Sunday, September 24, 2017

Freedom or security?

A very short piece by Robert Higgs, recently published on Everything Voluntary, caught my attention in a big way, and you can read it here. The key sentence therein that caught my eye was this: “Except for a tiny minority, avowals of the love of liberty are little more than hot air. Given a choice, people choose something else.”

To bolster his case, Higgs points out that it is material prosperity – not predominantly the prospect of individual freedom – that fuels migration to the “freer” societies. One might argue that prosperity of necessity goes hand in hand with freedom, and while this remains true in an overarching sense, one need only look at places like Nazi Germany or modern-day China to see examples of relatively well-heeled despotisms. Were or are these magnets for migrants? If not, it is only because better options were/are available; i.e., societies of greater bounty still, perhaps with better or looser immigration policies in the bargain.

 In short, if Higgs's observations are correct – and I see nothing which seriously refutes them – it means that other than a remnant, people don't want freedom inasmuch as they want “free” things. They don't want liberty as much as they want security. Full story...

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