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Two Kinds of freedom? The Creative Class, and Kentucky Teachers

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

1.       Two Kinds of Freedom? It bothers me when I am having a conversation with someone and feel that we are not communicating effectively.  I recently had that experience when discussing freedom.  I have finally concluded that the reason for the communication problem was the other person had a definition of freedom that was totally different from mine.

          My definition of freedom is freedom with responsibility, while the other person’s is freedom from responsibility.  Under my definition, freedom means being able to live as we choose and to bear the responsibility of our own choices and actions.  This is a self-correcting situation, in which, if we make bad choices, the natural, negative results of those bad choices will prompt us to change so that we make better choices in the future. 

          Under the other person’s definition, freedom means being able to do anything they want without bearing the responsibility for their actions.  This definition conveniently ignores the fact that somebody must bear the responsibility for their actions, and, if it is not the person performing the actions, it will have to be someone else.  In this case, it is the collective, or “society as a whole”, or the taxpayers.

In truth, this second definition of freedom is not really freedom at all but rather is a form of enslavement.  Freedom from  responsibility actually ends up enslaving us in two ways.  First, we are enslaved by being forced to bear the responsibility for other people’s bad choices, providing them the food, housing, medical care, education, and other benefits they should be providing for themselves.  Those of us who are responsible and productive end up being punished and enslaved in order that others will bear no responsibility for their own actions.  Second, since there is no self-correcting feature in this second form of “freedom”, the situation becomes progressively worse, with people becoming more and more irresponsible, and then we end up passing laws to regulate people’s behavior in order to minimize our collective responsibility, thus further enslaving everyone. 

For example, as the taxpayers become responsible for other people’s medical care, they want to control people’s lives – regulating the food they can eat, prohibiting them from smoking, requiring them to wear helmets, and so forth, in order to try to limit health care expenses.  So, instead of being free to make our own decisions and naturally bearing the responsibility for those decisions, our lives are severely regulated and restricted by government’s coercive force.  The state becomes the plantation owner and we, the people, become the slaves.

Freedom with responsibility is the foundation of the capitalist system, in which the state protects our lives and property against aggression and otherwise leaves us free to live as we choose and to bear responsibility for our choices. 

Freedom from responsibility is the foundation of the socialist or collectivist approach that is supported by the Democrat party platform.  For example, the Democrats support unfettered abortion rights, because they want people to have total sexual freedom without any responsibility for the lives they create in the process, shifting that responsibility to the developing human life itself, which they gladly sacrifice.  They also support government control of our property, health care, education, and so forth, because they want us to be collectively responsible for each other and thus enslaved to the state. 

2.       The Creative Class – The C-J frequently tells us that we need to support and encourage the “creative class” of people if we want to have a healthy, thriving community.  I agree, but I think their definition of the “creative class” is far too narrow.  They want to encourage artists and the like, but I think we should encourage everyone to be creative by treating every person and his property with respect.  We should all have the opportunity to be part of the “creative class”.  From the entrepreneur who takes the risk on a new business, to the inventor who takes a risk on developing his invention, to the homeowner who figures out an inexpensive way to expand his living space, we are naturally driven to use our brainpower to make our lives better.

Unfortunately, we have many public policies that tend to stamp out people’s natural creativity.  Government constantly regulates and taxes people to death, plundering Peter to “incentivize” Paul, which puts many obstacles in the way of people’s ability to carry out their creative ideas.  Government schools also tend to suppress our natural curiosity and creativity as they teach us to stand passively in line, to wait our turn, and to look to the state to solve our problems.   If those obstacles to creativity were removed, I think we would find that we have a huge “creative class” in our very midst, and releasing all that creative talent would result in a huge economic boom, making us all much better off. 

3.       Kentucky Teachers – It appears that the Kentucky legislature will be giving teachers a raise of over $150 million dollars as it increases their health insurance benefits.  I feel sorry for teachers, having to wait for the legislature to act in order to get a raise.  Why can’t we change the system to give teachers the opportunity to function in a free market like the rest of us, so good teachers can freely negotiate better pay and benefits with the consumers of their services and not be forcibly held back and paid the same as incompetent teachers?  Why do we continue to operate under a coercive model, in which we are forced to support all teachers, whether or not we are satisfied with their services?  Surely, good teachers would be paid much more and would have much more flexibility and better working conditions in a free market system, and bad teachers would be encouraged to seek other lines of work, both of which would benefit students.  A free market system would cut the red tape that prevents good teachers from doing their best work, and it would enable teachers to demand the kind of discipline in the classroom that is essential to real success.  A free market would be a win-win for good teachers and for students.  Of course, we can’t expect the unions to be promoting such freedom, since the union bosses line their own pockets by holding their members down.

Once we start from this idea, accepted by all our political theorists [that] "The motive force of society is the government"; once men consider themselves as sentient, but passive, incapable of improving themselves morally or materially by their own intelligence and energy, and reduced to expecting everything from the law; in a word, when they admit that their relation to the state is that of a flock of sheep to the shepherd, it is clear that the responsibility of the government is immense. Good and evil, virtue and vice, equality and inequality, wealth and poverty, all proceed from it. It is entrusted with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; hence, it is responsible for everything. -- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law" [1850]

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