What flavour of freedom do you want?

We’re surrounded by people claiming to fight for our freedom without ever stopping to decide what it’s supposed to mean. The problem, though, is that the way you think about freedom defines what you’ll do to protect yours. And, if you’re not conscious about it, you might internalise a sense of freedom that holds you back.

By deciding on a clear framework for freedom – knowing that language itself is a loose approximation of the world – you can make conscious choices that help it flourish. If you view freedom as something more than the space to do whatever you want, you get to make richer choices. You can connect yourself to a wider community of people by extending your view of liberation beyond your own preferences (they’ll just hold you back anyway).

In his 2024 book The road to freedom, the economist Joseph Stiglitz contrasts different understandings of freedom (as laid out by American politicians).

He presents the “four freedoms” that Ronald Reagan argued for in 1987:

1. Freedom to work.
2. Freedom to enjoy the fruits of one’s labour.
3. Freedom to own and control one’s property.
4. Freedom to participate in a free market – to contract freely for goods and services and to achieve one’s full potential without government limits on opportunity, economic independence and growth.

Stiglitz compares these views on freedom with the “four freedoms” for the world, articulated by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941:

1. Freedom of speech and expression.
2. Freedom to worship God in their own way.
3. Freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, mean economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime for its inhabitants.
4. Freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbour.

Needless to say, Roosevelt aimed higher than most.

What’s your opportunity set?

Stiglitz goes onto to argue that many discussions about freedom are reductive to the point of uselessness (and, really, that’s what makes “freedom” a useful rhetorical device). Unless we define what we’re talking about, in real terms, we’re just flapping around in the wind at best and, at worst, providing freedom for the few at the expense of the many – or, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin put it, “freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”

Stiglitz puts freedom in practical terms:

What matters is a person’s opportunity set—the set of options she has available. From an economist’s perspective, this is the only thing that matters. Her opportunity set determines, indeed defines, her freedom to act. Any reduction in the scope of actions she can undertake is a loss of freedom. 

And frames the various trade-offs between freedom like this:

What about the freedom to live up to one’s potential, which may only be possible if we tax the rich and deprive them of the freedom to spend as they want?

He uses income tax as an example:

• On one hand, Stiglitz argues, you have politicians like Rick Santorum arguing that “the less money we take, the more freedom you have.”
• On the other hand, income tax can be used to fund education, public transport and a host of others things – things that increase the opportunity set, or freedom, of people en masse.

Even if you don’t think you need those myriad public services, you get to decide what flavour of freedom matters more to you: the freedom for you to spend that extra percentage of your pay or the freedoms that flow on from the population getting quality education?

As I’ve written before: the way you describe your life will be how you live it. Turns out, the way you describe your life can shape how others live theirs, too.

Make your choices

When you see someone pitching a new product, service or idea, you can ask yourself how it’ll affect your opportunity set.

Here’s one more example from politics. Australia spends more on tax breaks for property investors than public housing, rent assistance and homelessness services combined. Whose opportunity set is embiggened by that policy? And is that increasing the amount of freedom in Australia’s society overall?¹

Making it more personal

You can scale this down. 

If you’re thinking about buying something, ask if it’ll increase your range of potential. How? What’s the ideal way to use it? What’s the most likely way? How does this thing – in its use and production – affect others?

Take my phone: how does it shape my opportunity set on a small, personal scale? Sure, I can use it to read every book ever written. I can write, engage with art, chat to friends. All things that broaden my potential. That’s freedom, bud.

More likely, though, it’ll take me out of the moment. I’ll refresh r/nba on Reddit nine times. I’ll use it to dull myself. And god knows how many businesses will try to track my every move. That’s surveillance capitalism, bud.

So. How can I minimise the bad and maximise the good in my life? What systems do I want to actively engage with? Here’s one I’ve been working on recently. 

I want to reduce my phone’s role in my life  – it narrows my perspective too much. I think music streaming services increase the opportunity set for cashed-up executives (and listeners, sure) at the expense of artists. No beuno.

My solution: a cute digital audio player and Bandcamp. This is wildly less convenient. The interface on the player is abominable. I need to plug it into a computer to get stuff on it. Buying music is more expensive than streaming.

But, so far, it’s nicer. I’m happy to give money to artists I like. I prefer using a dedicated device. It’s smaller. Focused. Specific.  I can slump in an armchair and listen to an album or audiobook without a well-honed voice saying “Just check your email real quick.”

From big to small

When you start thinking about things in terms of your opportunity set, you start seeing the ways people, companies and services pitching themselves as expanding yours but, once they’re in your life, just make more and more demands of you. They don’t serve you. It’s like they exist solely to stand between you, your awareness and the moment. All so you can enrich their opportunity sets instead.

I’ll be honest: I don’t know how elegantly Stiglitz’s view of broader economic freedoms scale down to personal decision making. But I think there’s some juice there. I think it helps me step back from my knee-jerk thoughts (and, like Chinese philosopher Laozi says in the Dào Dé Jīng, “the mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas”). It helps highlight the vast interconnectedness of our lives: the way I listen to music means something to the people who sell it and the people who make it. It opens up ways to think about downstream effects. It can turn an individual act towards the community around it.

It also clarifies the scale at which I operate. Sure, I can align my musicing to my values but, alone, I can’t really do all that much (and viewing purchasing decisions as radical politcal acts just buys into a consumerist way of thinking). I can only pry the opportunity set of musicians so wide – but, if I give a damn, I can take steps to do more. I can get involved with organisations that support artists; I can advocate for local policies that do the same. 

I can look beyond myself to name, know and support the flavour of freedom that does the most good.