How Appropriate Regulations (Protections for the People) Increase Our Freedom

[FayeforCure]

How do we define Freedom?

Freedom as opportunity (maximizing) vs Freedom from interference.

Fellow-blogger Don Herzog alluded to the reason why freedom-as-non-interference is an inadequate conception of freedom in a recent post.  If the only kind of freedom that matters is that no one intentionally interfere with one's formal freedom of action, and not that one's opportunity set be large and full of worthwhile options, then freedom-lovers would have to oppose traffic laws, stop lights, and so forth, for interfering with freedom of movement.  The result of a lack of such laws, however, is not actual freedom of movement, but, in areas of high traffic density, gridlock.

(And, in areas of high traffic flow, grave danger.)  To be sure, in a state of gridlock, one has the formal freedom to choose any movement in one's opportunity set--which amounts to being able to rock forward and back a couple of inches from bumper to bumper, getting nowhere.  Some freedom! 

By contrast, if we give up certain formal freedoms--to run red lights and stop signs, to drive indiscriminately across lanes--we get in return a vastly expanded opportunity set, including the ability/opportunity to actually get to places one wants to go, more safely and quickly than if we hadn't given up those freedoms. 

The point of formal freedom of movement--the right to move around, without coercive inteference by the state or other people--is that it is instrumental to expanding actual opportunities to move around where one wants to go. 

http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/06/so_you_want_to__1.html