Freedom is a fuzzy concept.
My goal here is simply to outline that the idea of 'constraining freedoms is bad' is just wrong. I'm going to lay out some ideas that don't seem to connect, and then I'm going to tie them all together, so please bear with me.
The standard rope analogy is as follows:
Imagine that one is manacled to a wall. One can't move even a centimetre in any given direction. For the vast majority of us, it's clear that we don't have any freedom in this situation. While we may be unconstrained mentally, that is little consolation to the fact that we are entirely constrained physically.
If, on the other hand, we were tied with a rope that was utterly intangible to all other beings and objects, and had a limit of three million kilometres, it is difficult to see how we would consider ourself anything but 'completely free'. I am not concerned with some hypothetical 'many worlds' framework whereby we can postulate the non-existing situation that space travel is possible and three million kilometres is a constraint in that situation: I'm talking about here, and now, in this world at this time, for the vast majority of the human race a constraint of three million kilometres is no constraint at all.
If we are to shorten this rope to two thousand kilometres, some of us feel constrained.
Reduced to one hundred kilometres, and many of us will feel the constraint at some point in our lives.
Less than ten kilometres of free movement will affect most all people, and less than one kilometre will leave a mere handful unaffected.
So physical freedom is not a polar state: it's not the case that either we are free, or we are not. Nor do I feel that we can really talk about 'degrees' of freedom (from this analogy). Freedom is a continuum. What is 'freedom' for me, is 'not-freedom' for you, not because of any nonsensical relativism (multicultural or otherwise), but because the actions that you wish to take are constrained by the length of the rope, whereas the scope of my actions fall within the bounds of my constraint.
This is, I say again, not relativism on the nature of Freedom itself, but simply that one finds oneself constrained only when one wishes to act outside the bounds of one's constraint.
So we need to note that there is a difference between *being* Free, and *feeling* Free. "Being Free" is a metaphysical state, that one needs to have an adequate metaphysical definition of Freedom in order to discuss fully. "Feeling Free" is an entirely subjective experience, that changes from person to person, from circumstance to circumstance, and is a combination of the circumstances that a person finds themselves in with the psychology of that particular person (i.e. their expectations, their choices, their desires, etc).
I find that most Libertarian writers conflate or ignore this difference; they seem unaware that their feelings of constraint are simply that: feelings of constraint. That's not to say that they are in error, but that their feelings are theirs and theirs alone. Certainly other people *may* feel the same, but not everyone does (as evidenced by those who would argue against them). To demand that society changes and reorders so that those individuals with a heightened sense of constraint feel less so (to the cost of those individuals who are less able to define their own life trajectory) seems somewhat unreasonable. To demonise all those who disagree with them *is* unreasonable. Furthermore, their idea of Freedom and Constraint is based on an entirely simplistic analogy to the Rope that I listed above: the more constraints there are, the less free one is.
While this is true, the picture is more complicated than they would allow for.
Picture a line (a continuum). At the left, we have absolute constraint (being manacled to the wall). At the far right, we have absolute freedom (no restrictions on movement, speaking, trading, etc). This is, generally, the picture outlined by Strong Libertarians. They want to argue that the position that society maintains should be pushed further and further to the right, that there is no cost this notion of 'more freedom', because *everyone* becomes more free.
The problem is that it's an entirely individualistic picture, and as I mentioned above, different people have different conceptions of 'feeling free'. Furthermore, different freedoms are constrained in different ways: total freedom of speech is in tension with freedom from hate speech. Total freedom of movement is in tension with private property. As one increases, the other must necessarily decrease. So the idea of 'absolute freedom' is false. What is 'absolute freedom' for any given individual is that the societal constraints have been pushed out sufficiently that everything that they want to do is within the bounds of those constraints.
To look at this idea from a societal level, picture a continuum again. On the far left we have a single individual. On the far right, we have ten billion individuals. What we are envisioning now is how many people our 'society' comprises of, and how many viewpoints the society has to balance and serve.
If we have the case of a single individual, we do not have 'absolute freedom': this individual has no freedom to trade as there is no-one to trade with. This is not a trivial point. They have no-one to communicate with. They cannot create a business as there is no-one for them to hire, nor is there anyone to hire them. While they do have absolute freedom to move and speak, there are few reasons to more or speak.
If we increase our society to two individuals, and if we wish to have a stable society, we now must envision rights and duties: the duty to not-kill our other members of society. Now each member of the society only has this duty to one other person. Trade is now possible, but it's extremely limited, as is communication, and forming businesses. If the first person hires the second, what would be the purpose? At best, they can form a partnership to create things (e.g. better living conditions), but their 'freedom' is still quite constrained. Furthermore, what do they have a 'freedom to do'? With only two people, the bulk of their time would be spent producing sufficient food for both of them to live. Without industry (which cannot be sustained by two individuals), food has a limited shelf life so they can't simply produce several years of excess food in one go and then perform some other function for the remaining time: their choice of lifestyle is heavily constrained. Additionally the notion of private property and private space needs to be introduced, which introduces more constraints to (i.e. reduces the freedom of) both members. On the upside, both of them have absolute freedom to do any work that they wish: should they wish to carve or create art, or produce food, there are virtually no limits here.
However, we can see that those limits would increase as the numbers also increase.
If we jump up to one thousand individuals, every member of the society has a duty to not-harm 999 others. Every member is constrained from taking the items of 999 other members. Given limited resources, trading becomes a *necessity*, not an option. If one wants to live, and one wants to do something other than farm, one *must* produce something that others wish to trade for. Furthermore, if you choose to produce something that others are already producing, you *must* either exceed the quality of those others, or ask for less in exchange for your skills (assuming you can meet a certain 'minimum quality' requirement that you are *constrained* to meet by demand).
Here we can see that some freedoms were created by the increase in population (i.e. trading, conversing), but others have been reduced (i.e. movement). Furthermore, all the people in our population are going to feel different constraints differently: if we were to introduce a tax on trade, the high-capacity trader is going to feel it the most. If people want to spend the same money on a similar good, they are going to move down the tiers of quality goods until they are paying roughly as much as they were before, perhaps with a slight drop in quality. Conversely, if that high-capacity trader wishes to sell as much as they did before, they need to reduce their prices. Note that this is a contingent constraint: *if* they want to sell as much as before, *then* they must reduce their prices. Regardless, their ability to make a profit has been constrained by the introduction of this tax: if they keep their profit-margin the same as before, less people will buy from them. If they want to keep the same number-of-sales, then they must reduce their profit margin. Either choice reduces the net profit that they make.
On the other hand, the introduction of the tax likely benefits those at the bottom-tier of quality, as more people will choose their products because they wish to spend less money. Granted: some people, when faced with an increase in cost or a reduction in quality, will choose to do without. This is also a constraint introduced by taxes.
On this analysis, it's fair to say that taxes are primarily a constraint, *but* this completely ignores what those taxes are spent on.
Even if (worst case scenario) those taxes are merely pocketed by those running the society, those people who receive the money are less constrained. I'd contend that this is not justice, but this is not an article on justice, so that's an entirely irrelevant point.
Generally, those taxes are spent on armies (to protect the interests of this society from other societies, increasing freedom), police (to protect the members of this society from other members, enforcing constraints), schools (increasing freedom of those who can't afford to pay for school personally), infrastructure (increasing freedom for all), etc. Taxes are a constraint, but they are used to fund freedom.
Freedom of speech is another contentious area. Some members will want an entirely unconstrained marketplace for their ideas. Other members don't want sex in the marketplace. Still others don't want alternative political ideas around. There is an inherent tension between these viewpoints, and increasing/removing constraints in this area is not just a simple analysis. Furthermore, while the notion of 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me' has been around a while, modern psychology indicates that it's incorrect: the concept of a 'hostile work environment' is now part of our legal code, and it's been documented that people in a hostile working environment tend to under-perform compared to being in a neutral or positive environment. As such, totally unconstrained freedom of speech constrains people's ability to perform work-related tasks. While the notion that 'freedom constrains' may be counter-intuitive, it's true, depending on the details of the situation.
I think that I've met my goal, to outline that the idea of 'constraining freedoms is bad' is just wrong. The picture is far more complex than many self-proclaimed Libertarians give credit, and seems to be a result of shallow thinking.
I'm not referencing anything here, I feel that most of the ideas here are easily researchable if people are inclined. If you're not inclined, that's probably why you disagree with me in the first place.
Any serious criticisms will be dealt with in a serious fashion.