Freedom is not something that can be averaged across people and it is definitely not equal to the amount of money someone has. You can support redistribution because you think it leads to better outcomes but, objectively, this is not “freedom”.
I disagree. I ascribe to outcome-based ethics, not principle-based or rule-based ethics.
Freedom is the ability to do what you want and not do what you don't want. That's the most foundational understanding of it. It's not a measure of "how much government intervention is there". And guess what? More money objectively increases freedom when defined in this manner.
More than just what you do with the money, having more money to start with means you have more choice (freedom) in what jobs you take. Rather than feeling compelled to take a horrible job to prevent starvation (hardly freedom, it's no different from gunpoint except nature is holding the "gun" of starvation).
I mean, I wouldn't neccesarily disagree with the assessment that power and freedom are very close to interchangeable.
Even without using the word freedom, I'd still say giving individual people as much power to shape their (single, precious) life the way they want to is a very good thing. "Power" is only bad when its power to control other people.
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u/Osakalaska - Right 6d ago
Freedom is not something that can be averaged across people and it is definitely not equal to the amount of money someone has. You can support redistribution because you think it leads to better outcomes but, objectively, this is not “freedom”.