What people don't understand about freedom

Freedom ain’t free.

1. AML, reversible transactions, etc.

Often, people will point to consumer protections to justify our current banking system: Anti money laundering, transaction reversibility…etc. I’m not saying that these features are bad. In fact I think they’re great. On the other hand, we should ask ourselves if we’re willing to give up our freedom to transact in return for these features. As we’ve seen with the Russian sanctions, many Russian citizens are pretty much left helpless when their digital banks are no longer easily accessible. And, I will bet money that this will not be the last time this happens as long as centralized authorities have grips on our freedom to transact. Freedom to transact ain’t free and means you need to be responsible for protecting your own money.

2. Censorship

Sure, we’ve seen authoritiarian governments censor. But we never talk about how the west is censoring itself when it flags certain ideas or phrases as politically incorrect. When we start socially ostracizing people with views different from ours, I don’t think we are doing any better than these authoritarian regimes when it comes to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech ain’t free and requires that you to accept that you will be offended.

3. Democracy

Democracy is the freedom to participate in governance. Freedom to be democratic ain’t free and requires that each of us actively participates in governance.

If we think freedom is a good thing that we need more of, then we need to acknowledge the costs of maintaining freedom. I do think most of us (myself included) take our existing freedoms for granted and complain when they aren’t as free as we expect them to be.