Our ‘freedumb’ times. The cultures that have the loosest social restrictions on the planet? Former communist…

Our ‘freedumb’ times. The cultures that have the loosest social restrictions on the planet? Former communist and Eastern European countries. The countries we would see as ‘authoritarian’, have the lowest amount of social restrictions in play. What’s it mean? /1

To me it shows what I often say. That societies are 100% social, never political in the way we mean the latter term. Here’s the paradox libertarians can’t understand. It’s social restriction, that creates freedom. This isn’t even difficult to understand. /2

Take roads. If we had no road rules or other customs around driving, if we all just went out there every day and drove however we liked, how ‘free’ would those roads be? It’d be destructive chaos. A bit like former communist countries. That’s why they *look* ‘authoritarian’. /3

That authoritarian style at the top leadership level *is* the attempt to rein in the chaos of absence of social restriction elsewhere. This is how populism becomes fascism too. Populism pretends to just let everybody do what they like. /4

The ensuing chaos then requires stringent action by the populist leadership, to try to rein in the clusterfuck. Vested interests have been enormously successful in painting basic regulation as a restriction on freedom. But regulation IS freedom. /5

If you want a new power point installed in your home, I can guarantee it’s the strong and multiple regulations around power supply that will make that a simple and easy process. That will make you ‘free’ to use power. /6

Or take Singapore. A highly prosperous and pretty happy society. It has a degree of social restriction that would make libertarians wet their pants in anger. It’s the degree of social restriction that leads to the happy, prosperous society. This isn’t a contradiction. /7

Customs and traditions and regulation create a standardised baseline for social life that creates the freedoms individuals can then enjoy. We live in an idiot culture that opposes these things, to freedom. It’s just empirically wrong, and so simple to debunk. /8

The tragically hilarious bullshit we’ve all lived for over 4 years now, of saying that public health restrictions restricted our freedoms. No, they gave us freedom, to live without serious infection. That’s what public health does. It’s an OBVIOUS fact. /9

The politics that is destroying us is really a small social grouping, of powerful and wealthy folk, selling us nonsense about freedom to protect and raise their own status. Only restriction and regulation brings freedom. Everything else is life in an old communist country. /end