03-27-2021, 08:40 PM
Freedom is rarely absolute. Much of our legal process resolves conflicts of freedom. Ordinarily the decision comes on the side of who is hurt least by the decision, which fits the "harm none" dictate. Competition means that someone will get something and someone else will not. There's plenty of real estate that I would love to own, but real harm comes only if people are priced into homelessness. That I am priced out of lobster as a regular meal and to ramen soup, one of the cheapest foods that I find palatable, because of poverty isn't that bad.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.