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Yifan

Americans have been indoctrinated into the belief that freedom is defined purely by negative liberties: Government cannot take away your rights to speech, religion, expression, etc. These are important liberties but their importance is over-skewed towards the ruling class. 1/6

There is another concept of freedom which is by positive liberties: Government should help its citizens secure food, shelter, clean environment, and a fulfilling life. Such freedoms are overlooked because they conflict with market capitalism. 2/6

Ask yourself which set of freedoms would be more beneficial to you if you had to choose between one and the other? The ruling class want you to think that positive liberties stem from negative liberties (e.g. you can't have welfare without free speech) but that is a lie. 3/6

China is the obvious example but we should also look to the economic "miracles" in South Korea and Japan as well which preceded their government reforms. They prioritized improvement of lives BEFORE political liberties. 4/6

I don't take for granted my freedom to dunk on Biden publicly. I am in the lucky minority who never has to worry about money. But to tell a working mother of three that she has to make rent but thank god she lives in a country where she can vote for her leaders is an insult. 5/6

In summary: I am not saying we need to give up negative liberties to get positive ones. I think both sets of liberties are important. However, they mislead us into believing that freedom is defined purely by what the government can't take away and that is oppression. 6/6

@yifanlu but these are essentially the same thing though?

- you get food or housing without paying imaginary be treated like a human points

> government intentionally causes harm to you and ruins your life

- you tell the government to stop being shit to everyone

> government intentionally causes harm to you and ruins your life

you can't improve peoples lives if your reaction to people telling you that you suck is to destroy their lives and harm them on purpose - thats the complete opposite of that.

and likewise its pointless to be able to talk about how they suck if your just gonna ignore it .. and then do that all again the second they try sort it out themselves because you refused too.

like tbh more i think about it .. "negative liberties" "positive liberties" are the exact same fucking thing and i don't think the classification is even helpful

@Li but don't you see that because you need to go through several steps of a hypothetical, they are NOT the same?

@yifanlu except its not really a hypothetical, its basically just what happens. in either case the government intentionally harms you and ruins your life, just for different reasons.-

heck thats how human rights violations are done in general.

and its kind of incompatible w improving peoples lives and stuff, and its also really easy to just *not* do that.

like i can't think of any real reason for the clasisifcation outside of trying to justify doing that ..

@Li you're arguing that "positive liberties cannot exist without negative liberties" and that is a fair argument to make. However that still means there's two categories to contend with. History serves as a good way to understand the past and gives us guidance on how to build the future. It does not mean that past dictates future.

@yifanlu

i am arguing that the only reason for the distinction is to maintain oppression .. *because* one can't exist without the other, and these are just liberties .. and it seems to be being used to suggest it can .

like especially when it's used to to ask you to choose which is 'more important' or whatever, as if there even has to or should be a choice ..

not being able to access food or housing is pretty much equates to the government " taking things from you "

otherwise there'd be nothing stopping you from just walking right into any of the thousands of available and currently unused houses .. or any of the countless excess food that gets wasted daily because they don't *want* you to have access to it.. in which case those needs would be met fairly easily.

@Li I gave real historical examples of times where people had positive liberties but not negative ones. The distinction exists because it is usually taken as a given that all rights stem from speech. This is orthodoxy that should be examined and debated. I'm not pretending to know the answer but when leaders constantly air out "free speech" as defense of bad policies that benefit the ruling class, we have to wonder.

@yifanlu yeah but in both cases, it's a case of maintaining oppression just towards different people yea? so my point kind of still stands there, that the distinction only exists to maintain oppression - the distinction still exist i guess since unfortunately that never really went away.

but like pretty much in all cases they didn't *really* have either,

also all rights come from speech is definitely bullshit, maybe like right to like to life like.. to *exist* or possibly body autonomy (free speech comes from body autonomy in a way, as does expression, and like life ..)

like obviously free speech is fairly useless if your dead. and .. free speech is fairly useless if they can violate you in other ways ..

@Li may I suggest reading the source I cited at plato.stanford.edu/entries/lib they describe it far more eloquently than me and explain the different objections to the idea as well

plato.stanford.eduPositive and Negative Liberty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

@yifanlu i've already been pissed off by it enough already that i think that would be bad idea for me honestly.

.. i think what you mentioned later is a bit more important, this idea that "free speech" is the ultimate epicness of freedom, when it kind of isn't really.

and heck isn't even something any individual actually has

(like; the USA still restricts speech just in a roundabout way where they say certain things "aren't speech" .. which makes no sense, and has the same outcome as just banning certain types of things from being said..)

anyway, call me anti-freedom or whatever, but like i for one find it extremely frustrating that sites like the pirate bay or kickass torrents, whatever, get targeted to hell, and get government level internet censorship and shit.. then sites literally dedicated harassing people from certain minority groups to suicide and calling for them to be killed, are fine because "free speech"

@Li or the fact that Super PACs can donate unlimited money to political campaigns because money is speech

@yifanlu that too! "free speech" except no one hears you over a bunch of billionaires politicians, media narratives, and all that shit thats like way louder and way more well known than anything any individual person can say ..

leading to like .. yknow transphobic bullshit about how trans stuff works, is more known than how it actually works from people who've experienced it.

(this isn't just a trans issue, i've seen the same (to a lesser extent) with like autism, and like DID too, .. everyone has the 'well-known' portrayal of it and those who actually experience it are ignored and/or 'lying / untrustworthy' and imagine those aren't the only places it happens .. )