The Cost of Freedom

When you hear a phrase like “the cost of freedom” you probably think of our military, and the sacrifices they have made for our country. And rightly so – we owe a world of gratitude to those who have risked life and limb to protect our freedoms. But recent events have led me to consider a different kind of cost. I’m talking about the costs we all are asked to pay for our freedom, every day of our lives. I also want to raise the question of whether we as a society are still willing to pay those costs. I sincerely hope we are, but lately I have begun to question that.

One of these costs of freedom is responsibility. If we are free to make our own choices, to take our own course in life, we have to accept the responsibility of how those choices turn out. The alternative is to have someone else (government) make those choices for us. If we allow that to happen, we may feel safer, but at what price? Take the social security debate of a few years ago as an example. The proposal was to allow individuals to invest a portion of their own social security money into private accounts – out of reach of the prying hands of government. But people were cold to the idea. It was too risky, they said. Okay, but the whole thing was voluntary. Nobody was going to be forced into it – if anyone was uncomfortable making their own investment decisions they could stay in the current government-run (and soon to be bankrupt) system. That wasn’t good enough though. It was just too risky. So instead of giving people the freedom to exempt themselves from a failing system, we chose the relative safety of letting government take care of us.

Another cost we must be willing to pay is inefficiency. We could design a system where virtually all control and decision-making is turned over to the government, and because one central organization would run everything there would, in theory, be a lot less overhead and duplication of efforts. The example here is health care. Proponents of a single payer, government run system argue that their idea would save money by eliminating the administrative costs of the myriad health plans and HMO’s out there. It might – but again, at what price? You would have no choice whatsoever in your health plan. What the government says, goes, and that’s the end of it. No alternative plan to switch to if you aren’t satisfied (I sometimes refer to it as the SOL plan, because if you don’t like it, you are indeed… SOL). No competition to keep prices in check. Just relax and let the government take care of you. I don’t know about you, but somehow I find that quite difficult to do.

One particularly difficult cost that comes with freedom is seeing other people face negative consequences for poor choices they make. We hate to see others suffer, which is good, but this can go too far and drive us to use government to protect people from themselves. Take smoking, for example. Here in Wisconsin, the governor is proposing a statewide smoking ban in places of business such as bars and restaurants, as well as a huge ($1.25) increase in the cigarette tax. Now, I’m okay with the ban because of secondhand smoke (certainly no one should have the freedom to injure or endanger the lives of others), but the tax is over the line. Apparently we can’t stand to see people suffer the health consequences of smoking so we’re going to be big brother to them and insist they make healthier choices. If the purpose of the tax was to reimburse the health care system for smoking-related costs that would be one thing. But it goes well beyond that, and is being presented as “encouragement” to get people to quit. I’m a non-smoker, always have been and always will be. Even so, I find this attitude disturbing. The same logic could be used to ban all sorts of stuff, from fast food to inactivity (exercise police, anyone?). We must resolve as a society to allow grown adults to make their own choices, even if we don’t agree with them, as long as they aren’t hurting others and know what they are getting into.

Finally, a cost that is inherent to freedom, much like responsibility, is inequality. I need to specify here that I’m talking about inequality of outcome as opposed to inequality of opportunity. We should ensure, as much as possible, that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in life. But in a society of truly free individuals, not all will make the same choices, and inevitably those different choices will lead to different results – some better and some worse than others. We have been led to believe that all kinds of inequality are offensive, but that is not necessarily true. There is nothing wrong with being free to succeed, and to reap the rewards that come with that. Too often, however, we are encouraged to feel envious of those that have more than us. Here’s a radical idea: I don’t care how much the top one percent has. As long as they acquired it fairly and legally, I’m fine with it. Like I said, we do need to have equality of opportunity, and I admit we’re not quite there yet, but beyond that I think it’s great that we have the freedom to achieve. Success should not be offensive – it’s a symptom of freedom.

Individual freedom, as long as it doesn’t hurt others and is coupled with responsibility, should be a core principle of our nation – wasn’t it once? Keep in mind there is always a compelling reason to revoke freedoms, whether that is saving money, safety, or an easier life. It may be hard to resist those temptations that come with turning pieces of our lives over to the government, but we must see the big picture. Otherwise we are nothing more than children.