their feelings aren't legitimate - those are phobias while yours are rational feelings!

In pretty much every EU member state, you'll have to assume that random people on the street carry guns. Not everyone, not most, but some, none visibly. Would it make you more or less comfortable if the same number of people openly carried the same guns?

"Wholistic view of individual freedoms" sounds to me like a quote from the movie Thank You For Smoking. My memory is terrible, but it goes something like this (context, old movies are being edited to remove cigarettes in order to not promote smoking): "Aren't you altering history" - "No, we are improving history".

I find it much better to just flat out say "the collective over the individual", and not dance around it with fancy terms. Redefining liberties as privileges instead of rights isn't the way to go. Arguing for the merit of something is much better than trying to sneak it in by bending language and concepts.

I'm not defining liberties as privileges, I'm merely pointing out that your right to liberty ends where it infringes on somebody else's (and vice versa). Reasonable people can debate where exactly that line can be drawn and whose interests outweigh the other's (and this is what constitutional courts do on a daily basis). What I'm cautioning against is the narrative that just because it can be defined as "liberty" it must therefore be sacrosanct. This is doubly true for anything related to money, where most invocations of liberty on closer inspection just boil down to "don't tax the millionaires and billionaires".

"In pretty much every EU member state, you'll have to assume that random people on the street carry guns. Not everyone, not most, but some, none visibly. Would it make you more or less comfortable if the same number of people openly carried the same guns?"

You could search 10,000 random people going about their daily business in a major German city and with the exception of members of police and security services, you won't find a firearm. While a private gun ownership permit is reasonably simple to obtain, public open/concealed carry permits are not. And while criminal use of guns certainly exists, actual gun violence is so rare outside interactions between criminals that for any interaction with other members of society in public, the risk of a gun coming into it in any way is so small that in practice it can be ignored.

I've also travelled extensively in the EU and lived in several countries and I haven't seen a single firearm in public with the exception of members of police and security services (though I admit that armed private security services are not uncommon in some countries). Even if concealed carry were the main practice for private gun owners, I doubt that I wouldn't have spotted a gun at some point if it were at all common in a country (I've been in countries outside the EU where gun ownership is much more widespread and where I did see both open and concealed carry).

> I'm not defining liberties as privileges, I'm merely pointing out that your right to liberty ends where it infringes on somebody else's (and vice versa).

Yet you included privileges (like getting tax-funded things) in those liberties that would be affected. That's muddying the waters. I'm sure you're well aware of the escalating utilitarian thought experiments that use the same type of argument ("but many people would benefit from doing X to Y").

On guns: You're moving the goal post from guns being carried to guns being used. Statistically, you don't need to worry about guns being drawn in normal interactions in the USA - it happens, it happens a lot more often than in Europe, but it's not like there's a daily shoot-out at the grocery store unless you live in some areas with a lot of gang activity.

But risk-perception is subjective. Where I spend a month in the US doing average things and expect to not see a single gun being raised, you might expect to see them on two occasions. Is expectation of risk a liberty that's infringed? I don't think so.

There's plenty of good arguments for strong firearm regulation, but it's not a freedom vs freedom thing. There's a right not to be harmed, but it doesn't extend to potential abstract harm.

"Yet you included privileges (like getting tax-funded things) in those liberties that would be affected. That's muddying the waters."

Differentiating between abstract liberties and the economic means to actually make use of them makes no sense to me. If a government guarantees the liberty to choose your profession freely, but the overwhelming majority of the population does not have the economic means to access the education required to become i.e. a doctor, does that liberty have any practical impact whatsoever?

In that sense, a free public education (including university), public health care, public pensions and even social security are not "privileges". They are fundamental rights that form the basis for the expression of liberty. And this is exactly how i.e. the German constitution frames these things. Social security payments explicitly are not a "privilege", they are a right and no government can cut social security payments below a certain threshold (though that threshold will make for a very uncomfortable living).

"I'm sure you're well aware of the escalating utilitarian thought experiments that use the same type of argument ("but many people would benefit from doing X to Y")."

Which is why it is important to build in protections. Modern/progressive democracy is not a "dictatorship of the majority", it is a rights-based system in which certain lines can not be crossed, no matter how benefitial it would be in a utilitarian sense.

"There's a right not to be harmed, but it doesn't extend to potential abstract harm."

It totally does. Again an example from Germany: We have a general prohibition on the surveillance of public spaces by public or private actors. Governmental authorities can supersede this in certain cases, but for private actors, you can't even point a fake camera at a public space, except when everyone using that space explicitly to that (which is impossible i.e. on public roads and already very hard in the common areas of apartment buildings).

The reasoning behind this is that no one should be exposed to even the abstract feeling of being surveilled in public, as this would alter their freedom to express themselves and limit control over their private information. Even employers need to limit incidental surveillance of their employees wherever possible.

"Is expectation of risk a liberty that's infringed? I don't think so."

I completely disagree. Again, it's a matter of degrees and your rights need to be weighed against mine. Often, your concrete expression of your liberties will outweigh the abstract infringement of mine. But sometimes they won't.

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