When speaking about personal freedom and it’s boundaries, I take the position of: every person must have all the freedom to do whatever they would like, until it starts to harm others or limit their freedoms.

I believe this to also be the most common position by proponents of freedom.

So this means I cannot say I have the freedom to beat someone, for example, as that is harming them and limiting their own freedoms.

Now this is an obvious example, but there are a lot of murky ones. For example:

  • Do I have the freedom to use some power tools in my house if it bothers my neighbor?
  • Do I have the freedom to smoke in the city if it bothers people?
  • Do I have the freedom to just walk completely naked in a busy city? What if I am very unpleasant to look at? What if many people do like I do and it just makes the city less pleasant to walk through?
  • Do I have the freedom to be entirely naked and stand on a public sidewalk but just next to a storefront? Maybe the owner doesn’t care, except I drive away their customers because they care
  • Do I have the freedom to plant a tree in my yard that suddenly takes away sunlight from neighbor? Technically it’s my house!

“the freedom to walk in my neighborhood without having to hear power tools” and “the freedom to use power tools” seem to be in opposition.

I think many people will have straight answers for these. I’m not looking for answers. I’m looking for a reasonable general guideline. When are situations like these considered to be within my rights to personal freedom, and when are they outside of personal freedom or infringing on freedoms of others?

  • matcha_addictOPEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    This seems reasonable, but then at what point do we say “no” to making dedicated spaces because someone thought their rights are being infringed?

    Separate spaces for smoking are common. What about dedicated spaces where street music performers can perform and others where they can’t?

    What if someone doesn’t want to see tattoos? At what point do you say “your annoyance is unreasonable”? I mean surely this one is, but is there a guideline that separates this from playing loud music?

    A extreme case would be someone who wishes to make a space free of a certain race. Obviously this is ridiculous and bad, but I am seeking a guideline that can separate these unreasonable ones from the reasonable ones.

    • Libra00@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      13 days ago

      If you want to line to be somewhere other than where it is right now I think the onus is on you to show that where it is now is causing harm. You aren’t harmed by seeing tattoos despite not wanting to, you can’t reasonably expect everyone else to cover them up just because they offend you. If they trigger trauma or something individuals may be swayed by sympathy to hide theirs around you out of respect, but that’s a choice they make, not a thing you can legislate upon them. Like if you’re bad enough off that outlawing the public display of tattoos seems like a reasonable solution then what you have is a ‘you problem’, not an ‘everyone else’ problem, and you need to figure out how to get past that so that you can function in the world because it’s unreasonable to expect the world to change around you to suit you.

      There is no hard and fast guideline other than the general sense of what’s reasonable that people develop by interacting. As I said in another comment under this post it’s all contingent and case-by-case. Does the harm caused by X outweigh the harm caused by the harm/trouble/inconvenience/etc caused by the negation of X? If so the line probably needs to move.