More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
May 2 - June 15, 2025
When libertarians argue that markets defend freedom, they really mean that humans have a duty to defend markets. In a “free market,” freedom is defined as the right of things to move around unhindered by humans, who are defined as barriers, or as entities with duties toward things. Human beings must be denied the freedom to change how capitalism works, and that denial must be labeled “freedom.” Thus in a “free market,” politics begins from Orwellian oppression.
Markets cannot be free. Only people can be free. Freedom is a human value. It can be recognized and pursued only by humans. There is no substitute for freedom, no way to delegate it. The moment we delegate freedom, to the market or anything else, it becomes submission. When people surrender the word free, freedom vanishes from their lives.
Competition can be a very good thing, as a practice within rules girded by norms. Yet even Adam Smith, the most famous of all thinkers about the market, understood that competition functions on the basis of virtues that it does not itself generate. Freedom comes from us, not from markets; and without freedom that comes from us, markets will work poorly.
Markets should work for us, not the other way around. Properly managed, they can indeed create some of the conditions that allow people to be free. They work depending on the rules. These rules should be informed by values, not by spurious notions of purity. When the rules are right, many of our cares are lifted.
Our political divisions draw us away from freedom as principle, making it harder to get to freedom as practice. They have been hardened by the collapse of local news, the rise of oligarchy, and the reach of social media. The algorithms push us toward mindless controversy and away from mindful discussion of priorities.
Americans on the Left make a different mistake: they fail to acknowledge freedom as the value of values, preferring equality.
Leszek Kołakowski proposed that we should all become conservative-liberal-socialists.20 I see his lopsided smile in my mind’s eye as I recall his provocative formulation, but the idea is a serious one. To regard freedom as central is liberal. The conviction that freedom is about virtues is conservative. The belief that structures gird values is socialist. These three approaches to politics are perfectly justified and complementary. They do not succeed in isolation. If they work at all, they work together.
the ancient cases, the practice of “rule by the people” (democracy) or the definition of government as a “common matter” or “the people’s issue” (republic) meant assemblies of citizens. In the American system, voting (democracy) is meant to create a government that is representative of the common good (a republic).
A touchscreen is no prison wall, but we are surrounded and surveilled and nudged and controlled. We have consented to a grim behavioralist grid of stimulation. We are being predictified.
A charter for fair transparency would be based on three principles: (1) things should be transparent to us; (2) we should not be transparent to things; and (3) we should not be oppressed by data we cannot see. From the principle that things should be transparent to us flow five good practices. (1) Social media must ask whether users want investigative reporting in their feeds and open an appropriate algorithmic pathway. (2) Social media must ask whether users want opinions that challenge their own and open an appropriate algorithmic pathway. (3) Social media must issue corrections to users who
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Declaring for freedom means declaring for freedom of speech. Declaring for freedom of speech means taking the side of the facts. Taking the side of the facts means supporting the institutions that give them a home. A declaration is balanced by an accommodation. A free speaker is taking a risk. Those who take risks need solidarity, in the form of protection of the freedom of speech. A country of free speakers requires the institutions that regulate these risks and thereby make factuality possible.
Free speakers are necessary, but so are receptive listeners. We need the calm capacity to pay attention. People who live within big lies do so because they feel isolated and powerless. They do not believe that they make a difference in the world, so they accept that a conspiracy governs everything. In a vicious cycle, unfreedom advances lies, which makes people still less free. We need a virtuous cycle of freedom and courage.
Though freedom is a quality of a single life, it is the work of generations.
Only an individual can be free, but only a community can make individuals. And yet for a community to do this, generation upon generation, its practices must be examined in light of the demands of freedom.
Freedom also rings like a tree, transforming the unliving into the living, grading and growing, aging and adapting, recording and renewing.
We are free to do what we can do, when we know why we are doing it.
What we cannot change we can understand and turn to our purposes.
an idea about freedom. Our problem is not the world; our problem is us. And so we can solve it. We can be free, if we see what freedom is. We can see creativity in the past, possibility in the present, liberty in the future. We can recognize one another, create a good government, and make our own luck.
