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Illiberal Belief #9: It’s a Small World – Article by Bradley Doucet

Illiberal Belief #9: It’s a Small World – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
January 11, 2013
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We have only one planet, it’s true, and there are ever more of us crowding onto its surface. With six billion humans and counting, surely we must be running out of land—if not on which to live, then on which to grow the enormous amounts of food required to feed us all. As evidence, we are reminded of the large swaths of the planet mired in poverty, a tragedy that is used to justify any number of illiberal policies, from Maoist one-child population control laws to Stalinist food rationing meant to stretch out our meagre and dwindling resources.

Thankfully, these fears are unjustified. The advent and improvement of air travel and modern communications technologies have certainly made the planet seem smaller—we can zip to the Far East in a matter of hours, or send electronic documents anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds—but it’s still the same gigantic ball of rock it has always been. The Earth is really staggeringly large; too large, in fact, to grasp intuitively. Of course, six billion is also too large a number to grasp intuitively. Only mathematics can help us understand if we are truly running out of space.

Our planet has a surface area of approximately 510 million square kilometres, of which just under 30% (149 million sq. km) is land area. How many people can the Earth support? According to Scientific American, “With current farming techniques, a little less than half an acre can grow enough food to feed one person.” One square kilometre contains roughly 247 acres, and so can feed approximately 500 people. If all of the land on Earth were suitable for food production, our planet could therefore support a population of some 73.5 billion people (149 million times 500). Of course, not all land is suitable for agriculture, but thankfully we don’t need it to be. Our current population of six billion could be fed on just 12 million square kilometres of agricultural land, an area slightly larger than the United States. Even at nine billion people (the downwardly-revised population peak we are set to hit by 2050)(1), we would only need 18 million square kilometres, representing just 12% of the land on Earth, or an area about the size of Russia. Furthermore, this figure assumes unrealistically that no further improvements in farming techniques will be invented over the next five decades.

1. Although it is true that there are more of us than ever, the 2004 UN projections show that population growth is slowing and total population is on course to top out at around nine billion by mid-century, far fewer than previously thought.
Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
The 2012 US Election and the War on (Some) Drugs – Article by Bradley Doucet

The 2012 US Election and the War on (Some) Drugs – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
December 14, 2012
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I spent the evening of November 6 with some friends, intentionally notwatching US election coverage. There were only two plausible outcomes in the presidential race, and each was worse than the other, as one friend likes to quip. Another friend kept referring to the occasion as Halo 4 Launch Day, and we all pretended the release of that pvideo game was the most momentous thing happening on the world stage. We didn’t even tune in to see what humorous comments Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert might have come up with to lighten the sombre mood.

But along with the dark storm clouds that will continue to hang over the United States for at least another four years, there are other, lighter, more fragrant clouds that will be hanging over two states in particular: Colorado and Washington, whose voters approved ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana not only for medical purposes, as many states have already done, but even for recreational use. That’s right, in Colorado and Washington, you can now legally get high without a note from your doctor.

Two Steps in the Right Direction

I’ve written against the Drug War a number of times in the past, a fact that has led some people to think that I’m a big pothead. No, I assure them, this calm, laid-back demeanor is my natural, unaltered state of mind. I don’t write about ending drug prohibition because I personally want to smoke marijuana without fear of legal reprisals, but rather because drug prohibition is stupid and wrong. It’s stupid because it does not achieve its ostensible end of protecting us from ourselves by curbing drug abuse, and it’s wrong because protecting us from ourselves is not a legitimate function of government.

The Colorado Marijuana Legalization Initiative (aka Amendment 64) asked voters if there should be an amendment to the state constitution “providing for the regulation of marijuana” and “permitting a person twenty-one years of age or older to consume or possess limited amounts of marijuana,” as well as licensing production and taxing the proceeds. The Washington Marijuana Legalization and Regulation Initiative (aka Initiative 502) asked voters if the state should “license and regulate marijuana production, distribution, and possession for persons over twenty-one; remove state-law criminal and civil penalties for activities that it authorizes; tax marijuana sales; and earmark marijuana-related revenues.” Both measures were approved, each receiving 55% of votes cast. This is a sign of the times, as more and more people are realizing that drug prohibition is as wrongheaded as alcohol prohibition was in the 1920s—although a similar measure was defeated in Oregon, receiving only 45% of the vote.

Now the Hard Part Begins

Of course, just because the people of Colorado and Washington decided to legalize marijuana production and consumption does not mean the War to End the War on Drugs has been won in those states. For one thing, other recreational drugs will remain illegal, so the government can keep right on kicking down doors and shooting family pets in its crazed search for those substances. (If you haven’t heard about such occurrences yet, check out this chilling music video for the song “No Knock Raid” by Toronto musician Lindy.)

But even when it comes to marijuana, a substance that by all accounts is less harmful than alcohol, the fight is not over. That’s because the federal government is unlikely to honour the democratically expressed wishes of a majority of voters in these two states to be left alone. Instead, according to two former U.S. drug control officials interviewed by Reuters, “the federal government could sue to block parts of the measures or send threatening letters to marijuana shops, followed up by street-level clampdowns similar to those targeting medical marijuana dispensaries the government suspects are fronts for drug traffickers.”

On the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama, who has admitted to using marijuana and other drugs when he was young, spoke as if he were going to allow states to go their own way on the medical marijuana issue, breaking with the Bush administration’s policy of raiding pot dispensaries. “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue,” he promised. Yet as President, he has broken that promise, cracking down even more than his predecessor on growers and dispensaries in the 16 states that allow marijuana use for medical purposes. There is little reason to believe that the Hypocrite in Chief’s reaction to the Colorado and Washington initiatives will be any more restrained.

We’re from the Government, and We’re Here to Help

The notion that prohibition could accomplish anything besides the empowerment of organized criminals is one that should have died with the Volstead Act in 1933. The notion that other people ought to have the power to tell you what you can and cannot put into your own body is one that should offend any individual with a modicum of self-respect. On the one hand, it’s discouraging that the Drug War drags on in this day and age. But on the other hand, the fact that voters in Colorado and Washington have, for practical or moral reasons, denounced this destructive, bankrupt policy is at least a little something for lovers of liberty to celebrate this election cycle.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
Illiberal Belief #6: Good Intentions Are Enough – Article by Bradley Doucet

Illiberal Belief #6: Good Intentions Are Enough – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
November 11, 2012
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  There is a tendency among some people to focus almost exclusively on intentions. They may not explicitly believe that motives are all that matter, but they speak and argue as though that were the case. They spend a lot of time praising people they think have good intentions, who they imagine will act in ways that are beneficial to others, while condemning those they think have bad intentions, who they imagine will act in ways that are beneficial to themselves (either disregarding others or knowingly injuring them).There are several reasons why being overly concerned with people’s intentions in this way is misguided. First, it is simply not possible to be sure what another person’s motives are in any given instance. We are not mind readers, so when we infer someone’s intentions from his or her actions and declarations, we do so with a greater or lesser amount of uncertainty. To claim to have knowledge of another person’s mind is simply arrogant. It is sometimes not even possible in certain cases to be sure about our own motivations, much less someone else’s. This is because intentions are complex. We likely have several reasons motivating any given action, some of which even push us in opposite directions.

A second problem with obsessing about intentions is that actions which benefit oneself often benefit others as well. If I work in order to make money, those who voluntarily purchase the product of my labour also benefit, and this is equally true of any voluntary market transaction. This kind of self-interest should be praised as the motor that drives the world to become ever more prosperous, with condemnation reserved for that sub-category of self-interested actions which actually do harm the interests of others.

Finally, it has been said before, but it bears repeating: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Good intentions alone—even redefined to include benign self-interested intentions, and even setting aside the very real knowledge problems involved—are simply not enough. What’s the use in wanting to help the poor, for instance, if the manner in which I choose to do so succeeds only in perpetuating their plight? If one wants to do good, one must actually learn how to do good, or one may very well inadvertently end up making things worse. Instead of wasting time judging people based on what we imagine their intentions to be, we should focus on whether what they are saying makes sense, and on whether the results of their actions are actually good.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
Illiberal Belief #5: Charity Must Be Enforced – Article by Bradley Doucet

Illiberal Belief #5: Charity Must Be Enforced – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
October 13, 2012
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Some people feel that charity must be enforced and administered through government welfare programs because private charity would not suffice to meet the needs of the destitute and desperate. If people are not forced to give up half of their salaries to ensure a caring society, then they won’t do it and we will be left with a dog-eat-dog world in which the needy are left to suffer and die in the streets.It is undoubtedly true that very few people would give up anywhere in the neighbourhood of half of their earnings if they were not forced to do so. What is not true is that society as we know it would crumble as a result. Instead, it would flourish. Allowing people to keep more (dare we dream: all?) of their earnings would be a great incentive for people to work harder, because the extra effort would be fully rewarded. On the flipside, knowing that they will not be automatically taken care of is a great incentive for the unemployed who are able but unwilling to work to get off their butts already. As for those recipients of welfare programs who are truly unable to care for themselves, they would be able to rely on the voluntary charity of a society that will be even wealthier than the one we have right now and whose productive members will not feel that they “already gave at the office” to the tune of half of their earnings. There is simply no grounds for believing that the bulk of humanity is so uncaring as to let the truly needy suffer and die when helping them is readily within their reach.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
I’ve Got Olympic Fever – and the Only Cure is More Nationalism! – Article by Bradley Doucet

I’ve Got Olympic Fever – and the Only Cure is More Nationalism! – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
August 17, 2012
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Once again, the Olympics have come and gone. Some of the best athletes from around the world competed to see who could run, swim, row, dive, jump, kick, shoot, spike, spin, flip, and twist faster or higher or more artfully than their opponents. And that part of it was great. Well, some of it was dull as dirt, but some of it was genuinely thrilling and even beautiful.The part of it that I don’t get is where I’m supposed to cheer for the guys and gals who are “representing” Canada. I’m supposed to feel disappointed when these fine young men and women fail to live up to expectations, and I’m supposed to be happy, even proud, when they make it to the podium. And people from other nations are supposed to feel these emotions for the athletes “representing” them. Well, not only do I not feel anything special for Canadian athletes, but I would go so far as to say that such seemingly innocuous nationalistic sentiments are a big part of what’s wrong with the world.Nationalism by Any Other Name

For my money, foul-mouthed stand-up comedian Doug Stanhope put it best: “Nationalism does nothing but teach you how to hate people that you never met, and all of a sudden you take pride in accomplishments you had no part in whatsoever…” Now granted, the Olympics are not so big on the hate. But why should I, simply because I’m Canadian, take pride in the fact that Canada hauled in 18 medals? And should I feel a little less proud because only one of them was a gold? Of course, strictly speaking, “Canada” did not win 18 medals. Rather, Canadian athletes won 18 medals. But why should “we” care one way or the other, much less feel vicarious pride? We didn’t build that.

To be clear, I’m not against sporting events per se. I actually like sports, both playing them and watching them. I like watching basketball and American football, and I even root for certain teams (the Celtics and the Patriots). I enjoy watching my fellow human beings perform incredible feats of strength and agility, and struggle to summon extra energy or settle frazzled nerves. Watching tennis star Na Li rally from a 1-5 deficit in the deciding third set of her semi-finals match at the Rogers Cup in Montreal this weekend to win six straight games and take it 7-5 was both exciting and inspiring. I like the way Na Li plays—I refuse on principle to place her family name first, regardless of what is done in her nation—and she’s got a pretty quick wit, too, judging from the times I’ve heard her speak. Why should I give a damn what her nationality is?

I did watch some Olympic tennis, including the record-breaking third set of the match between Milos Raonic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga that took 48 service games to decide. I was impressed that Raonic could give Tsonga such a run for his money, but the fact that we are countrymen was the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, I was happy that Tsonga finally won the match. I enjoy his style of play, and he’s actually my favourite player on the men’s tour at the moment. Different nationality, different mother tongue, different skin colour? I literally could not care less.

The Hosts with the Most

What about the host country? In an article in the Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders wrote of the “mood of national euphoria” in England following the closing ceremonies, and of the “ineffable value of having organized a very large, very happy event with virtually no flaws, and having looked very good before the world—something that Britain once took for granted, and is likely to enjoy remembering for some time.” The implication is that Britain should feel proud of the great job it did hosting the Games.

But again, did “Britain” host the Games? Did “the British people” host the Games? No. Some small subset of specific individuals organized the event, for better or for worse. Why would every Brit deserve credit for that? Now, British taxpayers did foot the bill, whether they wanted to or not. And what a bill it was, totalling some $14.5 billion. (You can forget about any economic stimulus from hosting the Games, by the way. As Saunders tells it, the prospect of daily Olympic crowds of 100,000 kept at least 300,000 non-Olympic tourists away.)

Similarly, as a Canadian taxpayer, I financed some tiny fraction of the training of the Canadian athletes participating at these Games, who were subsidized to the tune of $96 million over the last four years. (For those of you keeping track at home, that’s five million and change per Canadian medal.) The thing is, paying taxes is not really something a person does; it’s something that is done to a person. I cannot therefore reasonably feel proud of what is done with those dollars once they are taken out of my account against my will, and neither should the British taxpayer.

For Love of Country

On a trip to Ottawa a few years ago, I saw a bumper sticker that captured my feelings about Canada: “I love my country, but I’m afraid of my government.” Canada is a fine place with many fine people who continue to enjoy the echoes of a strong classical liberal tradition. But those “representing” us (there’s that word again) in the halls of power are not generally speaking the finest of those fine people.

For one thing, they all seem to be nationalists of one stripe or another. I suppose it wasn’t surprising to see Pauline Marois, leader of the separatist Parti Québécois, celebrate the fact that Canada’s first four medals were won by Quebecers. Rather more disappointing was how all three major provincial party leaders were competing to oppose the purchase of homegrown Rona by US rival Lowe’s. The race for gold in the “economic nationalism” event was too close to call.

Someone is surely going to argue that the Olympics are all about the nations of the world coming together in friendship. Well first of all, at the risk of beating a dead dressage horse, “nations” cannot be friends. Only people can be friends, and some of the Olympians probably made some new connections. But do the Olympics help people from different parts of the world adopt friendlier attitudes toward one another? An American basketball team packed with NBA superstars rolling roughshod over every other team tells a different tale, as does the rash of below-the-belt punching in the quest for basketball gold. And how about those bad calls against the Canadian women’s soccer team, denying them a chance to play for gold? That really promotes friendly international relations.

One parting shot: I’ll take the human achievement of the Mars landing over the nationalistic achievements of the Olympics any day. And although again, the taxpayer funds used to pay for it rub me the wrong way, at $2.5 billion, the price tag was roughly 1/6 as large as the Olympic tab.

Some kind of reverence for imaginary lines on a map seems to be deeply ingrained in most people, but to me, honestly, winning a medal “for your country” is only slightly less creepy than winning one for your Dear Leader. I prefer the humanist sentiment of elation of one Western writer (I’ve tried in vain to relocate his name) who, upon seeing the Great Wall of China for the first time, exclaimed, “My people built that.” Human beings can do great things, which should be a source of encouragement and inspiration for us all, regardless of the colours of our passports.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
More of Everything for Everyone – Article by Bradley Doucet

More of Everything for Everyone – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
July 4, 2012
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At any given time, I like to be reading one fiction and one non-fiction book. Rarely, though, do my choices dovetail as serendipitously as they did just recently when I was reading Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think (2012) by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler alongside The Diamond Age (1995) by Neal Stephenson. The former is a look at the world-changing technologies coming down the pipe in a variety of fields that promise a brighter future for all of humanity. The latter is a story set in such a future, where diamonds are cheaper than glass.If Stephenson’s world of inexpensive diamonds sounds farfetched to you, consider the entirely factual tale that Diamandis and Kotler use to kick off their book. Once upon a time, you see, aluminum was the world’s most precious metal. As late as the 1800s, aluminum utensils were reserved for the most honoured guests at royal banquets, the other guests having to make do with mere gold utensils. But in fact, aluminum is the third most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, behind oxygen and silicon. It makes up 8.3 percent of the mass of the planet. But it is never found in nature as a pure metal, and early procedures for separating it out of the claylike material called bauxite were prohibitively expensive. Modern procedures have made it so ubiquitous and cheap that we wrap our food in it and then discard it without so much as a second thought.

The moral of the story is that scarcity is often contextual. Technology, as the authors explain, is a “resource-liberating mechanism.” And the technologies being developed right now have the power to liberate enough resources to feed, clothe, educate, and free the world.

The Future Looks Bright

Peter Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, best known for the $10-million Ansari X PRIZE that launched the private spaceflight industry. He conceived of the project back in 1993 after reading Charles Lindbergh’s The Spirit of St-Louis (1954) and learning about the $25,000 prize funded by Raymond Orteig that spurred Lindbergh to make the first ever non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927. Diamandis also holds degrees in molecular biology and aerospace engineering from MIT and a medical degree from Harvard.

Diamandis and his co-author, best-selling writer and journalist Steven Kotler, do not attempt to paper over the plight of the world’s poor, who still lack adequate clean water, food, energy, health care, and education. Still, there has been significant progress “at the bottom” in the past four decades. “During that stretch, the developing world has seen longer life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates, better access to information, communication, education, potential avenues out of poverty, quality health care, political freedoms, economic freedoms, sexual freedoms, human rights, and saved time.”

It is technology that has improved the lot of many of the world’s poor, and in Abundance, we get a quick tour of dozens of the latest exponential technologies that are poised to make serious dents in humanity’s remaining scarcity problems. There is the Lifesaver water purification system, the jerry can version of which can produce 25,000 litres of safe drinking water, enough for a family of four for three years, for only half a cent a day. There is aeroponic vertical farming—essentially a skyscraper filled with suspended plants on every floor being fed through a nutrient-rich mist—which requires 80 percent less land, 90 percent less water, and 100 percent fewer pesticides than current farming practices. There are advances that promise to make solar power more affordable and easier to store, which is going to be huge given that “[t]here is more energy in the sunlight that strikes the Earth’s surface in an hour than all the fossil energy consumed in one year.”

Stephenson’s The Diamond Age actually gets a mention in the chapter on education thanks to its depiction of what experts in artificial intelligence (AI) refer to as a “lifelong learning companion,” which has a central role to play in the novel. The Khan Academy has already shaken things up with its 2,000+ free online educational videos and two million visitors a month as of the summer of 2011. But things will be shaken up again soon enough by these AI tutors that “track learning over the course of one’s lifetime, both insuring a mastery-level education and making exquisitely personalized recommendations about what exactly a student should learn next.” With mobile telephony already sweeping the developing world and with smartphones getting cheaper and more powerful with each passing year, it won’t be long before there’s an AI tutor in every pocket.

Abundance, Freedom, and the Ultimate Resource

To sum up, in the world of the future, although there will be more humans on the planet, each one of us will be far wealthier on average than we are today. We will have more water, more food, more energy, more education, more health care, and make less of an impact on the natural environment to boot. And the healthy, educated, well-fed inhabitants of the world of tomorrow will be freer as well, no longer kept down by force of arms and blight of ignorance. We’ve already had a glimpse of what mobile phones and information technology can accomplish in last year’s Arab Spring, regardless of whether or not Egypt has made the most of the opportunity.

Not that we should be complacent, though. There are no guarantees, and any number of factors could derail us from the path we’re on. But there are powerful forces pushing us in a positive direction. The X PRIZE Foundation is doing its best to spur innovation with various prizes modelled after its initial success. Technophilanthropists like Bill Gates are also doing their part. And then there are the poor themselves, the bottom billions who are becoming the rising billions. As Diamandis and Kotler write, echoing the late Julian Simon, author of The Ultimate Resource:

[T]he greatest tool we have for tackling our grand challenges is the human mind. The information and communications revolution now underway is rapidly spreading across the planet. Over the next eight years, three billion new individuals will be coming online, joining the global conversation, and contributing to the global economy. Their ideas—ideas we’ve never before had access to—will result in new discoveries, products, and inventions that will benefit us all.

I still have a hundred pages or so to go in The Diamond Age, so I don’t know how that story turns out. But in the real world, all signs point to technology-fuelled increases in abundance and freedom in the poorest regions of the planet over the next couple of decades. Abundance encourages us to do everything we can to help those technologies develop and spread, to the benefit of the entire human race.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.
Illiberal Belief #11: The Environment Is Steadily Deteriorating – Article by Bradley Doucet

Illiberal Belief #11: The Environment Is Steadily Deteriorating – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
May 13, 2012
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There are plenty of potential sources of concern when it comes to the environment. We are polluting the air we breathe and the water we drink; we are depleting the oceans of fish; we are punching holes in the ozone layer; we are warming the climate to dangerous levels—and all of these problems, we are given to believe, are only getting worse.

Taken together, these worries, along with the ones discussed in more detail above, make up what Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg referred to as The Litany in his controversial(1) 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg plumbs the available data and the environmentalists’ arguments on each of these issues and discovers, to his surprise, that things are not as bad as they are made out to be. Like forest cover, air and water quality are generally improving in the developed world, and have been for decades. The ozone problem had a fairly simple and affordable solution which has been implemented. As for the climate issue, even setting aside the serious uncertainties contained in computer models, it will be much easier for us to adapt to future warming than to try, largely in vain, to prevent it. Our trillions of dollars, Lomborg emphasizes, would be far better spent dealing with more pressing problems like poverty in the developing world—and, he adds, helping the world’s poor climb out of poverty would have the additional benefit of allowing them the relative luxury of caring about and improving the state of their forests and the quality of their air.

We need not choose between improving the environment and alleviating world poverty, for the two categories of problems stem from the same kinds of causes. It is inadequately secure property rights and protectionist trade policies that keep the world’s poor from improving their lot; it is the absence of adequate property rights that threatens the ocean’s fisheries; it is irrational government policies that give polluters the right to pollute and forbid those whose property is polluted from seeking damages; it is government subsidies that lead to the wasteful use of water and other resources. We don’t often hear it in the media, but the solution to global poverty and to the environmental problems that do exist is one and the same: greater economic freedom.

1. Readers who are curious about this controversy are invited to visit www.greenspirit.com to see the debate between Lomborg and Scientific American, and decide for themselves which party is trying to clarify the issues and which is trying to muddy the waters.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.

What People Mean When They Talk About Freedom – Article by Bradley Doucet

What People Mean When They Talk About Freedom – Article by Bradley Doucet

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The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
April 11, 2012
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Most people I talk to believe that freedom is important. They generally want to be free, and they want others to be free as well. The disagreements only begin when we start discussing what, exactly, we mean by “free.” These disagreements over the meaning of liberty underlie a good part of the much-hyped polarization of politics in the western world.

One meaning, or set of meanings, is reflected in Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World survey, whose findings for 2009 are available here. Freedom, according to this survey, is “the opportunity to act spontaneously in a variety of fields outside the control of the government and other centers of potential domination.” If that seems a little vague, the organization’s website gets more specific, breaking freedom down into two broad categories: political rights and civil liberties. Political rights allow people to “vote freely for distinct alternatives in legitimate elections, compete for public office, join political parties and organizations, and elect representatives who have a decisive impact on public policies and are accountable to the electorate.” Civil liberties include “freedoms of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy without interference from the state.”

In the latest survey, fully 47 countries, ranging from Canada to Barbados, from the United States to Uruguay, get a perfect score of 1 for political rights and a perfect score of 1 for civil liberties. Only nine countries, including North Korea, Somalia, and Sudan, get the worst possible score of 7 on both counts. To get a sense of the spread, Argentina gets a pair of 2s, Turkey gets 3s, Kenya gets 4s, Ethiopia 5s, and Iran and Zimbabwe 6s.

Setting the Bar Too Low

This survey, however well-intentioned, suffers from two glaring deficiencies. First, it sets the bar way too low. By no stretch of the imagination are there 47 countries in the world that deserve perfect scores for freedom, even if we accept Freedom House’s criteria. Are civil liberties really perfectly safe in England, with surveillance cameras on every other street corner? Should the American Civil Liberties Union close up shop in an age of warrantless wiretaps, enhanced interrogation techniques, and jail time for smoking a joint? And here at home, how many Canadians really imagine that our proroguing Prime Minister is fully accountable to the public? I’m not saying I’d rather live in Zimbabwe—or Argentina, for that matter—but even in these relatively free countries of the Anglosphere, there remains plenty of room for improvement.

The other glaring defect in Freedom House’s survey is that it completely ignores economic freedom. There is no mention, for instance, of red tape, which costs small- to medium-sized Canadian businesses over $30 billion a year. No mention, either, of the eminent domain abuse that is rampant in the United States, robbing small property owners of their homes and shops in order to help some developer with deep pockets.

The Economic Freedom Network—with members in over 70 nations around the globe, including Canada’s own Fraser Institute—provides a picture of economic freedom in the world with its annual report. By its definition, economic freedom exists when property acquired “without the use of force, fraud, or theft is protected from physical invasions by others” and when individuals “are free to use, exchange, or give their property as long as their actions do not violate the identical rights of others.” More specifically, according to its latest report, to have high economic freedom, a country has to protect private property, enforce contracts, and have a stable monetary environment. “It also must keep taxes low, refrain from creating barriers to both domestic and international trade, and rely more fully on markets rather than the political process to allocate goods and resources.”

Compare and Contrast

Many of the countries that score highest in economic freedom are also at the top of the list in Freedom House’s survey of political rights and civil liberties, and conversely, most of the least free score dismally on both surveys. In fact, a graph in the Economic Freedom Network’s report shows this strong positive correlation. But there are some notable exceptions. Hong Kong and Singapore, first and second respectively for economic freedom with scores of 8.97 and 8.66 out of a possible 10, are only middling according to the Freedom House survey; and the United Arab Emirates (7.58) and Bahrain (7.56), 19th and 20th for economic freedom, are quite repressive on other counts, both scoring 5.5 according to Freedom House (with 7 being the worst possible combined average score).

Would I rather live in Singapore than in Canada, which placed 8th for economic freedom with a respectable score of 7.91? The trade-off in terms of civil liberties would probably be too high. But I would gain something in exchange for my loss. According to the Economic Freedom Network’s report, countries with higher economic freedom have substantially higher per capita incomes, higher growth rates, longer life expectancies, better environmental performance, and less corruption. The poor are also better off in absolute terms in countries with higher economic freedom, and no worse off in relative terms.

As a libertarian, I value both civil and economic liberty. I fault the authoritarian segment of the political right for running roughshod over the former, but I also fault an equally authoritarian segment of the political left for trampling the latter. But beyond this, I fault both sides of the spectrum for fetishizing political rights. Democracy is a tool, and it can be a useful one, but what good are elections if our representatives are not checked by a strict constitution from taking away our civil and economic freedoms? What good is accountability if the people don’t know or appreciate what is being taken away from them? Looking at it from the opposite perspective, if we cared enough and were wise enough to guard our civil and economic freedoms properly, would it matter very much anymore who administered the machinery of government? Yet without constitutional limits and the will to enforce them, political rights amount to the “freedom” to force others to do what we want—a power that interest groups will fight tooth and nail to wield.

As I am regularly reminded when I discuss libertarianism with my fellow Canadians, this is a pretty good place to live. Canada scores better than or as good as most places on the planet in terms of political rights, civil liberties, and economic freedom. This is a fact, and I am grateful for it. But does that mean we shouldn’t try to make life even better? Why are we so complacent, so ready to accept “pretty good” as good enough? Why are so many intelligent, educated people uninterested in even exploring what history’s great thinkers have had to say about liberty? Few Canadians, I wager, have even heard of Benjamin Constant, for instance. A champion of individual freedom two centuries ago, he viewed political rights as a collective kind of freedom, present in the ancient world, which was “compatible with… the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community.” Yes, Canada is a pretty good place to live, all things considered. When individuals are no longer subjected to the dictates of their fellows, free to live as they see fit and responsible for the consequences of their own actions, it will be a great place to live.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.

What the World Needs Now – Article by Bradley Doucet

What the World Needs Now – Article by Bradley Doucet

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What the World Needs Now

Bradley Doucet
March 11, 2012

So you’ve decided that you want to make the world a better place. And admittedly, despite humanity’s unprecedented gains in wealth, knowledge, wellbeing, and liberty over the past two hundred years, poverty persists in many parts of the world, ignorance and superstition fill countless books and broadcasts, needless suffering abounds, and everywhere men and women are still in chains. You want to feed the hungry, school the benighted, treat the sick, and free the servile. Noble goals all, to be sure, but what to do first? Where to focus your efforts? What does the world need now?

Perhaps a return to a gold currency standard in order to curb governments’ power to print money and fuel speculative booms and busts is the ticket. Or maybe you should do what you can to push for free trade, particularly in agriculture, and greater labour mobility across international and intra-national borders. Maybe ending wars and refocusing military resources and personnel on defence instead of offence is what is needed—and while we’re on the subject of war, ending the disastrous war on drugs, too. Perhaps fighting for lower taxes and simpler tax codes should be your priority, or fighting to simplify and reduce business regulations. Or again, you might think ending one-size-fits-all education and letting a thousand flowers bloom would bring about the most good, or maybe opening health care to greater competition and innovation.

Which of these goals should you devote your energy to accomplishing? Which would best promote the cause of liberty and hence lead to greater wealth, knowledge, and wellbeing for all? We could argue about it for days and not come to a definitive answer, but fortunately, we don’t need to agree. Indeed, as the above quotation suggests, to ask what the world needs is in fact to ask the wrong question. The world needs a lot of things, and any of the goals listed above is worth pursuing. But what the world needs most of all is more people who have come alive.

Love, Sweet Love

But hang on a second. Isn’t it selfish to spend your precious time and energy on what fills you with passion and makes you feel most alive? And isn’t selfishness one of the root causes of things like poverty, ignorance, suffering, and servility? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all gave more thought to the needs of our fellows—if, in other words, we were all a little less selfish? And isn’t it therefore wrong, even perverse, to call on people to be more selfish and claim that this is what the world needs?

The short answer to the first question is yes, it is selfish to concern yourself with what makes you come alive. But this is a case in which the short answer will not do. The problem is the persistent conflation of two distinct notions: petty, short-sighted, and ultimately self-destructive selfishness on the one hand; and expansive, rational, enlightened self-interest on the other. The man who rips off his clients, steals from his neighbours, cheats on his wife, indulges every stray impulse, and betrays his own deepest values is not doing a very good job of serving his own true interests. But the man who is honest in business and friendship, who weighs the future consequences of his actions and is true to his values will be more successful in the long run, which is to say that he will have a better, happier life. Happiness, in other words, is dependent on such virtues as honesty, rationality, and integrity.

There is another important distinction that helps to clarify the issue: the difference between duty and virtue. Whatever you may have learned from government schools or religious teachings, you have no duty to save the world, no duty even to make it a better place. This is no great loss, however, for the cold, grey hand of duty is a comparatively poor motivator in most cases. It breeds resentment and sucks the vitality out of existence. Happiness, in contrast, is a shining prize that feeds the spirit, a prize to be won daily and over the course of a lifetime through the exercise of virtue. And the kicker is that virtuous, happy, passionate people are precisely what the world needs.

Do What You Love, Freedom Will Follow

Even if you agree that you have a right to pursue your own happiness in a peaceful manner, you may still think the world would be better off if you sacrificed some of your happiness in order to work toward some other goal. Far be it from me to discourage you from pursuing a worthwhile goal if you want to pursue it. My purpose is rather to discourage you from pursuing a goal you don’t really want to pursue, a goal that will not make you happy.

If you sacrifice your happiness, even to further a goal that you value, you will squander your precious energy. Your unwelcome tasks will weigh on you, and you will feel depleted at the end of the day, and wake from sleep unrefreshed and unenthusiastic.

If, instead, you do what you love, you will have energy aplenty. You will tend to embrace your tasks, and you will feel good even when tired, and wake eager to greet the next challenge. Even if you spend your days in a manner that does not directly further the cause of liberty, as long as you do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, you contribute to making the world a better place through the positive sum game of voluntary exchange. You also set an example of the good life—a peaceful, productive, and happy life—that, if everyone simply emulated, would be sufficient to bring about a golden age overflowing with greater wealth, knowledge, wellbeing, and liberty for everyone.

There is one more indirect salutary effect that people who have come alive have on the world. In addition to benefiting others through voluntary exchange and through the productive and peaceful example they set, people who have come alive are not themselves easily ruled. They value their own freedom to follow their bliss, and will tend to guard it jealously, and so guard the freedom of others as well.

By all means, if you can directly further the cause of liberty in a way that makes you happy, I encourage you to do so. But don’t consign yourself to a life of misery because of some antiquated notion of duty to others. Instead, do what makes you come alive, and you will thereby contribute much to making the world a better place.

Bradley Doucet is Le Quebecois Libré‘s English Editor. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.