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102 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 6h \ on: When is freedom bad? AskSN
Other than @optimism's point, I don't think it's the freedoms that are bad. It's bad people who do bad things.
Having the freedom to wear what you want (on private property where the owner...) is good, because the alternative is a dress code police invading private property and assaulting people for their clothing choices.
I don't think it's the freedoms that are bad. It's bad people who do bad things.
But to some extent, they can't be separated. Guns don't kill people, people do is reasonable, and yet when trying to figure out how to stop people from killing each other, people seem likely to vote for controlling guns.
If my neighbor wanted to walk around their yard naked all the time, I'd certainly have a problem with that.
Here's another example: someone does a reckless thing like trying to chop down a large tree on their property by themselves. Let's assume they don't know what they are doing, but they don't want to hire a arborist. The tree might fall on my house. If there's no law against chopping down large trees, I have to wait until they accidentally smash my house to have any recourse. However, in the case of the existence of a law that says no one can chop down trees over a certain size unless they hire an arborist, I could potentially stop them before they smash my house.
On the other hand, the tree-felling might go perfectly well, despite their amateurism, and I don't like laws that impinge upon freedom because of a lowest-common denominator assumption (just because most people can't safely fell a large tree, doesn't mean I can't).
These are the cases I'm curious about. Not selling tobacco products to minors is another. Ideally, parents would be responsible for the behavior of their children. Why should merchants be tasked with enforcing good health?
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If my neighbor wanted to walk around their yard naked all the time, I'd certainly have a problem with that.
The reason people don't like freedom is because they don't want to pay the necessary price to own all the stuff they want to exert their control over.
If you don't want to see your neighbor naked, buy enough land so that you can't, build privacy fencing, make a deal with your neighbor, move, or just accept that you don't always get your way.
someone does a reckless thing like trying to chop down a large tree
Generally, libertarians do consider it appropriate to be able to stop credible threats to one's person or property. So, I'd put this into "exercise aggression" no-no category.
Not selling tobacco products to minors
I'm not sure exactly and I've never seen anyone tackle it philosophically, but it probably goes in that aggression category too. (How convenient is that?)
Minors are not considered competent to consent to contractual arrangements, so contrary to most libertarians preferences, this would have to be considered something like theft from the minor.
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