Consumer freedom is a real kind of freedom that goes hand in hand with the freedom to choose more meaningful lifestyle and career choices. The reason those choices are meaningful is precisely because the stakes are higher than what you buy at the store. If you go back two hundred years, the ability for a family to offer their children such an abundance of food with so many options was extremely meaningful because poor people really did have to struggle to put food on the table and almost nobody had access to so many different kinds of food. Now we take it for granted because it’s easy and anybody can do it, not because we stopped enjoying it.

When people decry that nobody else will pay them to be an artist or to follow their passions they’re really decrying that they’re unwilling or unable to follow their passions without either giving up something or without offering enough back to other people to justify their use of their resources. Reality doesn’t give a shit whether or not you’re free, neither does the guy that built your house or grew your food, or the nurse that wipes your ass when you get sick.

You either have to be the change you want to see or stop whining that other people won’t adjust their lives to conform to the way you want them to be, without subjecting yourself to any discomfort beyond jeering from the sidelines. It’s really easy to imagine a world in which you’re free to benefit from everybody else’s lack thereof, children do it all the time.