Monday, October 22, 2012

Welcome To The Liberty Mill

I live in a democratic country. While I am quite happy with this kind of political set-up, I cannot be sure that I am happier than somebody, say, in Cuba which is an authoritarian regime. Freedom is the most quintessential thing, I believe, we would associate with happiness; wealth would follow. Living in a free country doesn't make you free for freedom can be more than what meets the eye. In his novel Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts talks about his character being free to hate or forgive the men who tortured him while he was helplessly chained in a prison in Australia. Clearly for him, freedom was a state of mind.  "Man is born free but he is in chains everywhere", said Rousseau when he wrote about the social contract. Do we love these chains? Does it bother me? Have we had enough of these? These are questions we do not reflect upon in the ordinary course of our lives. Good for us, a lot of men have given it serious consideration and the matter continues to be discussed and debated. This blog too would serve the same purpose. 

Why liberty? Because there has been too much of hue and cry over poverty and what socialism has done is try to distribute it equally, failing even at that. Because I feel capitalism has not been given its due credit for raising the standard of living of millions of people, globally. Because the government regulates my life so much that I have to get a license to become a barber/hair-stylist if tomorrow I find that hair-cutting is my gifted talent. And finally, because at no point of time in history, unlike socialism in USSR, has laissez faire capitalism been allowed to flourish. While we continue to count on the government to provide for most of our needs, alleviate poverty and "build roads", should we not remember that a government which is big enough to provide for all these is big enough to take away everything we have got? 

While as a libertarian I can never answer these questions for you, The Liberty Mill will manufacture (and share) ideas and questions open for public debate and discussion. I hope that your own answers to these questions applied in your own lives for your own self interest would serve the greater good.  

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