tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post2831149912128330972..comments2024-03-18T15:45:32.866-04:00Comments on bensozia: Prohibition, Feminism, and the Indian StateJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-89266532548285933082017-04-18T10:05:48.470-04:002017-04-18T10:05:48.470-04:00"So, my freedom-loving readers, are the women...<i>"So, my freedom-loving readers, are the women right? Or is taking better care of their families not worth the cost in lost freedom?"</i><br /><br />The problem with this sort of calculation is that much of the time, many people fail to account for the fact that freedoms are often mutually exclusive, and that increasing one person's specific form of freedom can directly decrease the freedoms of others.<br /><br />Orson Welles opined that:<br /><br /><i>"There's a price for everything. There is nothing that does not have its cost. Joy and inspiration and mere pleasure, have a market value precisely computed in terms of their opposites. The cost of youth is age, the cost of age is death. You want love? The cost of love is independence. You want to be independent, do you? Then pay the price and know what it is to be alone. Your mother paid for you with pain. Nothing, nothing in this living world is free. The free air costs you the life consuming effort of breath. Freedom itself is priced at the rate of the citizenship it earns and holds."</i><br /><br />It's true that forcibly preventing someone from drinking themselves into a stupor decreases their own personal freedom. But at the same time, it overwhelmingly often increases the freedoms of those around them.<br /><br />A drunkard's wife and children receive more freedom when their father can't waste the family's meagre finances on drink, selfishly forcing hardship onto them. The local community receives more freedom when they have to deal with less disruptive behavior caused by drunkeness. The local police have less work to do, the local doctors as well, crime goes down, spending goes up, the community overall improves and prospers, people become friendly and more trusting, the area becomes a nicer place to live, et cetera.<br /><br />Freedoms extend only until they unduly infringe upon the freedoms of others, and not all freedoms are created equal. We deny certain freedoms in favor of others. We don't allow people the freedom to drink and drive, because that infringes heavily upon other people's freedom to not be exposed to undue mortal peril. We also don't allow unlicensed or uninsured drivers, for much the same reason.<br /><br />To some, these restrictions may seem like unjust impositions against the freedoms of the individual. The typical argument that if a person is willing to take the risk, they should be allowed to do anything. But risks are never taken in a vacuum. Nothing does not have its cost. It's just a question of who ends up paying that cost. Those who champion the freedoms of the individual seem not to realize that the cost of such individual freedoms is born by countless others, against their will.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com