What is the price of freedom?
He will set down roots, limit himself to one area – even it is only following the herds as they migrate. He is truly free.
We can now add a wife and kids and establish a family. Very little will change. It is only when we add an outsider, someone else, another family that we beginning adding rules. But these rules are universal – don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t mess around with another man’s wife and family, respect others and their properties, work together for common betterment. These are the core of what we call the Ten Commandments. These are our rights. Nothing more – nothing less.
All religions, Christian, Jewish, Muslin etc, all mankind believe these same truths, same rights. They are accepted and held in high regard because they do not affect the freedom of the small world our first man created around himself. They only prevent man taking what belongs to others or hurting others. These are the only beliefs we need to live in peace. The only aspect of absolute freedom that is taken away is to do harm to others.
If we superimpose this over our modern lives we will find that the majority of people in the world are free. Billy works in the machine shop to buy food from the store to provide for his family and can move and think unrestricted in his little world. A goat herder in the mountains of Afghanistan provides for his family, can move and think freely in his countryside. A farmer in North Korean works in his field to provide for his family and again is free to think and move in his world. As long as none of them do harm to another person they are truly free.
As society grows then rules are needed. Rules are the grease that keeps a society running smoothly. Rules should not stop a person but only guide them. Their sole purpose is to help society to flow smoothly.
The best examples are the rules of the road. A speed limit does not stop you from traveling. Its only intent is to provide consistence, so that everyone has a reasonable expectation as to how fast everyone is traveling. Having to use a signal light does not stop you from turning a corner but keeps traffic moving smoothly. Stop signs and red lights are to cause breaks in the stream so that traffic continues to flow so that others can enter.
Every time you break a rule you are a piece of grit slowing the machine down. If you turn your signal light on to change lanes the vehicle in the next lane eases off the throttle slightly to let you slip into that lane and traffic continues uninterrupted. If you change lanes without signaling that person has to brake harder causing the person behind them to have to brake as well. The person who had been following in the first lane and who had intended to change lanes as well now has to wait for traffic to return to normal before they can change lanes. Did using your signal light slow you down or stop you from reaching your destination? No, it actually helped to speed you along.
Not every society has the same rules or the same need for rules. If you have ever traveled to another country and seen the chaotic traffic you can see this in action. In the chaos there are rules that help keep everything moving smoothly. When someone disobeys those rules you see a flurry of brake lights and horns. So even though different societies may have different rules for similar things they are what keep them moving.
The final part of the equation is regulations. Regulations are to protect from harm. For example hunting is regulated. Only so many deer are allowed to be killed each year and only during certain times. That is because if we were allow to hunt indiscriminately we would wipe out the deer population and there would not be enough to re-establish the stock. The number is regulated year to year so that we will always have deer.
Rats however are over populated and are not regulated so you can kill as many as you like. The next example is bringing meats or vegetables into the country. They are regulates because those items could be carrying harmful diseases that while harmless to humans may kill all the livestock or crops that are here. Millions of people in this country could starve because all of the cattle here were wiped out.
Another example is declaring how much money you are bringing into the country. If too much money is pulled out of a country it can bankrupt that nation. On the other hand if a country is flooded with foreign currency it devalues its own money ruining the country’s economy. That is why they regulate how much money you can bring into a country. That being said nations are worth billions and trillions of dollars so as long as you declare how much money you are bringing in and out of the country you are allowed just as long as you follow the rules you are allowed to hunt.
So now that we know what freedom is and what rights, rules and regulations are we can begin piecing together the different parts. In other words a country freedom is the equation
Freedom = Rights+Rules+Regulation
The freest country in the world is the country that would score a ten (10 commandments + 0 rules + 0 regulations). From there we add on points for each rule, one point for each regulation. The lower the total the freer the country would be. The higher the less free the people will be. So let’s start with a simple island nation. There are no cars, everything you make goes to the government, you must serve five years in the military and you have to be Buddhist. (10 + 2 + 1) = 13. The next island nation over has cars so you have to stop at the stop sign, you pay 50% in taxes, you must serve two years in the military, you must have drivers license. This island freedom would be (10+3+1) =14. So while on the surface the second island would seem a better choice the people of the first that are freer.
The problem is when a country starts imposing rules and regulations that no longer improve the lives of society or prevents harm. An example of this is legislation against loud pipes on motorcycles. Loud pipes alert other drivers to our presence. They are not hurt or harmed by them. Legislation against them is not a rule because it does not help traffic flow. It is not a regulation because there is no harm being prevented. It actual has the opposite effect of what a rule or regulation is suppose to do. It slows traffic because of traffic accidents and it puts us as riders directly in harm’s way. It needlessly erodes away at the freedoms of its citizens.
Waking up they both say a short prayer. She prays to God, he prays to the son of God, Jesus, so they both have equal freedom of religion. They begin the day by watching TV – she has one channel run and controlled by the country, he has two hundred plus channels also controlled by the state. That is because in the US you cannot just start broadcasting a TV station or radio station. You have to applied to the FCC and pass the rules and regulations in order to keep broadcasting. You have to submit what your shows are.
This is why Kelly Ripa isn’t topless in the morning. That is why prime time shows can show more violence and sex than after school shows. If you violate those rules you will be fined, or if serious enough you may even face jail time. TV stations pay to broadcast and pass that cost along to the customer.
Our biker and woman get dressed to run errands for the day. She puts on a Burka as required by the laws of her land. The biker has to put on a helmet, eye protection, leather jacket, gloves, full length pants and heavy above ankle boots. That is the law here. It is against the law for him to ride a motorcycle without that clothing, just as it is against the law in her country to be in public without a Burka.
Our woman is not allowed to have a driver’s license or own a vehicle. Our biker friend has a driver’s license as long as he is old enough, healthy enough, has passed exams. His motorcycle has to be registered, has to be insurance, has to pass DOT inspection and meet emissions. A driver’s license isn’t guaranteed, isn’t free. The biker has to pay for that freedom.
The woman cannot speak out or protest her government. Our biker can march on Washington. However there are limits to what he can and cannot do. He cannot march through the Senate or Congress. He cannot wander the halls of the White House. He is free to protest but if he over stays his limit he will be arrested like the protesters of Occupy. If he charges the house floor there is a very good chance he will be shot.
Our woman lives under a dictatorship and cannot vote. The American can vote but only on one day between certain hours, if he has proper ID. He has a choice between only two candidates. He cannot go across town to a different district to vote for that candidate, he cannot travel to different state to vote for that candidate.
At the end of the day neither one has true freedom. The difference is her world is black and white – yes or no. There is no middle ground. The American only has the allusion of freedom. The lines have been blurred to grey, a carrot of an ideal dangled before the under educated to make them believe that they have freedom, that freedom is real. He pays for the cost of freedom every time he has to obey a rule, follow a regulation. In our simple example his freedom cost him the price of cable, the price of a helmet and gloves, the cost of his driver’s license, insurance and registration. If he refuses his freedom is stripped away until it becomes black and white – yes or no.
It is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s a hard truth to accept. A society needs a certain amount of rules to grease the system. A society needs a certain amount of regulations to protect themselves from harm. But just like any machine too little grease and the machine will seize, too much grease can gum the system up so bad that it will eventually come to a stop.
Both will need to be torn apart and rebuilt in order for it to run smoothly again, to grant true freedom. And like our example of traffic rules at the beginning what rules and regulations work here will not necessarily work somewhere else. Neither one is right, neither one is wrong. So as you sit down tonight to drink a government regulated beer, and eat a FDA approved steak in your residential zoned home watching government approved television stations ask yourself if you are really bringing freedom to the man who lives in the jungle who takes his boat up stream to catch fish for his family to eat.
-bad Uncle Monkey
