Hey everyone,
I would like to share with you some thoughts that came to me the other day. I was basically wondering what is really meant by the maximisation of freedom and where does this limit actually lie. At what point can we say that freedom is maximised? Is it only a matter of individual freedom or the maximisation of freedom for society as a whole?
I believe that this maximum is somewhere on the spectrum between absolute individual freedom and absolute community coordination. Salop said somewhere between anarchism and communism or a dictatorship.
In the one extreme, each individual has maximum freedom to do what he or she wants, there are no common tasks or competences, because for that you would have to give up some of your own competences. At the other end, however, there is a totalitarian state in which the individual no longer has any power but is defined solely by the collective or the ruler to whom he surrenders all his powers.
Most political theories are somewhere in between and approach each other from the left or the right. Libertarianism clearly does this from the liberal left side. In contrast to anarchism, there are public institutions, facilities and places to which one surrenders a minimal part of one’s authority. In my opinion, this is formed spontaneously because we humans naturally organise ourselves into groups and the resulting specialisation helps us to perform more complex tasks more quickly.
But where is this minimum level of competence at which society can develop optimally and the individual still has the maximum possible freedom? What do you think?
An anarchist society likely would have courts. Read Bruce L. Benson’s The Enterprise of Law. There are plenty of ways to have a privately-operated system of justice.
But then you effectively give the courts some kind of competence over you. Even if it is absolutely minimal. And thats what I’m talking about: How much is justifiable?