> You need to look up "freedom." It doesn't mean "other people are required to meet all of your needs."
There are quite a few definitions of freedom that actually require that (to a certain degree), even on wikipedia.
As in the theory of justice, there are two broad views on freedom: one side seeing freedom as something abstract (by law you are free to vote; the constitution does not discriminate against skin color, gender etc.) and the other side sees freedom as the concrete opportunity space of an individual (therefore studying should be free of cost, access to healthcare should be free etc.).
Interestingly, the abstract interpretation seems to match the common meaning in the U.S. and the concrete meaning of the word is more common in Europe. That seems to explain quite a few misunderstandings in spaces like HN :)
I can really recommend Amarty Sen's book 'The idea of justice' as a quite approachable introduction into the topic.
While I agree that it's true "freedom doesn't mean others should have to meet your needs" I find it a damn shame we can't stand on a little piece of ground hardly anywhere without paying someone.
We are born on earth and we are entitled to a little piece of it. Powerful people shouldn't get to own everything.
> Henry David Thoreau wrote that "[i]t is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself."
> Some abolitionists in the United States regarded the analogy as spurious. They believed that wage workers were "neither wronged nor oppressed". Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans argued that the condition of wage workers was different from slavery, as laborers were likely to have the opportunity to work for themselves in the future, achieving self-employment. The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared, "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. But later in life, he concluded to the contrary, "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other". Douglass went on to speak about these conditions as arising from the unequal bargaining power between the ownership/capitalist class and the non-ownership/laborer class within a compulsory monetary market. "No more crafty and effective devise for defrauding the southern laborers could be adopted than the one that substitutes orders upon shopkeepers for currency in payment of wages. It has the merit of a show of honesty, while it puts the laborer completely at the mercy of the land-owner and the shopkeeper.".
Much of our seeming choices are predetermined by a corporation/politician, the de rigueur political/economic philosophy of the day and also by the era we are born into. It's unfortunate this topic is out of bounds in most places. Even here on hackernews you're shutting him down. This conversation is potentially one of the most important we could be having today.
There are quite a few definitions of freedom that actually require that (to a certain degree), even on wikipedia.
As in the theory of justice, there are two broad views on freedom: one side seeing freedom as something abstract (by law you are free to vote; the constitution does not discriminate against skin color, gender etc.) and the other side sees freedom as the concrete opportunity space of an individual (therefore studying should be free of cost, access to healthcare should be free etc.).
Interestingly, the abstract interpretation seems to match the common meaning in the U.S. and the concrete meaning of the word is more common in Europe. That seems to explain quite a few misunderstandings in spaces like HN :)
I can really recommend Amarty Sen's book 'The idea of justice' as a quite approachable introduction into the topic.