I'm reminded of Former Coworker Randy who was fond of saying that the only real freedom is financial freedom. It's not strictly true because civil liberties do matter, but for most people in the western world today whose core of civil liberties are not threatened, it approximates the truth aptly. Even a maximum of free speech, due process, and the like won't enable an individual to achieve happiness. Happiness requires free time.
In Walden Two Revisited (the preface to Walden Two), B. F. Skinner opines how the great historical revolutions have not been politically driven, saying instead that they've been idealogical--moral, religious, philosophical, scientific, etc. In the United States, the state has egregiously trampled over civil liberties since the early days of the republic, such as with the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it illegal to speak out against the government. The act was repealed a short time later, but our history since has been a noisy sequence of setbacks and resets with respect to individual liberties. Usually the victims have been the same: people who the state perceives as a threat to its power. Worriers would have it that these days the state's threat to our liberties is real and that things are different. We all are threatened with a great and sudden loss of liberty. The odds are not on the worriers' side, but what if they're right? So what. It's doubtful that political activism will improve the situation for the individual; instead, it's more optimal to let other people continue taking political action and for the individual to take personal action towards securing freedoms that are more under his control. It's more optimal to pursue financial freedom than it is to pursue political ends.
The freedom from work is not only about winning freedom over one's time. The nature of needing someone else's money as one's own income necessarily reduces options. Whether the individual is self-employed or working for a large corporation, that he needs to work means that there necessarily exist things he cannot say, behaviors he cannot adopt, and ideas that are unsafe for him to pursue. The situation is good when the individual gives up what he cares little for, but the situation is best when the individual needn't give up anything at all. The path to maximal practical freedom for an individual is for him to reduce his financial obligations so as to win his freedoms, not from the state but from his economic situation. In modern times, everything else is, to some extent, an abstraction.
Conclusion
I was tempted to write a third argument about how the natural course for most people is to favor security over freedom and that much discussion about the erosion of civil liberties is empty talk. Perhaps in a later post I'll return to this topic, but for now I'll end with a quote by Mark Twain.
I’ve seen many troubles in my time, only half of which ever came true.
- Mark Twain
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