China has made the world more free than America has?

[Zeugma]

[Boris Johnson]

Postive liberties have very little to do with an increase in international trade as well I might add, the sort of things Berlin was talking about are how much one is involved in ones society, for example the positive liberty of being able to stand for office. Aruging something like a right to a job is a postive liberty is one thing. I do think the concept can somewhat be applied to freedoms, but to suggest that you then get postive freedoms by an increase in consumer goods. Is pushing the concept to breaking point.

Furthermore, positive liberty applied to china (A technocracy where normal citizens have no say) certainly does not come out with it looking good.

The point Berlin was making with the concept, is that saying 'oh we are free we have no constraints upon that which we do' or saying 'oh we are free we get to vote about everything' misses the fact that both forms of liberty are important. A state in which there is no central authority and anything goes is not free, likewise a state in which restrictive laws on what the individual can do are passed by democratic mandate is not as free either.

Just condensing the work of Berlin down into some parallel check list of 'things what it is good to have for freedom' calculating it up and coming out with some freedom figure, misses the point of Berlin. I was guilty of this a lot in the past frankly, I remember making several arguments on old school pcf that negative liberty was the only way to go. Which misses the entire point of Berlin (and others) project in the 50'ies and 60'ies by in the wake of what was seen as the failure of liberalism in 1920'ies germany trying to go back to first principles and understand what was important and worth defending about western liberal societies.


Anyway, clearly not a srs stratego post.

[Dylan]

Somewhat odd post, given that the US and Europe have been the greatest consumer of goods (by a huge margin) for decades. Going by the standard of "freedom" you posed, then, the West has distributed more "freedom" than any other group.

But this is a silly standard anyway so I'm not sure why I tried to engage it.

[Aaron]

So stratego thinks he can create a definition just for purposes of a thread.

Freedom is born out of the European movement towards individualism. That movement which turned away from collectivism and religious dependance, created the United States as a byproduct. China has nothing to do with this. Nothing.

[Stratego]

[Dylan]

and whose FDI and consumption made China's economic rise possible, stratego?

[eynon81]

even by Strategos' standards the US has done more than China.

[Zeugma]

[kapitokrug]

[Boris Johnson]