[HN Gopher] Why an abundance of choice is not the same as freedom
___________________________________________________________________
Why an abundance of choice is not the same as freedom
Author : herbertl
Score : 119 points
Date : 2025-10-19 14:58 UTC (8 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| gausswho wrote:
| An abrupt ending to a worthy if lomg setup. The final paragrpah
| hints at what I thought would be the meat of the article, but
| ultimately nneded more to demonstrate how limiting choice can
| lead to freedom.
|
| In practice, we all restrain our choices in ways that we hope
| narrow our focus and abilities towards things that matter. It
| would be nice to read a piece that explores how this can be true
| collectively.
| cma wrote:
| A long treatment of some of the stuff in the last paragraph is
| Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom though not necessarily the
| same conclusions
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom
| gausswho wrote:
| Thank you this is right up my alley right now.
| leobg wrote:
| Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of,
| and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
|
| Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast
| away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.
|
| Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly,
| however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?
|
| Nietzsche, ~1889
| Isamu wrote:
| I'm trying to engage with the author here and maybe I'll read the
| book that this refers to, but I think the author has this
| backwards.
|
| It's that when you little to no choice we say you aren't free. It
| doesn't follow that having more choices makes you free, but it is
| a prerequisite. Serfs tied to the land were not free, they had a
| choice to stay and struggle or leave and risk wandering and
| starving. Not much of a choice.
|
| Also the author seems to be worried that people will make bad
| decisions with their choices, and this seems not like freedom to
| the author.
|
| This piece makes me uneasy, it's like there's this effort to
| justify limiting our choices and calling that freedom. I'm
| wondering where this is going.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The author kind of lost me in the first few paragraphs because
| she bases her entire thesis on this idea that we frame freedom
| in terms of having many choices. But I've _never_ heard anyone
| do that! As you said, people generally recognize that having
| choices available is a prerequisite to freedom, but they do not
| require it to be a large number of choices, nor associate more
| choices with more freedom. So the author 's entire argument
| seemed to me to be based on a strawman.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Meanwhile, I've heard that very argument every time some
| official organisation makes a proposal to regulate the market
| to limit the dominance of some dominant players. Those
| distorting the market in their favour will oppose any
| regulation that reduces their power by bemoaning how it will
| limit consumer's choice.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think all of you are getting hung up on quantity versus
| quality.
|
| Past a very low threshold, it's the quality of the choices
| that matter not the quantity. And I don't mean workmanship or
| value, but the cost/benefit ratio of the choice.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I mean I certainly agree, but I never said otherwise. I am
| simply saying that the author is arguing against a
| viewpoint I've never actually seen expressed.
| TuringTest wrote:
| The article says 'abundance'. The point you make that having
| choices is a requisite for freedom, but truth is that freedom
| comes from meaningful choices, not an abundance of them.
|
| You have a myriad of artificially created choices that amount
| to more or less the same outcome; think of a supermarket, where
| all products are the same high-processed food and imported
| vegetables. Freedom would be having a competing family-owned
| local shop with proximity products.
|
| To have meaningful choice, you cannot depend of having a single
| homogeneous environment providing all the choices you can make;
| this can come from having healthy competition, or sometimes by
| you creating your own choices when there were none.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Serfs tied to the land were not free, they had a choice to
| stay and struggle or leave and risk wandering and starving. Not
| much of a choice.
|
| Your example is completely orthogonal to liberty. Choices are
| completely orthogonal. If the serf could leave and not starve,
| he still wouldn't be free because they would find and drag him
| back and punish him. He wasn't permitted to make the choice, it
| being incidental that he wouldn't survive long enough to be
| punished for it in most circumstances.
|
| If they had refrained from punishing serfs that leave you'd
| still insist there is no freedom there, I think, because of the
| starvation. But no one is obligated to feed you so that you can
| choose options that would otherwise starve you.
|
| >Also the author seems to be worried that people will make bad
| decisions with their choices
|
| For good reason. Given choices, humans inevitably pick the
| worst of them. And I'm not talking about those that are only
| bad options in hindsight.
|
| >it's like there's this effort to justify limiting our choices
| and calling that freedom.
|
| There's no effort, that's called reality. Reality limits
| choices, and it is effortless.
| throaway1988 wrote:
| We have the choice to be free for a time and then beaten or
| killed? no?
| throaway1988 wrote:
| Yeah, technically we're always free to do whatever we want.
| Other people are the issue, not our ability to choose.
| danaris wrote:
| There are absolutely ways in which limiting our choices
| _increases_ overall freedom: specifically, when our choices
| _harm others_ , or take away _their_ freedoms. Indeed, this is
| what laws that create a safe and healthy society based in rule
| of law _are_.
|
| Removing our freedom--or ability to choose--to kill others,
| take them as slaves, take away their stuff*, etc, is an
| increase in overall freedom of the society, especially as that
| removal is expanded to _everyone_ in the society, no matter how
| wealthy or powerful they are.
|
| * With impunity, through laws and enforcement thereof; being
| able to physically prevent us from doing such things _en masse_
| is a different kind of question.
| hinkley wrote:
| I suspect the appeal of Jane Austin is characters making the
| most of their limited choices. I don't think anyone reading her
| can ignore the vast set of rules the characters have hooked
| themselves and each other to. It's integral to the story. It's
| small rebellions that make the characters feel alive.
| techblueberry wrote:
| > Also the author seems to be worried that people will make bad
| decisions with their choices, and this seems not like freedom
| to the author.
|
| Even sort of bing a libertarian, objectively speaking, yes, I
| think other people will make bad decisions with their choices.
|
| I find this argument interesting, because I think it's a plea
| to rationality. people who consider themselves good/rational
| are humble enough not to paint the rest of humanity with such a
| broad brushstroke. But I think it's wrong, I think it serves
| more as an emotional plea than a rational one.
|
| So yes, I think the author probably thinks that too many
| choices will lead people to make bad choices, and in fact not
| only do I agree with the author but I would guess many? Most?
| People would be happy to apply this to themselves.
| halayli wrote:
| > It's only in recent history that freedom has come to mean
| having a huge array of choices in life. Did we take a wrong turn?
|
| Said who? This is an argument from invented opposition. I'm not
| sure anyone actually defines freedom as "a huge array of
| choices". The author seems to invent a mainstream narrative just
| to dismantle it(arguing against a straw man)
|
| Abundance of choice and freedom are orthogonal. Having the right
| choice and being free are not.
| gtowey wrote:
| I think it's definitely the case where corporations and the
| media want us to believe that having a huge array of choices is
| freedom.
| dkdcio wrote:
| how? in what way? why? what does that even mean?
| lm28469 wrote:
| Unlimited options when it comes to consumerists gadgets, 1
| option when it comes to being a wage slave your whole life
| card_zero wrote:
| It's not like they're obstructing a better arrangement.
|
| I guess you have in mind something like: all the
| pointless churn of making the latest video doorbells and
| smart watches could instead be dedicated to giving me and
| you some time off work. So, UBI? Maybe. But this is
| obstructed by voters, or by practicalities.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Choice is an aspect of freedom. You could have absolutely
| freedom from any kind of social or political obligation or
| coercion and if all you can do with that is how potatoes then
| what good is it?
| hinkley wrote:
| Salesmanship has long been associated with convincing people
| they have a problem and then offering a solution.
|
| And an evergreen one is the single differentiating feature.
| Like color. How many kitchenaid appliances have been sold in
| a faddish color only to be replaced by white or black or red
| a handful of years later? Those things were tanks. Still are
| to an extent.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| On the higher end. Low-end are imported often-junk with a
| badge stamped on them.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Said who? This is an argument from invented opposition. I'm
| not sure anyone actually defines freedom as "a huge array of
| choices". The author seems to invent a mainstream narrative
| just to dismantle it(arguing against a straw man)
|
| It's the inversion of something which is correct.
|
| If you don't have any choice or are limited to a small number
| of bad options, that's not freedom. Freedom _requires_ choice.
|
| But choice is necessary, not sufficient. Having a thousand
| frivolous choices that are all bad and still not the ones you
| ought to have is not it either.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The American media environment in the post-WWII era (say,
| 1948-1968) was full of both explicit and implicit claims that
| the vast array of consumer choices available to Americans was
| evidence of the freedom the Americans had.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| And it was.
|
| Evidence of a fact is different from the fact.
| raincole wrote:
| Freedom isn't about the number of choices. It's about:
|
| - Comprehensiveness: instead of pork or beef, you can choose from
| meat, fish, tofu or egg as your protein source.
|
| - Non-commitment: choosing one of them doesn't prevent you from
| choosing another for the next meal.
|
| - Safety: none of them shouldn't be so expensive that it hurts
| you financially, or poisoned it hurts you physiologically beyond
| its nutritional nature.
|
| I'm not talking about meals but elections, by the way.
| Theodores wrote:
| There is also the aspect of freedom - for whom?
|
| A 'free market' means freedom from monopolistic and rent-
| seeking practices (according to a Marxist). Yet we have a
| different capitalist take on what a 'free market' is, which is
| more like a choice between Pepsi, Coca Cola and own-brand cola,
| with plain old tap water not on the menu.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Taking it further, it's worth asking if we're talking about:
|
| 1. Freedom TO or
|
| 2. Freedom FROM?
|
| Both are valid in discussions of freedom, but I find the west
| tends to focus considerably more on #1 than #2.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Thanks for bringing this point up.
|
| I may have incredible freedoms inside a market, but I have
| little to no freedom from markets (or capitalism) I have no
| practical freedom between different economic systems.
| Capital has eaten it all. I detest being essentially forced
| to participate in a system I don't believe in where the
| alternative (living in the woods alone) isn't really an
| alternative at all. It's Moloch or the wilderness.
| saurik wrote:
| This wording isn't as useful as it comes across at first,
| as the issue itself is often two-sided. Steve Jobs--one of
| the defining users of these phrases in tech--saying that it
| is important to exert his puritan values on everyone to
| provide a "freedom from" porn by normalizing taking away
| someone else's "freedom to" install whatever they want is
| also him exerting what he feels should be his "freedom to"
| build centralized cryptographic locks and take away many
| peoples' "freedom from" authoritarians, whether here or in
| China. The west, for numerous reasons, tends to focus a lot
| on "freedom from" such control, and it happens to manifest
| as a "freedom to" do things, but a "freedom to" do
| something is always commensurate with a "freedom from" the
| constant intrusion of the people who insist that you can't.
| GPL software guarantees me both a "freedom to" do things
| with it, but it's moral purpose is to ensure "freedom from"
| all the shitty things developers can do to me if I don't
| have those guarantees. At the end of the day, I feel this
| linguistic contrivance is maybe useful if you've never
| before realized the world is made up of tradeoffs between
| multiple interests, but then it starts to lose its
| usefulness once people try to apply it as a shortcut for
| how to analyze or judge morality.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| I feel like we can simplify this: Alice's freedom to do
| something is in conflict with Bob's freedom from Alice
| doing it to him.
|
| And then we're back to "you should have the freedom to do
| anything that doesn't harm someone else" and people get
| to argue forever about what counts as harm.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| Thats just positive versus negative rights, although people
| often frame positive rights as "freedom from", i.e. "the
| freedom _from_ starvation ", which is just the positive
| right to food.
|
| Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it
| makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights.
| RIMR wrote:
| How exactly does the right to food "imply slavery"?
| anon291 wrote:
| It's the opposite and highly different across the western
| world, with America mostly focusing on 2 and Europe
| obsessed with 1
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I have no understanding of the "freedom to ..." and
| "freedom from ..." phrases that would align with your
| claim about America.
|
| "Freedom from..." is generally used to form phrases like
| "Freedom from hunger", "Freedom from homelessness",
| "Freedom from being thrown in the back of an unmarked
| black van by unmarked people wearing masks". I don't know
| what version of America you've experienced, but the one I
| know absolutely does not focus on this notion of "freedom
| from".
| RIMR wrote:
| Yeah, look at the state of our freedom of religion.
| Conservative Christians love to push the idea that
| religious freedom includes the right to legislate from
| scripture, but honestly, it feels like people should know
| better.
|
| People tend to think that when you get the government
| involved with something you are passionate about, that
| passion will now influence the government. Still, the
| reality is that you're handing control over that passion
| to the government.
|
| This is how a "Christian America" would play out.
| Whatever beliefs are held by those in power would be
| written into law, despite the actual opinions of
| America's Christians. The government would declare itself
| an authority over Christianity and would start telling
| churches how to operate.
|
| This was already partially true in red states before
| marriage equality (and probably still true today, to some
| extent). Progressive churches that believed same-sex
| marriages were holy in the eyes of God were told by the
| state that they could not perform same sex marriages - in
| some cases, even barring a pure non-binding ceremony as a
| form of "attempted marital fraud".
|
| If you are an American Christian and you care about your
| right to worship freely without government interference,
| you should cherish secularism. Enforcing the Bible as a
| matter of law means that interpretations of the Bible you
| disagree with will be enforced against you. Requiring
| prayer in schools will lead to vicious fights between
| teachers and parents over which prayers are the "correct"
| ones. Literally any piece of scripture you write into law
| will become controversial even amongst Christians. But
| still, people insist that their freedom would somehow be
| enhanced.
|
| And this doesn't even touch on the fact that a Christian
| America would turn non-Christians, especially Muslims and
| Jews, into a lower class of citizens.
|
| It is unfortunate that he current powers controlling all
| branches of our government are primarily interested in
| taking rights away, and that those who voted for it think
| that this is freedom.
| anon291 wrote:
| Freedom from interference. Hunger is not of human origin,
| thus no human can guarantee you freedom from hunger. This
| is a religious desire. On the other hand, humans can
| guarantee their own non interference
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| A free market simply means that individuals are free to
| conduct consensual transactions with others. In other words,
| they aren't compelled through violence or the threat thereof,
| to make or not make transactions that they otherwise would.
|
| Generally speaking, what all other definitions boil down to
| is Sam and Hanna wanting to make a consensual transaction,
| and some third party who has nothing to do with said
| transition interfering "for the greater good" or whatever.
| Which is nonsense, it's the complete opposite of freedom.
| siscia wrote:
| I believe the broader question would be if a free market is
| always USEFUL and DESIRABLE for individuals and community
| as a whole. And what is freedom when individual and
| community interest are not necessary the same.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| What you're really asking is if fundamental individual
| human rights are desirable for individuals and community
| as a whole, which is of course a hotly debated topic. So
| yeah, it goes all the way down to fundamental questions
| like if we should have freedom of association.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > A 'free market' means freedom from monopolistic and rent-
| seeking practices (according to a Marxist).
|
| This is also the position of Adam Smith and, for that matter,
| everybody except for the monopolists and their sycophants.
|
| I think the latter are sometimes referred to as the Chicago
| School and someone should really buy that place out to split
| it up and sell it for parts. I bet they have some nice
| buildings that are worth way more than any of their theories.
|
| > Yet we have a different capitalist take on what a 'free
| market' is, which is more like a choice between Pepsi, Coca
| Cola and own-brand cola, with plain old tap water not on the
| menu.
|
| Let's not ignore the third thing here. There are actual
| economists who will make arguments like "monopolies are
| efficient because of economies of scale" -- all empirical
| evidence to the contrary -- and presumably actually believe
| them. But there are also, you know, monopolies, and
| government officials in their pockets, who say things like
| that _knowing_ that they 're full of crap because that
| mendacity has been lucrative for them.
|
| And maybe we need to start putting _those_ people out on
| their butts or into a prison cell.
| card_zero wrote:
| Why are you (apparently) calling Milton Friedman a
| sycophant of monopolists? Here's a Friedman quote,
| shortened to keep it on topic:
|
| "A government which maintained law and order, defined
| property rights, [long list of other functions of
| government,] engaged in activities to counter technical
| monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely
| regarded as sufficiently important to justify government
| intervention, and which [something about welfare]--such a
| government would clearly have important functions to
| perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist."
|
| Obviously he didn't _like_ regulation at all, and was
| probably struggling to decide how much of it to tolerate,
| but that doesn 't mean he wanted monopolies.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The term "free market" originally referred much more to
| freedom from government or ruler-controlled markets than it
| did to the behavior of actors with a market.
|
| A free market in that sense is one in which (more or less)
| anyone can sell (more or less) anything at (more or less) any
| price. Historically, the freedom to do this was impeded by
| laws and/or arbitrary rule making, even if today monopolies,
| monopsonies and rent-seeking are a bigger problem in many
| markets.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| "People will say with a straight face that having one choice
| for dear leader is tyranny - but having two is freedom."
|
| By the way, it doesn't matter how many choices you have - if
| you can't chose the one you _want_ , you don't have any freedom
| at all.
| nielsbot wrote:
| > any freedom at all
|
| It's not all-or-nothing. I'd rather have a choice instead of
| none.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >It's not all-or-nothing. I'd rather have a choice instead
| of none.
|
| I used to work adjacent to car financing. One of the
| "tricks" used in car negotiating is the "fake choice": "oh,
| you want to pay less for the car? Well. I can give you X OR
| Y for FREE!". Now you spend time thinking if you want X or
| Y, forgetting thay they are worth $200, and what you really
| want is $1000 less on the car.
|
| Be careful with the "choice" you think you are making
| RIMR wrote:
| Don't let the illusion of having a choice make you feel
| like you have a choice.
|
| Having only one choice is equal to having no choice.
|
| Having only two choices isn't notably better, especially if
| both options are equally bad.
| b_e_n_t_o_n wrote:
| If I want pasta, and I can chose from 10k options, but
| none of which are pasta, is it really any different than
| if I had one option?
| vasco wrote:
| Do you want to eat a plate of worms or do you want to eat a
| plate of spiders?
| card_zero wrote:
| Spiders, probably. What kind of worms?
| intrasight wrote:
| Do you want to die from hanging, lethal injection, firing
| squad, electrocution?
| card_zero wrote:
| Lethal injection if done right, otherwise firing squad.
| What are you trying to demonstrate? Some choice is still
| better than no choice.
| card_zero wrote:
| If the people can get rid of a leader, they don't live under
| totalitarianism. Even though another leader will appear quite
| soon, the important thing is to be able to cause the
| incumbent leader anxiety and confusion at election time, to
| prevent excessive leadership.
| raincole wrote:
| I will say with a straight face that having one choice for
| dear leader is tyranny, but having two is better than one.
| barrenko wrote:
| Freedom is freedom from choice.
| mgh2 wrote:
| There is this fanaticism in the US with "choice", which is
| confused with freedom, that can often result in detrimental
| consequences:
|
| https://medium.com/@trendguardian/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tal...
| jancsika wrote:
| > - Non-commitment: choosing one of them doesn't prevent you
| from choosing another for the next meal.
|
| Left unspecified-- do you mean as measured scientifically? Or
| do you simply mean that a person _perceives_ that this choice
| won 't prevent them from choosing differently for their next
| meal?
| dpflan wrote:
| Sounds like _The Paradox of Choice_.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
| massysett wrote:
| Sort of. I took the argument in "The Paradox of Choice" to be
| that too many superficial choices can reduce happines: for
| instance, choosing between ten different varieties of
| toothpaste in the supermarket can overwhelm the consumer. I
| think a practical lesson from that book is that a company can
| boost sales by reducing the number of trivial choices it
| offers, making it easier for the customers to pick the "right
| one."
|
| This article on the other hand seems to say that people have
| equated choice with political or economic or philosophical
| freedom and, furthermore, that this equivalence is a false one.
| It's a deeper and more difficult argument to make. I think "The
| Paradox of Choice" makes a lot of sense but this article leaves
| me unconvinced. For example I'm not understanding the argument
| this piece makes about the abortion debate. Abortion rights
| proponents are not arguing that the right to choose abortion is
| an empty promise. They're arguing that women need to have real
| choices so they can in fact choose abortion if they wish. The
| arguments this piece makes to suggest choice does not promote
| freedom seem to me to support the opposite conclusion: that
| choice is an essential component of liberty and freedom.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Is this about _freedom to_ vs _freedom from_?
|
| The first freedom of course is freedom from fear (e.g. from fear
| of being snatched from the street just because you are brown and
| speak with an accent)
| techblueberry wrote:
| I find this topic wild, and it makes me wonder a lot of things
|
| - is an abundance of choice not freedom, or is freedom not
| strictly speaking "good"
|
| - is there a freedom to be able to have a life on rails? Maybe 50
| years ago you grow up in a small town with a coal mine, and you
| get married to someone from that town and work in that mine for
| the rest of your life. That choice or lifestyle is not available
| to a lot of people anymore.
|
| - non-compatible choices --- some people say about work from home
| is always good, because each person has a choice, some can work
| from home, some in the office, but these choices just aren't
| compatible. Having a work from home policy generally means that
| people who want to work in the office don't get the experience
| they were hoping for.
|
| - super markets. consolidation means there's only a few brands of
| supermarkets left. But those super markets have more choice than
| ever before - but they also tend to have a pretty narrow
| selection of raw ingredients / produce. What is freedom here?
|
| * the loss of special experiences. My city had a great authentic
| Thai restaurant. It was great! I could go whenever I wanted, but
| when I actually went to Thailand, I was a bit disappointed that
| nothing really felt new there.
|
| * the loss of human connection. I think the world was a better
| place when Tv during the day sucked. We've fundamentally lost the
| need to rely on each other for entertainment, and I think this
| has impacts in community formation, friendship and dating.
|
| * Adaptation to self vs self-adaptation. When there was less
| choices you had to change yourself to appreciate new things. Now
| one can probably almost precisely do the opposite, only find the
| things that match who you currently are.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| This is demonstrably false. Large supermarkets in the US have
| far more SKUs in produce, dairy, and meat than they did 30
| years ago. I can still remember the first time I encountered a
| number of vegetables in the early 2000s which suddenly appeared
| in large chain grocery stores. Who knew what a sunchoke was in
| 1992?
| bendigedig wrote:
| In my view a superabundance of irrelevant choices blinds most
| folks to the lack of more politically important choices which are
| denied to most.
|
| Perhaps the contemporary fight back against 'woke' is really
| about the important and empowering choices in life being denied
| to too many?
| cjfd wrote:
| I once hear 'freedom' explained as having the ability to do what
| only you can do. I think that is better food for thought than
| this entire article.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Exactly this. The article (and most of the discussion) is about
| choices in a marketplace. Consumption of goods and services.
| Freedom to me is much more about the ability to pursue one's
| own life goals, what to study, what things to devote one's life
| to, where to live, how to practice religion or other systems of
| values, etc.
|
| Talking about freedom in terms of a selection of products in a
| marketplace seems very shallow.
| ranprieur wrote:
| The most fundamental freedom is the freedom to do nothing.
| loganc2342 wrote:
| The article brings up some interesting points but doesn't really
| go anywhere with them. I came into the article with a mindset of
| "freedom of choice is objectively better, explain to me why I'm
| wrong," and only came away with the caveat of "if public health
| and safety demands less choice." Which is fair, and essentially
| how (the majority of) people reason politically, at least in the
| US; on paper, your choice of political party affiliation rests on
| how much individual choice you believe people should have on
| individual issues, such as the choice to have an abortion or the
| choice the manufacture a product that harms the environment. The
| debate is essentially: does giving people this choice have a
| significant enough negative impact on public health and safety to
| warrant limiting the freedom to make this choice?
|
| However, I still think that, in general, more freedom of choice
| is only a good thing.
|
| > Is there any real difference between the scores of toothpastes
| or breakfast cereals in contemporary supermarkets?
|
| That depends. Do you have a preference for one flavor of
| toothpaste or cereal over another? Do you have dental issues that
| require a toothpaste with whitening effects, or without fluoride,
| or with baking soda? In a cereal, do you value health concerns
| over taste, or vice versa? If so, then yes, there is a real
| difference between different choices in these cases. Making one
| choice over another can have a direct impact on quality of life,
| if often a minor one. And this is what makes freedom of choice so
| important for me: it's the freedom to strive to improve quality
| of life--synonymous with the pursuit of happiness.
|
| Of course, as the article briefly touches on, freedom of choice
| isn't the only kind of freedom, and arguably isn't the most
| important one, either. I think this is the point the author was
| trying to make, but she doesn't go into much detail. Freedom from
| oppression is a prerequisite for freedom of choice, and freedom
| from suffering is (on paper) the ultimate goal of it. Therein
| lies the debate: when does increased freedom of choice impede on
| these other two freedoms? Which should be prioritized in these
| cases? The line is different for everyone. I would've liked to
| see the article add more nuance to the discussion.
| card_zero wrote:
| Toothpaste options do matter. There's only one kind I know of -
| conveniently very cheap, not a big brand - without massive
| amounts of menthol in. Since menthol triggers my gag reflex, I
| buy that one. Without consumerism, I would be supplied with the
| people's utility toothpaste, and I would be retching whenever I
| brushed my teeth.
| overflyer wrote:
| When you had therapy for several years there are very wise
| therapists and authors that teach you that the opposite iOS true
| despite sounding paradox: Freedom is the limitation of choices.
| notagoodidea wrote:
| I have that cheesy-ish phrase I carry around with me since a
| teenager: "Freedom is the ability to choose your regrets and your
| remorses".
| kleiba wrote:
| They say that choice is freedom I'm so free it drives me
| to the brink ... They say that choice is
| freedom I'm so free it's driving me insane ...
| They say that choice is freedom I'm so free I'm stuck in
| therapy
|
| Joe Jackson: It's All Too Much (1991)
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| To me, freedom means to be free of obligations to others. I don't
| really see how an abundance of choice has anything to do with
| freedom...
| NaomiLehman wrote:
| There is a really good book that touches on some of these topics:
|
| "Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he
| wants,' while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In
| order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what
| one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think,
| but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to
| solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting
| ready-made goals as though they were our own."
|
| -- Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (or The Fear of Freedom in
| another translation)
| daft_pink wrote:
| It's not the same thing as freedom, but it does correlate.
| Correlation does not equal causation all the time, but sometimes
| it does and it's often impractical to prove it doesn't if the
| correlation is high enough.
|
| Having a lot of choices is often a strong indicator that you also
| have freedom.
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| Equating freedom with choice is strange. Often choices comes hand
| in hand with commitments which removes initial options from the
| table while other options appear. Whether the lost options
| produces regret is a matter of one's evolving values that
| perceives the available options at the given time. Hence absence
| of regret seems the real freedom, but we don't have a Time
| Machine or a Crystal Ball. The next best option is approaching
| regret with humility of the past and agency to align current
| values with future options. If the values don't need to be forced
| on oneself to align with available options then we get freedom.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| If you have many choices that are within a small range, it's the
| opposite of freedom. It's more about control. But it works
| extremely well to give the illusion of freedom.
|
| You see that in our political discourse. Debates over things like
| gay marriage, immigration or abortion are encouraged because they
| don't cost the oligarchy any money. Discussion about things like
| income inequality that may reduce the power and wealth of the
| upper class is discouraged.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Behavioural economists point out that most people are actually
| pretty bad at making decisions of this kind
|
| That's okay because those choices are their own. I think most
| people would rather make their own choices and live with the
| consequences than have the ability to choose taken from them even
| if that'd mean being forced into something that would be better
| for them than alternatives. Personally, I don't equate an
| abundance of choice with freedom, but a lack of choice or
| unnecessary constraints on avilable choices aren't going to make
| people more free either.
| weitendorf wrote:
| Consumer freedom is a real kind of freedom that goes hand in hand
| with the freedom to choose more meaningful lifestyle and career
| choices. The reason those choices are meaningful is precisely
| because the stakes are higher than what you buy at the store. If
| you go back two hundred years, the ability for a family to offer
| their children such an abundance of food with so many options
| _was_ extremely meaningful because poor people really did have to
| struggle to put food on the table and almost nobody had access to
| so many different kinds of food. Now we take it for granted
| because it's easy and anybody can do it, not because we stopped
| enjoying it.
|
| When people decry that nobody else will pay them to be an artist
| or to follow their passions they're really decrying that they're
| unwilling or unable to follow their passions without either
| giving up something or without offering enough back to other
| people to justify their use of their resources. Reality doesn't
| give a shit whether or not you're free, neither does the guy that
| built your house or grew your food, or the nurse that wipes your
| ass when you get sick.
|
| You either have to be the change you want to see or stop whining
| that other people won't adjust their lives to conform to the way
| you want them to be, without subjecting yourself to any
| discomfort beyond jeering from the sidelines. It's really easy to
| imagine a world in which you're free to benefit from everybody
| else's lack thereof, children do it all the time.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| Productivity has outpaced population growth for some time, and
| the largest obstacle to the full-fledged social stability that
| would guarantee ubiquitous "food on the table" (at least, in
| the West) are people like you, who advocate zealously for
| artificial scarcity based on a mistaken or emotional sentiment.
|
| Anyway, "consumer freedom" as we know it is a facade, with a
| handful of conglomerates owning most of the brands you know, a
| few large investment funds owning the conglomerates, and a few
| factories in Asia supplying many of the parts and products that
| nominally Western brands sell. The choices aren't meaningful
| and the costs are higher _because_ we try to maintain this
| appearance of choice (hence, Temu).
| weitendorf wrote:
| How willing are you to farm for your own food, or let someone
| else decide what's worth eating? How willing are you to order
| other people what to do without taking those orders yourself?
| Do you think that you're going to be the one in charge in a
| world where someone gets to decide we have enough different
| kinds of cereal? There are places where you can live like
| that right now, most people don't like them.
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