How Free Should People Be?

Human beings are unique individuals with separate, unique intellects and minds, and separate, individual perceptions of reality, interests, aims, desires, goals and purposes. 

It seems obvious then, that the greater the proportion of people in the human population who have freedom of thought and action, and the greater the scope of those freedoms, the larger the likelihood that some, perhaps many, individuals will discover or create new and better ways of thinking and acting, and develop wider knowledge, from which all individuals stand to benefit. That is called progress.

It should also then be obvious that the less freedom individuals have, the less scope of freedom to think and act, and the fewer the individuals who are able to act freely, the less opportunity there can be for creating improvement.

 It should therefore follow that if one wishes the human condition to get better, then normal, mentally competent, adult individuals should have maximum scope and freedom to act as they wish, each in their own way, and to communicate freely.

The obvious limitation: that their actions should not  injure or prey upon other individuals or encroach on their similar freedoms, for otherwise everyone’s actions and freedom would be seriously limited or contravened by the need to protect themselves or even to survive attacks or encroachment by others.

The historical record and current experience support this idea of maximizing freedom: We find that in general, the freer the society, the more successful it tends to be.The less free, the less successful. In the West, we look back on the great burst of progress created by ancient Athens, for example, or the flowering of intellect and culture of the Renaissance. They pale in comparison to the greatest flowering of human development of all time: It started with the Reformation, which introduced the concept of freedom of religious thought, combined with the development of systematic scientific inquiry, the development of the printing press and the drive to spread literacy, throughout the population, and continued with the consequent development of first religious and then political and economic freedom, all providing the foundation for an enormous leap in human progress and quality of human life that continues to this day. 

In general, the correlation today between relative freedom and the economic success and general happiness of the world’s nations is unmistakeable: The freer the nation, the better off it tends to be. The correlation is not perfect - there are other factors at work - but it is very strong.

So, considering both theory and practice, this conclusion seems inescapable: Individuals should be as free as is feasible, and societies should be designed to incorporate and reflect that conclusion.