So this chapter attempts to compare the freedom people have in a hunter gatherer economy to freedom in a modern economy.
The chapter makes some good points about how having to follow orders in the structure of a "job" and how that is most peoples' only choice, but I really did not find this all that convincing. Having argued with propertarians a lot, a lot of them will argue things like "well you dont have to work for an employer" and "you dont have to have a job" and imply you can start your own business or choose to live in the woods.
I mean, hunter gatherer societies are "living in the woods", and that's not an opportunity most are willing to take. Widerquist makes a good argument about why it's not viable. Any territory where people settled were eventually taken over and people were forced to integrate into states, but yeah.
The impression I get is that people gain freedom in some ways, but lose it in other ways. Yeah you dont have to take orders from a anyone specifically. You dont need to work a job where you're subservient to others. but then you're expected to share everything and have zero privacy, which is almost as bad in other ways. I mean, I'm gonna be honest, this is why i never romanticized socialism or social anarchism. I'm not very social. I kinda like being left alone to do my own thing, and I can understand some level of sharing being good (I'm not gonna support the extreme position of propertarians), but this is just the opposite extreme. I think it's fine to have some level of personal property, and privacy. i dont think privacy should be this chiseled into stone natural right that can never ever be violated, but I don't think the alternative is much better here. Yeah, we can leave and find another band. But if they all do the same thing, what freedom does that afford me? It's no different than a propertarian telling me I can leave and find another job. Just because freedom exists in theory doesn't mean it always exists in reality. And humans are essentially social creatures and are pack animals who have to rely on others.
I just tend to aim for a system that guarantees both individual rights and some level of collectivism. I tend to believe that some level of collectivism and infringement on negative freedoms are justified to give us greater freedom. While Widerquist does make some valid points about the lives of hunter gatherer societies, I tend to think he romanticizes it a bit too much here. I honestly think some collectivist tribal society has the potential to suck as much as an individualist tribal society. Again, we need some moderation between the two extremes.
The same goes with the idea of work. In some ways, I view the concept of work itself as inherently freedom limited. An hour spent working is an hour lost pursuing other pursuits. if we really seek a society where we're as free as humanly possible, we should seek a society in which we minimize work. Tribal societies work hard, and even mentioning the plight of the slaves and 40 acres of a mule...sure, being forced to work for an employer sucks more than working for oneself. But that doesn't mean being forced to till the earth for one's own sustenance is a good thing. We live in the 21st century. We have all kinds of labor saving devices available to us. Most of the work force used to be involved with agriculture, now only a few percent are. State societies may reduce freedom in forcing people to be subservient to employers, and this is a negative aspect of them, but state societies have technology that saves on labor. And that's good. That's progress. We should like that. We should use the resources of the modern society and all of the benefits it provides to reduce how much people have to work. The problem is, despite this obvious abundance, we have this mindset of forcing people to work for employers and literally making as much work as possible in order to fill their days. Because we have this idea of work as a social obligation combined with this oppressively strict property rights system, rather than just redistributing SOME of the excess resources in such a way it gives everyone freedom and ensures they don't have to go without, we insist on making more "opportunity" and "creating jobs", instead. Because we insist people must work for their bread. Karl widerquist makes good points discussing the prehistory of modern society here. Dont get me wrong. It has changed my conceptions of human history and helped me provide for myself a more coherent view of it, which translates to a much stronger worldview overall. Again you can go back and read my original draft of my worldview earlier this month. I'm kind of all over the place and fragmented. This helps focus me. But I don't agree fully with widerquist here. Yes, vs a property rights system as practiced, hunter gatherer societies often have more freedom in some ways. But in others, they have less, and let's be honest, it is a hard life. Modern society has so many positive benefits. They just aren't evenly distributed because we insist on on using antiquated concepts of political philosophy that widerquist points out tend to be convenient fictions we invented to justify things ex post facto. But regardless of their origins, many of these enlightenment era revisions have been positive. Democracy, constitutional rights, separation of powers. Not to mention the liberal philosophies of the 20th century which expanded SOME freedom to the economic sphere. We must go forward and build on our successes, not go back to monke.
We should seek to eliminate work. Labor saving devices should give us more time and therefore freedom. Let's not forget what's the most important dimension of these issues of freedom. TIME. In our society, time is money, and you better be thinking of how to spend every waking hour making money or you're lazy and wasting time. In a hunter gatherer society, sure, there's less domination, but their time is still filled with the mundane. There is something to be said of Van Parijs' "real freedom" arguments. Freedom is the ability to do whatever one wants to do. Higher UBI gives people more freedom. We should reduce economic coercion, and reduce the time people spend doing mundane tasks. Instead of creating jobs, we should be automating them, cutting work hours, and replacing wages with UBI and similar mechanisms. We need a society that gives people the individualism and associated rights that exist in a modern propertarian society, while simply reducing the ill effects of propertarianism. The rigid property system DOES enslave people. Our attitudes toward work enslave people. It's not as simple as the property system, although the property system is a mechanism of coercion, and it is important to address it. That said, I nevertheless respect what Widerquist is doing here. I might disagree with him in some ways, but I also think his main thesis here is important. In order to make my own arguments, we do need to take propertarianism down a peg, because so many people just see this stuff as "natural" and that anyone who opposes it is stupid and ignorant. But it's not. it's an artificial social system, that we can change at any time.
I plan to continue grappling with this, and finishing the book over the next few weeks. This stuff is intellectually engaging. And it is helping me formulate my own ideology more. I just don't always agree with widerquist here. As I noted in my analysis of his "freedom as the power to say no" book, I think Widerquist has some anarchist bends that I quite frankly, dont agree with. I think he flirts a bit too much with anarchism and romanticizing state societies here. Sure, he's right that our western ideas of them are very racist, but in some ways i dont find that life style attractive either. I like civilization. I like some aspects of our system. I do think that these societies have advantages, but they go in the other direction. While we have some things to learn from them, honestly, the solutions are somewhere in between stateless societies and our current system. A UBI in a modern context, for example, would give people the best of both worlds. It would give people the privacy and SOME level of property rights allowing them to have a secure life to themselves where they can be left alone, while also correcting the most obvious flaw of the current property rights system and the coercion involved. I basically want to make a system where I can have my cake and eat it too.
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