Freedom From Want

One of FDR's FourFreedoms: Freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants - everywhere in the world.

I don't have a problem with the other three, but I don't buy this one. The other three are "negative" freedoms, in that guaranteeing them merely involves preventing other people from acting to damage those freedoms. Guaranteeing "freedom from want", however, involves compelling other people to do something; specifically, giving up their property, to be taken away from them and given to someone else. Besides which, it's a slippery slope. Who decides when people are "free from want"?

(interjection: When everyone is above the already defined 'standard of living' which is the threshold of poverty. This has already been studied at length by professionals and defined, I am not going to do so here. But continue, this is a good line of reasoning. -- KirkBailey)

What stops the "redistribution of wealth" required to provide this "freedom" from turning into out-and-out Communism? -- MikeSmith

(An armed and sovereign populace? -- KirkBailey)

Taking Peter's property to feed Paul is one way to eliminate want. Is it the only way?

Well, I can't think of any other way that doesn't involve coercion. Can you?

Sure, you just prevent Peter from exploiting Paul.

(OR, teach Paul to feed Paul. A small investment to be sure, compared to the effects. Insuring all are WELL educated in general AND with a REAL trade is one of the best investments anyone can make in society - or themselves. And yes, I mean spend the money on OTHERS, not one's own education. -- KirkBailey)

Who steps up to define what is exploitation and when Peter starts (or stops) exploiting Paul? That's just a detail. The point is, it doesn't involve coercion.

(Well, here's a test. If Peter does not pony up the sheckels to pay for paul's benefit, does something happen to Peter, or to Peter's property? If so, it's coercion. -- KirkBailey)

I'd say it's more than just a detail. You're implying that this "exploitation" of which you speak is the sole reason that there are poor people in the world, and I don't believe that for one cotton-pickin' minute (perhaps not the best choice of phrase for this context, I know. ;-) -- MikeSmith

Exploitation doesn't create poverty (by itself). Exploitation often leverages it, true - but that is not the same thing. (Exploitation can push people near the threshold into poverty when the exploitation begins, then a new 'steady state' prevails, at a different sverall [?] social strata distribution of the population. -- KirkBailey)

The problem lies in the imbalance of power in an exploitative relationship. The powerful party often has it in *their* best interests to continue (or in fact deepen) the poverty of the powerless party.

Can you be more specific? How exactly do wealthy people exploit poor people? Why is it in the best interest of a wealthy person to exploit a poor person? I am not very wealthy by any means, but I have some wealth, and I don't go around figuring out ways to exploit people who are less wealthy than I.

(I take it you are not the CEO of a large multinational corporation either, right? -- KirkBailey)

The AntiGlobalization argument would suggest that if you spend any of your - moderate - wealth in, say, StarBucks?, then you are helping to exploit people who are less wealthy than you are.

(Depends on the firm. I find the arguments against Starbucks more difficult to swallow than their coffee, which is delicious, if expensive. HOWEVER, the arguments against NIKE are another matter altogether. The evidence of sweatshop conditions, treatment, dangerous working conditions, and disciplinary violence in the famous (infamous?) factories in Vietnam are pretty well documented. -- KirkBailey)

What do you think? Suppose there was a global MinimumWage. What kind of difference do you think that would make?

(One for the worse. Jobs would vanish. Sure, it's GREAT if you have a job. Or so it would seem. But many workers sweeping stairs and parking lots would be out of work. And Employers would seek ways to engineer positions out of existence to avoid the unprofitable expense. -- KirkBailey)

Absolutely none. You can't have a global MinimumWage. Different countries have different costs of living. (Also true. -- Kirk) What is a reasonable wage here in Canada is considered rich in Haiti and poor in Silicon Valley. Governmental (or economic) centralization does not solve the problem. The only solution is education. All peoples must be educated (or have access to education). This allows people to think for themselves and obviates the need for others to get involved.

(Did anyone notice how the internet, and wiki's are a PROFOUND force to accomplish exactly that, and the resultant social change? Just checking... -- Kirk)

"You can't have a global MinimumWage." - well, you're entitled to your opinion. (and I am entitled to agree with it, and the reasons for it. -- Kirk) It wouldn't be very difficult to implement. The world would start small, say, $1USD per day per person. This would represent about a 50% salary increase for the poorest workers in CentralAmerica?, but would have no effect whatsoever on Silicon Valley. Since it is the people in Silicon Valley that are paying $4.50 for a latte that comes from the Central American coffee pickers, there would be a negligible standard-of-living impact on the Silicon Valley people, but a rather large improvement in the standard of living of the Central American.

That argument does not make sense. If the wage for a Central American coffee picker is $0.50/day and the worker is worth $0.50/day then raising the minimum wage of the worker to $1/day will put the worker out of work, since the employer will not pay a worker more than he is worth. So the worker's pay will go from $0.50/day to $0/day. He'll be out of work, and the Silicon Valley latte drinker won't get his coffee. How is that a good thing?

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE WORKER IS WORTH? -- Kirk (could it be 'market forces'? But price fixing (which is what wage controls are) obliviates that feedback mechanism. -- Kirk)

Business doesn't work that way. Costs of doing business are passed on to the customer so instead of the coffee pickers being out of work and the Silicon Valley people not getting their lattes, the Silicon Valley people will pay more like $8 for their latte. Currently, the lack of standard of living of the coffee pickers is subsidizing the coffee price of the Silicon Valley worker's latte. How is that a good thing?

This argument ignores elasticity of demand. If the Silicon Valley people have the price of their coffee roughly double, with no increase in their income to offset it, they will drink less coffee. That equals less demand for coffee beans, and thus, those who pick them. So you end up with some coffee pickers that previously earned $.50 now earning $1, and others who previously earned $.50 now earning $0. So you've made the lives of a few pickers better while making the lives of the other pickers, and all Silicon Valley coffee drinkers worse. Congratulations.

There is a whole line of people, starting with the pickers going up through farm owners, shippers, packers, roasters, brewers and ultimately drinkers. Why not skim a little off all those middleguys and the ultimate end-user to make those that are least well off do a little better? The idea is to help people resist their natural impulses to take merciless advantage of deperation in others.

Are you just not paying attention? Because, at best, it only helps some of those "least well-off". The others become worse off, because they no longer have jobs. Why do you want to take jobs from poor people?

"Taking Peter's property to feed Paul" - the trouble with this notion is that society is not a zero sum game. If Paul is fed and educated, and if he has the opportunity, he can generate objects of value to Peter, with the result that society as a whole obtains more opportunities. This is the essence of copulism, and the logic behind ideas like SchoolsForCivilization and the WikiWikiWeb itself. An economic system is completely useless if it doesn't enable people to work together for their mutual benefit. This realization became obvious during the GreatDepression, and formed the foundation of FDR's NewDeal?.

Leaving aside the supposed economic benefits of the NewDeal?, isn't it counterproductive to coerce people into doing good deeds?

Um, let me see: do you enjoy the benefits of living in a state? That is to say, do you enjoy its military and police protection, its system of laws, and its provision of road, sewerage, water, and other networks? Well, gee, don't you know that those things are all funded by means of coercion? You better bug out to your desert island right now, before you cause any more people to be coerced. If you choose instead to stay, you can start to make decisions about what kinds and what ends of coercion you' d like to encourage.

Libertarians like me do NOT want to have ANYONE to be cohersed above the BARE minimum to establish a limited set of basic services to preserve and stabilize society. Although some theorists claim that almost everything can in potential be privatized, the general moderate view is that Military, Police, Judicial, and Legislature are government functions, as are maintaining Standards of Weight and Measure, road building and maintence, and a few other national functions dealing with the unavoidable commonwealth aspects of nationhood. (ie, the air, the watertable, and a few other things that do not lend themselves to practical private ownership.)

Libertarians have quite happily sidestepped the issue of taxes by saying that minimal government intervention is necessary for things like protection of the state. While it may be fun to claim this is inconsistent, it's really the FallacyOfTheBeard?, so sadly you'll have to try harder to pull that Ayn Rand out of his hand.

Please create a description of this fallacy. -- Kirk

Um, let me see: could there be such a thing as a non-coercive state, which used force only in retaliation and only against those who initiated its use?

NO. No penalty, no law.- the translation of a very old maxim about law and government. Were there no excisting system of law WITH PENALTIES FOR LACK OF OBEDIENCE, they would be ignored at convience. The government would not have REVENUES, it would have DONATIONS. A 'non cohersive state' is a voluntary association of persons for some purpose, freely entered into and maintained, with resources donated by them to accomplish some freely chosen set of goals. This is not a nation as understood by mankind, although it may well be a lovefeast. -- Kirk

Conmen and burglars don't initiate coercion. Why bless your innocent heart! OF COURSE THEY DO!

Look. Let's say just for talking, that to test this point I come by your pace one night and torch your new car, ok? Let's see if you feel injured. Let's see if the trouble and expense of dealing with all this cost you, forces you to change your life significantly. The propertarians are very wise when they say that one's property is an extension of one's life. They aslo say that ALL rights are in effect one- property rights. You are free and self governing because you own yourself. -- Kirk

How such a state would deal with them?

ME, I like shooting them dead on the spot, although the Islamic habit of cutting off hands the first time is rather appealing. Theives are slavemasters on the installment plan. -- Kirk

Let me see if I've got your logic right: Paul is fed and educated by taking money from Peter by government coercion. So according to you, Paul can now 'generate objects of value for Peter'. Where exactly is the win here? You've just moved money around. You can't create wealth by moving money around.

Money isn't wealth.

(''SSHHH!!!! THAT'S A SECRET! -- Kirk)

If every dollar on the planet disappeared from every database, no objects of value would disappear. All our regulatory systems would crash, but that's a matter of dependency on money rather than money itself. The same objects of value might be managed according to some other reliable regulatory system, if we had such a thing, which we don't.

This is actually what destroyed the Spanish and Portugese empires of the 17th century. They conquered the new world and imported boatloads of gold, thereby crashing their own regulatory systems and sidelining themselves from geopolitics. The English, who understood wealth, fared considerably better.

The spanish inflated the gold supply and GROSSLY inflated the SILVER supply, and prices went up and up and up and up... They got to hanging merchants for raising prices, probably the second only case of governmental flirting with price controls (the Roman Empire's love affair being the first I know of... -- Kirk)

Wealth is the opportunity to obtain experience, not bits in an account.

'''Shit no, at least not in the normal routine world's sense it ain't. WEALTH is STUFF. Oreo cookies. Gasoline. Solar Cells. A copy of Webster New colligete dictionary. My lunch. A shot of Penacillin. 220V AC corsing through my air conditioner when it's 98 degrees outside.

More abstract and confusing, is SERVICE. For instance, the service of getting my house painted. The paint is real. The painter is real. The PAINTING is not material, but is an ACT of reality. But it modifies something real, my house, for the better. -- Kirk'''

You are avoiding the question. How do you gain by coercing someone to hand over their wealth/resources/dollars/stamp collections to someone else? You have moved things from one place to another. Where is the gain?

Advantage of location? -- Kirk

You gain when one of three conditions apply:

For example, let's say Peter has a fishing pole. He catches his dinner and commences dining. Paul wants to borrow the fishing pole, but Peter won't let him. "Where's the gain?" he demands.

That's an easy one - the borrowing of the fishing pole is not a gain. Paul gains the fishing pole, Peter loses the ability to fish - no gain there. Peter also takes on the risk that the pole will be broken or stolen - no gain there. The ability to fish for one person is moved from one person to another with an increase in risk - in all a net loss, not a gain.

Peter had his dinner, so loaning the fishing pole is no skin off his nose. And the risk of breakage or loss is minimal compared to the opportunity for mutual benefit. The ability to fish isn't moved from one person to another because Peter only catches his dinner once a day. The resource was underutilized.

Now, if Peter wants to set up a contract with Paul (it doesn't necessarily need to be written), he can do so to mitigate the increase in risk in giving up one of his assets to another person for a while. But that's his choice. There's no coercion if he does so willingly, obviously. If the government steps in and forces Peter to hand over his fishing rod to Paul against Peter's will, then we have coercion, and no gain, as noted above.)

The only person talking about government coercion here is you. Let's talk about why you feel freedom from want requires government coercion.

Look, the main thread here is about Freedom from Want. In order to make sure that a person who wants is free from his want, you need to satisfy his want with some resources. Those resources do not magically appear, they must be taken from someone else.

FIRST they must be created. -- KirkBailey again.

If the person from whom you are taking had the desire to give the person to whom you are giving in the first place, he would already have done so. Since he has not of his own free will handed over resources to the person with the wants, it stands to reason that in order for him to part with his resources, he must be coerced.

The world is not one giant FalseDichotomy; there are other answers than bullets. The Cuban constitution (and let's believe Cuba is a constitutional democracy for just a minute) gives people the Right to Health. This does not mean that the government is going to coerce the influenza virus out of your body by arresting it. What it does mean is that the government is responsible for taking on policies that in its mind increase the health of the populace, which is why Cuba actually has a bajillion hospitals. Emergency room waiting lines aren't really a concern there, unlike the potential day-long marathon that exists up here in Canada and the United States.

True, they simply are perpetually short on all but the most primitive supplies, and lack all mut the most primitive instruments- and often, these are broken, missing, or stolen. I would shudder to go to a Cuban clinic (other than one near tourist centers) for care for of my Diabetes. -- KirkBailey

Similarly, it's not necessary to rip a person's copy of AtlasShrugged out of her hands in order to make the world a better place. Instead, a Freedom from Want would entice a responsible government to manage the economy equitably for the populace instead of concentrating wealth in the hands of a few feudal lords or despots. While managing an economy is difficult, and there will be many mistakes made in attempting to keep it running, the idea is that acts such as embezzling money from the public purse and tax codes that enforce ClassStriation should be illegal as well as.

On the other hand, you're right, it may also require in some cases the revolutionary elimination of the title owners so that land may be redistributed to the population. Whether or not that is the right thing to do is really irrelevant; it will happen to a ruling class that doesn't alleviate discontent amongst the majority population. And in some cases, like Afghanistan (especially the April Revolution), a growing dischord between an evolutionary (bourgeois) and revolutionary (proletariat) restructuring was enough to cause a civil war. Now that's real coercion, and why a libertarian society is unsustainable unless it is already roughly egalitarian.

Consequently, an excellent example of legislated egalitarianism that requires government coercion is inheritance tax. In Europe, an aristocracy was born as older generations could pass wealth down to younger generations without much cost. By contrast, America had (repealed by Dubya) a policy of high inheritance tax ensured that wealth couldn't be passed on so readily. This greatly increased the probability of individuals of one class to move down the class ladder, thus making room for others to move up, as well as preventing capital from being permanently removed from the economy by our friends, the feudal lords. And before you complain, one doesn't deserve wealth because one is born into it, so it's difficult to argue against this on a libertarian axis. -- SunirShah

Later on Paul fights off a marauding tiger, who otherwise would have eaten both of them. When winter comes Paul has stored up a cache of tiger jerky. Peter hasn't. Paul is rugged up in tiger furs. Peter is cold. Paul bars the entrance to his cave and hunkers down to gnaw on tiger jerky until the spring. Peter gets lost in a blizzard. The river ices over so he can't fish. He gets whole-body frostbite and dies with his fishing pole in his hands.

Plainly Peter didn't understand how to use his wealth to maximize gain.

Intresting. Prehaps he should have offered to work for Paul? He may have had to wear Paul's old bearskin, but it beat's freezing. -- Kirk

''Right, and then next spring, Paul is alone and starves to death because he can't fish. What's your point? That stupid people who don't want to trade with each other for mutual gain will eventually die out?

My word, capitalist commerce as a survival virtue and assett! you will go give the socialists apoplexy if you keep doing that! -- Kirk

Of course that's true. The point of this page is to discuss how forcing people to trade with each other against their wills is somehow a good thing. Are you proposing that the government should step in and force stupid people to trade with one another? Maybe we could send in our SAT scores to exempt ourselves from such a program, and just do what normal people do: engage in mutually beneficial trade.''

You asked a stupid question: how does moving resources around result in gain. Given that stupid question, how come you're surprised you got a stupid answer? The point of this page is to describe FDR's four freedoms. Just what point you're trying to make here is not obvious. At a guess, you're trying to set up a StrawMan by specializing FDR's freedom from want to require more government coercion than the other commonplace activities of a state. Is this right, or are you trying to say something with some signal in it? If the latter, for crying out loud spit it out why don't you?

FreedomFromWant wasn't a socialist philosophy. Roosevelt had been President through most of the GreatDepression and the nation was intimately familiar with real poverty. FreedomFromWant didn't mean 'equal wages for all'. It meant an opportunity to earn a living. Considering the rise in the American Standard of Living over the last 60 years, his economic recovery package was quite effective.

'''HOLD IT!

Intellectual property is a special case, and deserves it's own thread on it's own page. This is about real/material wealth, and fringes of that, such as service and energy. Information is a special case.

For instance, my generator sends you 1 KwH of power. It is gone from here. My server sends you a file. It is still here, nothing is deminsihsed. Information is a special case, demanding special treatment apart from the more normal sorts of wealth. -- KirkBailey.'''

''You gain when one of three conditions apply:

Abolishing Intellectual Property laws will satisfy all 3 conditions. Copy software has negligible cost, let the software be used at a great capacity (now 2 people can use it at the same time), and having more copies around make it easier to get a copy thus "enables further access" to it. The flaw with these 3 conditions is that it does not address how it can generate more resources. Without generating more resources, you are just playing a zero-sum game.

You should be careful. The only intellectual property laws you are seeking to repeal are protections of copyright. Patents and trademarks are very different. You should also be careful when using the term zero-sum. Digital resources aren't zero-sum, and that is the problem.

Please, someone move this last part to a totally separate page discussing such matters. If there is one, please append this there. I am not sure where to put it. -- KirkBailey

Not sure about inseparability of Political and Economic freedom that LudwigVonMises asserted

China has been trying hard to prove, and with apparent success, that economic reforms can be made with minimal political reforms.

But that statement could be correct if we accept

EditText of this page (last edited November 25, 2005) or FindPage with title or text search