berlinism
#coherentism
libertarians are all about liberty. Your liberty to do this, to own that, etc. Isaiah Berlin split up freedom into “positive liberties” end “negative liberties”.
Negative liberty is what we typically think about. The government granting you free speech is a negative liberty, the ability to say whatever you want without (government) consequences.
Positive liberty is far more interesting IMO, it’s the ability to actually act and change the world around you. Billionaires have the same negative liberties as you because they are (ostensibly) beholden to the same laws you are, but they have far more positive liberty since if they want something to happen, they can make it happen.
For a while I joked that I was a “socialist libertarian”, an oxymoron that I used because I hadn’t read about positive vs negative liberties. I think that berlinist libertarianism is appealing to me because I don’t think people are truly free until they can affect change to the world around them and have control over their lives. If someone has to take a job because the alternative is starving, and they have little control over their workplace and mode of living, then are they really free?
