Mill-On Liberty

Class today went especially well, and the discussion near the end brought back that rush of pure intellectual pleasure. It had been a long time since reasoning something through had given me that kind of joy.

Cases we discussed: Hong Kong's Mandatory Provident Fund; the freedom of BDSM and cross-dressing (today and in the nineties); the freedom to degrade oneself; cults; trust in government; the way mainstream thinking seeps in and limits individual freedom; reason and feeling; indirect versus direct effects; the freedom to ride without a helmet; paternalism.

The Harm Principle

If an individual does no harm to anyone else in society and damages no one's interests, then their liberty ought not to be interfered with.

If they would directly harm their own life, interference is permissible.

Smoking and cycling without a helmet, for example, are not to be interfered with, because they endanger life indirectly (as a matter of probability), not directly.

Drink-driving, on the other hand, should be interfered with, because it endangers other people's lives.

Paternalism

Mill is a critic of paternalism: within the bounds of the harm principle, the liberty of mature people in a mature society should not be interfered with. However loudly paternalism flies the banner of "it's for your own good", of weighing your interests more rationally than you would — and even when its purpose is sincere — it should not interfere with individual liberty. At most it may persuade, and patiently guide.

Hong Kong's Mandatory Provident Fund (a fixed sum paid in every month, drawn out after sixty-five for retirement) is a textbook case of paternalism. But think about it: the government says it is looking ahead to our old age, inoculating us in advance — but is the aim really the citizens' good? Do we really trust the government that much? Isn't this a way of passing on its own fiscal pressure?

We alone are first responsible for ourselves. Handing the right to choose to any authority, however reliable, is a failure of responsibility to oneself.

Is xiejiao — the "evil cult" — a pseudo-concept? English has no exact equivalent. Whether a sect is harmful depends on whether it urges its followers to do things that harm themselves and others; beyond that, believers are free to choose their sect, and are responsible for that choice.

Mill criticized dogmas that forbid opposing views and free speech, arguing that they damage freedom of thought, and that such dogmas gradually lose their very power to teach people to be good. So is a single mainstream discourse today also a persecution of freedom of thought?

Very often someone will make choices for you in the name of your own good — your parents, society's mainstream values, even the state. Set aside whether that "for your own good" is sincere: even if there were a perfectly rational system, guaranteed to produce better outcomes, that made your decisions for you and required you to carry them out — would that really be better? As a young man Mill over-worshipped reason and fell into a mental crisis, and it was feeling that rescued him: he came to see that the power of feeling is no less than that of reason. For that reason too, if people are forced to do what is rational and supposedly beneficial without exception, how are they any different from machines? People would grow more and more alike.

People have the freedom to make mistakes, and to make choices that are less than perfect. And this freedom of emotional, subjective choice may be precisely an important path to developing a person's individuality (Character) and well-being (Goodness). We should trust humanity. Just as the "invisible hand" brings free markets to their greatest efficiency, perhaps the freedom of humanity's many emotional choices is precisely an important force driving human progress.