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Freedom Principles "The best things in
life are beyond money; There are two types of
freedom - 'freedom from…' and 'freedom to…'
Freedom to Act We have a law against murder that requires us to relinquish our freedom to arbitrarily kill in exchange for the security offered by that law from murderers. Of course, it is not perfect because such laws are broken, but relatively rarely in this case because it has the consent and approval of the vast majority of people. This category of law concerns the general relinquishing of freedom to do physical harm to ones fellow citizens in exchange for security from such. It is the balance involved in 'freedom to act'. Yet even in this general case there are exceptions, for example, contact or combat sports where all parties are consenting, informed adults. However, there are glaring inconsistencies in most Western societies over the issue of 'consenting adults' and what they may, and may not, do. For example, until relatively recently most homosexual acts were illegal. Duelling and prostitution still are in many jurisdictions, as well as boxing in some. Much of the muddle over these issues stems not from rational debate but from outmoded religious doctrine - something of an irony in a supposedly secular society. At the heart of this paradox lies the question of 'Who owns my body?' The Middle Eastern monotheists of Judaism, Christianity and Islam say 'God'. The modern secular libertarian view is 'I do' - that the only person I have to answer to for what I do with my body, or allow to be done with it, is myself. If we accept the latter premise (which we do) then we must also accept that with freedom comes responsibility. If we do something stupid, and do not like the consequences, we have nobody to blame but ourselves, and have no automatic Right to call upon our fellow citizens to bail us out of trouble. Read the quote from Robert Heinlein once again please… There is only one caveat that should be applied, and that is of 'informed consent'. Some adults, through mental incapacity, may be incapable of giving informed consent. In these (rare) cases the people involved should, as far as possible, be given the same degree of protection (and consequent lack of freedom) as minors. What this means is a quite radical departure from currently accepted wisdom in certain areas of law. It means, for example that prostitution should be regarded as a regular business and regulated as such. It means that I have the Right to commit suicide, and others have the Right to help me should I so desire i.e. euthanasia is permissible. It means I should not be forced to wear a seatbelt in a car, nor crash helmet on a motorcycle (providing I pay for any resulting injuries). Above all it means that I have the Right to ingest whatever chemicals I so desire - even to my own detriment. The latter argument is, of course, referring to illegal drugs - a trade bigger than the oil or car industries, and second only to the global arms trade. In the name of 'saving people from themselves' Western morality has created a monster of corruption and associated crime that is unparalleled in Human history. The so-called 'war on drugs' has been an utter failure for a simple reason that our Capitalist politicians seem strangely unable to recognise - 'you can't buck the market'. Since the dawn of recorded history people have been taking drugs, whether alcohol, tobacco, hallucinogens, tea, coffee, cannabis etc. Recreational drugs are one of Nature's commercial success stories and no laws are going to change that. The damage done by prohibition is not measured by the deaths of addicts, because, to be honest, that is a trivial statistic - at least compared to the damage done by socially acceptable drugs. The real damage of illegal drugs is hundreds of billions of dollars of dirty money flowing in the banking system and corrupting entire nations and societies from top to bottom. At the low end the vast mark-ups on the products creates a crime wave that in Britain accounts for about half of all crime in order for addicts to fund their purchases. At the high end an estimated forty-percent of money flowing in the economic system is tainted - and nobody from bankers to politicians seemingly has any ability to stop it. Or, more likely, no incentive. And all this money then flows into the hands of some of the most evil and ruthless people on Earth to be reinvested in legitimate businesses (you didn't think it was stuffed under the mattresses of drug barons did you?). The notion that this has no effect on the moral complexion of contemporary business practices is naïve. Yet this whole evil cycle of corruption could be stopped in its tracks by simply selling drugs openly to adults who wished to buy them (plus tax). Addicts would no longer have to commit vast amounts of petty crime to fund what would now be a relatively cheap habit. The dealers would be immediately out of business because there would no longer be vast profits in the supply. The driveby shootings and gangland wars would cease overnight. And what of the suffering and deaths of addicts, when anyone can walk into a pharmacy and buy a gram of cocaine or heroin? The most popular addictive drugs are seldom particularly dangerous, despite newspaper reports to the contrary. Deaths only tend to occur because the strength and purity of illegal drugs is unknown to the purchaser and overdoses or poisoning can result. And with drugs that may have chronic long-term problems – caveat emptor. One can envision a situation where there would still be strict controls over the supply of such substances, and very severe penalties for supplying minors. Adults would need to supply identification in order to purchase the drugs and full information would be provided on the effects, if known. It would be made very clear that, unless the product was specially taxed, the community would not supply free medical treatment for those effects either acute or chronic. Additionally, any crimes committed under the influence of such substances would be not be treated with leniency. The excuse of 'I was drunk/stoned/hallucinating when I did it' would simply count as a confession and be in no way a mitigating circumstance. It is time adults were treated as such - it is by far the lesser evil. The Freedom to Know Information, and its free flow, is the lifeblood of any advanced civilisation. It is essential to the economy, scientific and technological advance, and politics. Impeding it, restricting it or overcontrolling it cripples all the above. The failure of the old Soviet Union is a case in point. The question is not one of what information the public in general should have the Right of accessing in a Freedom of Information Act, but of what can legitimately be held from them. The only justifiable categories that may be withheld from the people by the government are: Information whose public release will provably damage the wellbeing of the people as a whole. The examples following are not intended to be exhaustive but illustrative. An obvious case is that of ongoing criminal investigations by the police or security forces. Other such information would be detailed technical descriptions of government research and development affecting national security. Information held on individuals which should not be accessible to anyone but those individuals, and should be available on demand whether government or private corporations hold that information. Citizens should not have to provide information to any organisation, including the government beyond identifying themselves, unless contractually obliged to do so. In addition the government should regulate what information is permitted to be held on its citizens by private corporations. Finally, all the workings of public servants must be available for scrutiny by any citizen, subject to standard commercial and short-term confidentiality agreements. This is especially important at the lower levels of government where it interfaces directly with the public. Such freedom of access is the major tool in the fight against corruption. The Freedom to Speak Communication is a two way process, and freedom of speech concerns the dissemination of information and what limits may be placed upon it. Historically this has been one of the most contentious areas with almost all societies having censorship laws covering areas as diverse as government workings, politics and pornography. The current debates over child pornography and ‘hate speech’ are just the modern faces of these old topics. Given our libertarian leanings outlined in the above sections it follows that we are not in favour of censorship unless a criminal act has been committed in order to produce or acquire material. In which case knowingly distributing such material in a manner likely to exacerbate the crime would make the distributor an accessory. Which takes care of all the pornography laws (or lack of them) and also precludes ‘hate speech’ laws other than direct incitements to violence, and even that is a grey area in our opinion given that no physical violence is actually involved. Does this mean that slander
and libel are to be tolerated and go unpunished? It
depends… For example, in a Usenet news group where lies, distortion and hyperbole are the norm libellous accusations generally go unremarked because the entire medium is unreliable and only a fool would believe what is written. An equal prominence Right of reply would also go unnoticed, which is appropriate. On the other hand, if the medium were a newspaper selling millions of copies such a Right may well be a major disincentive to sloppy journalism. However, much of the effectiveness of such a new law would depend on having swift and cheap access to justice. There is also one category of ‘speech’ that needs to be restricted, but not by direct censorship. That is socially harmful material that is reinforced by monetary gain. A prime example would be tobacco advertising, where there are vast profits to be made persuading people to take up what is universally recognised to be a damaging habit of no social benefit. Another is advertising aimed at children, the most vulnerable members of our society. In such cases we must employ a version of the ‘Economic Separatism’ principle of the Consensus Principia and ‘de-finance’ such information dissemination. That is, we should literally allow ‘free’ speech, but not speech that is part of a monetary positive reinforcement cycle. In the case of tobacco it would be perfectly acceptable for anyone to argue that it is a good and healthy habit to indulge – as long as no person or corporation was making money from saying so. If they did, then punitive taxes should be applied against the entity involved. Genuine 'free' speech is to be severed from the notion of financial gain. Privacy Last of all, there is the reverse side of the information coin – privacy. Who should know what about whom? This can be divided into two questions: how much should a government be allowed to know about its citizens, and how much should corporate entities be allowed to know? The latter question is most easily answered, or avoided. Corporations need to know only enough to be able to carry on their business under government supervision, with data protection and freedom of information laws fully applicable. The big question concerns government, and especially the methods whereby they acquire their information. Obviously, in criminal or targeted security investigations the entire panoply of surveillance techniques can be justified, from signals intercepts to DNA samples. However, what concerns most civil libertarians is the routine information collected and stored about ordinary citizens, as well as the extent that ‘data mining’ is used to combine information from multiple systems across government and business. The most topical of such are ongoing proposals for identity cards, fingerprint and DNA databases, and tracking information extracted from mobile phone records, not to mention total surveillance of all Internet and email activity. Given the new levels of global terrorism and the shifting of significant criminal activity into cyberspace (along with much else of a more mundane nature) this too can be argued to be in the best interests of our citizens. Ultimately it is for our societies as a whole to decide the trade-offs involved. However, it is vitally important that honest citizens know what information the state is storing about them and how it is being used, and be able to have confidence that such information will not ‘leak’ to interested third parties that might find it valuable. To help ensure this truly Draconian penalties should be levied against such abuse - not merely fines, but years in prison for those breaching confidentiality. © The Consensus 2002 |
