OnFreedom

Quora Answer : Would you agree that freedom means there should be no limits in any way?

Oct 9, 2013

Absolutely not.

Freedoms and restrictions are often two sides of the same coin.

When women in Western society gained the "right" to own property they gained new freedoms to live their lives as they wanted, without needing a husband or male relative to look after them.

But only because government chose to protect the woman's property-ownership. And government protection of property is enabled by government restricting other people from appropriating that property. The government have to threaten to chase and prosecute anyone who tries to walk away with the woman's jewels or set up camp on her land.

Most freedoms are of the "positive" kind (ie. enabled by actively restricting someone else) rather than the "negative" kind. Only a tiny minority of the freedoms that actually make up our society are "negative" freedoms.

Quora Answer : Should society suppress freedom to maintain order?

Oct 5, 2017

To some extent it has to.

There's no society without some constraints to co-ordinate its members.

The trick is to find minimal constraints, which allow a wide enough degree of freedom to keep people satisfied.