Freedom

Ask most people if they believe themselves to be free, and they usually reply in the affirmative. This is hardly surprising, given that nobody in a modern industrial society is marched to work by armed guards, nor are shoppers forced to shop at gunpoint. When it comes to the latter one might justifiably argue that in some respects there is too much rather than too little choice. Just as the shopper has a variety of alternatives to choose from, so the voter has freedom of choice between a number of offerings in the political sphere. The above description roughly captures the bounds of freedom as envisaged by neo-liberalism. Freedom exists with respect to something or someone, just like its opposite, constraint. Liberals advocate freedom in respect to two important contexts, political freedom and economic freedom. Political freedom is tied to the idea that all citizens are presumed to act rationally in their self-interest and expects them to behave responsibly by casting their vote in seeking to elect those who best represent their interests and by playing an active role in lobbying these representatives in the period between elections. The liberal assumption of economic freedom is that one should seek to enable the creation of a free market with many buyers and sellers each acting in accordance with their self-interest.