Today I was attending a lecture about blockchain and cryptocurrencies and the lecturer said that freedom and safety don’t go together. You can have more freedom by abandoning safety. Would you agree?
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they are probably using the modern interpretation of this those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety
Read my mind.
It’s possible to have neither freedom nor safety
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Yes, that’s the entire basis for the idea of the social contract. That you give up a little bit of freedom in exchange for security from living in a society.
You’re talking about trade offs and maximization.
That’s not reality yet. In reality, we have less freedom AND less safety than we could. There’s plenty of room to increase both.
Once we get to a maximized state, then tradeoffs are necessary. But we’re very far from that at the moment.
Social contract theory is statist propaganda. Even before I knew anything about politics or political theory I was so confused by this idea.
It’s just there to create an illusion of consent for state oppression. Even though there’s no realistic way to opt out, and we never even decided to opt in in the first place.
What kind of crazy contract is that?
Not technically, because there are scenarios where you can give up some freedom or safety without improving the other in return (and therefore restore freedom/safety afterwards without diminishing the other)… but it’s a close enough approximation to be useful, kinda like classical physics vs general relativity.
If you want to be more detailed, you can look at “freedom to” vs “freedom from”. This has its own limitations, but it’s precise enough while still being useful.
For example, assuming everyone involved is constrained by the same rules:
You can’t have the freedom to fire a gun in the air, and have freedom from your neighbor’s falling bullets.
You can’t have the freedom to drive a tank down the street, and have freedom from fear of being squashed as a pedestrian.
