[deodorel]

Often when I look at how us works it seems to me that a lot of political action, censorship and coercion is privatised there, so it looks superficially like you have more degrees of freedom because you are limited by private actors and not the state.

[sdoering]

I grew up in western Germany. My SO in the GDR (eastern Germany) before the Iron Curtain fell.

Comparing my experience and hers (or her family's) gave me an interesting view of freedom. Namely that I think there isn't one freedom. Not in the universal sense.

For example. In the GDR it was a bad idea to critique the state/government/socialism. But I know quite a few cases of people telling their boss he was an asshole. Without any consequences.

Compared to Western Germany. We could call our politicians names, critique our government, call democracy an idiotic for of representation but tell g our corporate bosses they were idiots could destroy your life.

Just an extreme example of what I mean with different forms of freedom.

In the end I think it always comes down to a society needing to decide where to limit the freedoms of their people to ensure as much freedom as possible for all members of society. And future generations.

Our constitutional court for example declared the climate change efforts of our former government not sufficient to ensure freedom of future generations as doing nothing (or too little too late) now would burden future generations to an extent that is not in line with our constitution. Limiting our freedom right now (taxes, limits to how fast to drive, and so on) to ensure freedom for yet unborn.