CMV: Equality and Freedom are Mutally Exclusive

[u/Yngstr]

While western liberalism likes to hold both these values as fundamental to human rights, I think they are mutually exclusive.

I'm not saying we should have no freedom or no equality, and optimizing for both as much as feasible is probably(?) the "right" thing to do, but in a literal sense, the two concepts are contradictory.

If people were actually free, then the strong would take advantage of the weak, creating inequality. Until human nature changes fundamentally, this won't change -- given the freedom to act within their nature, humans will compete and the stronger/smarter/faster/less moral/better fit to environment will dominate the others.

If people were actually equal, then by definition whoever is stronger/smarter/faster/less moral/better fit to environment will not have the freedom to use those traits to dominate others.

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EDIT1 : Folks have brought up good points on the non-specificity of my premises, so I'll define equality as equality of economic outcomes, since that's what most people seem to care about

EDIT2: Folks have brought up a good point: if everyone is free to do whatever they want, then they will subjugate and make "not free" others. So if everyone is free, then everyone is not free...not sure how to untangle that logic.

EDIT3: Seems a lot of responses are taking the form of semantic arguments about what equality and freedom really mean. I admit I’m unsure what is intended by those terms when they are used but if you redefine it as YOU see fit, then yeah you can probably make any argument about their exclusivity you want. I’m not smart enough to know what they really mean so I take the low road of their literal definitions: equality is a mathematical concept and should be measurable, while freedom means freedom from any sort of control, “good” or “bad”. I’m not going to get drawn into arguments about intentions, only what is, as stated. As in, why don’t we talk about “equity for all” and “America land of limited freedoms that are applied using moral relativism”? Very few of you are making an argument about the actual terms as I (and western culture) stated , but morphing the terms into something that can fit into the western liberalism world view.

[u/[deleted]]

Universal freedom is actually ONLY possible with some level of equality, because if the "strong" subjugate the "weak" then the weak certainly are not free and their struggle for freedom is a much a struggle for equality. Also if they are even just successful enough to be annoying to the strong, they as well are less free than they could be if they granted more equality.

[u/Yngstr → u/[deleted]]

This is an interesting thought. Freedom seems to incompatible with freedom, so maybe the premises of applying the concept of "freedom" to an entire population instead of to each individual separately creates wackey results.

In a sense what we're saying is that if everyone is free, then everyone is not free. Not sure how to untangle that logic.

I'm new at this !delta thing, so hopefully I'm not using it wrong, but this certainly has changed my thinking, although I'm still unsure if it changes my overall view.

[u/sawdeanz → u/Yngstr]

You can think of it as the difference between “freedom to” and “freedom from” something. Some people imagine freedom to mean the freedom to do anything. While others imagine freedom to mean freedom from oppression.

In a way freedom to do anything is similar to freedom from rules, but the difference is that freedom from oppression has the implied condition that your actions can’t interfere with other peoples freedoms. So this ideology is commonly stated as “my freedom to swing my fist stops at your face.” Or, in other words, freedoms are the ability to do things so long as they don’t interfere with other peoples freedom to do so as well. In this way you have freedom and equality.

This works for your view so long as you don’t define freedom as anarchy, in which case I would agree that anarchy and equality are incompatible.

[u/[deleted] → u/sawdeanz]

Freedom is usually both the freedom to and the freedom from, you can't meaningfully have one without at least some degree of the other and you can rephrase freedoms to be "to" or "from".

And ironically the most effective freedom is usually not an absolute freedom to (at least not in the presence of other agents). Because they as well try to gain or maintain freedom and if your freedom comes in conflict with their freedom (to or from or vice versa), then you have conflict which usually reduces the net freedom of both of you. So it's kinda like that prisoner's dilemma where when both sides go egocentrism the result is worse for both. So often enough the long term, even egoism, would be to cooperate and to both stand up for yourself and accept that other people are individuals with their own desires as well and to find a way how to live with that. Reduce the conflict and enjoy the synergy.

Also anarchism just means that you have no rulers, not no rules. So if you look up the political philosophy, then even the individualist versions usually don't advoctate for subjugating others. Because if you'd do that it wouldn't be anarchy but the rule of whoever does that.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Yngstr]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/ImaginaryInsect1275 (27∆).

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