economically well-off or free?

[The Dharma Bum]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liber ... -negative/

[Stratego]

[The Dharma Bum]

[Stratego]

Rather than thinking about freedom as a single thing, we need to start segmenting freedom into acts. Rather than asking whether we are free, we should ask whether we're free to do A, B, C, D.....etc. Then you sum up all the acts where you have both positive and negative freedom and ask yourself are you satisfied with what you can freely do?

A government can improve the results of freedom segmentation through decentralizing.

[eynon81]

This is a great thread! fun topic Homer...major props.

Easy answer though, I would much rather be upper-middle/lower-upper class in Pinochet's Chile than poor in modern democratic Mexico. As people have mentioned on this thread poverty impedes liberty worse than most dictatorships.

Of course that is subject to some change, I'd rather be a poor Mexican than a Middle-class Afghani under the Taliban. But yeah, I'd take Pinochet or Franco over poverty in a heart-beat.

[Medius]

The title is kind of wrong, you mean "Free or Moderately Well Off?"...

Honestly, I would have said "Free or Rich?" as that puts a better perspective on things. There is social freedom and personal freedom. The poor in America have social freedom, but no personal freedom. The rich generally have both as they can just move to where they have social freedom (or just buy off the government to have it where they live). Of course, that depends on whether you are resting rich or working rich. If you have to work like crazy to maintain the rich, you aren't very free, but you have a better opportunity of freedom than someone who works like crazy to maintain just life.

Then, of course, you need to add in the other bits. For instance, if someone were homosexual, they would probably choose poor in the US as rich in a dictatorship may be the equivalent of dead in a dictatorship.

So to bring it to the majority:

Would you rather be poor in America or rich in a dictatorship where having relations with the opposite sex is punishable by death?

[Mathurin]

[Mathurin]

[Stratego]

[eynon81]