Liberty revised, pt. 1

In recent posts I've touched upon a broad idea: that as a nation grows it necessarily evolves greater complexity as a whole and that that complexity arises through the increasing specialization of its constituent parts, namely we as individuals. The specific aspect of the idea that I wrote about was that specialization itself necessarily correlates to a decrease in individual liberty and that, based on the assumption that the nation's growth cannot be checked by any individual, it is therefore unwise to worry about one's personal liberties.

I now realize that I was wrong to write what I wrote previously, though not ideologically. Ideologically, I still believe that what I wrote is valid, and I look forward to its ongoing defense. However, what I was wrong about was my approach to the topic. As I said, the topic is broad, delving deeply into abstract concepts of evolution, complexity, and freedom, not to mention practical aspects such as sociology and political philosophy. It's wrong to tackle such a complicated issue head on in such a short essay (or maybe even in a long one). What's needed is a better way of showing the idea.

But the posts were not a total loss; I know in at least one reader's case they provoked some thoughtful introspection, and in a subsequent email dialog that reader wrote to me the following.

[J]ust because you exercise a specialized skill doesn't mean you necessarily limit your freedoms. I could, for example, program for a tech company but live out in the woods. I just need an internet connection and power.

I suspect this is an idea that has occurred to many software developers and probably with greatest frequency when doing activities such as waiting in traffic or paying property taxes. It's certainly occurred to me many times. So, using the example of the hypothetical programmer-in-the-woods, the question is raised: does individual specialization necessarily correlate to a decrease in individual
freedom?

What is freedom?

I don't see anyway good way of proceeding to write about the programmer-in-the-woods without first defining, however incompletely, the term freedom. I apologize for having to do this; the term has come to represent many things, some of which are outright contradictory, and it's a specific type of freedom in which I'm arguing is necessarily limited by specialization. That type of freedom is, put simply, the ability to do what one wants.

Some people will say that one may enjoy a freedom from fear, in which a person is knowingly safe, or a freedom from hunger, in which a person is kept well fed. There are, I suppose, a countless number of freedom froms; take a bad thing, X, and one may conceptualize a freedom from X. Though freedom froms are important and good, they do not constitute the type of freedom I'm interested in (within the scope of this argument, not personally) because they do not enable one to do anything. They are securities; they are protections and insurances against bad states and bad results.

Not in all cases is gaining a freedom to a net benefit. Sometimes having a freedom to do something masks a lack of freedom that represents a wider range of choice. For example, all things held equal, it is good to have the freedom to choose from a wide range of nifty features for one's car, such as its color, but for some people such a freedom is a false choice; a greater freedom is independence from the automobile and the freedom to transport oneself and one's stuff without incurring the great expenses, both internalized and externalized, of private motorized transport. That we have so many options of what kind of car to buy is largely derived by the economies of scale in the industrialized world and that the car has become ubiquitous and necessary for millions of people.

This concept may be difficult to see for a car lover who can't fathom life without the car; probably there exists a element of subjectiveness here. However, the freedom of whether to own a car (made possible only by not needing one) allows for a greater range of behaviors than the range allowed by the choice between driving a black car with power windows and a fifth gear or a red car with manual windows and only four gears. In the former case one's life may take many different patterns; in the latter case the freedom at hand has little effect on the overall pattern of one's life.

But still you may be a car lover and disagree with this example. Imagine other similar examples, such as the lesser freedom to choose your full-time career versus the greater freedom to choose not to work at all. Hopefully the general point is illustrated: gaining a specific freedom doesn't necessarily entail increasing one's overall quantity of freedom; some freedoms are gained at the cost of losing other, larger ones. This has not to do with how much a freedom is valued or esteemed but with how much that freedom enables a person to behave in new, profound ways. In brief, the type of freedom in which I'm interested (for this argument) is the ability to invent for oneself the pattern of one's life. I hope this is a sufficient working definition to continue with our programmer-in-the-woods.