“It’s the paradox of freedom, that when it seems the most free, the most unfettered, is when it’s most in danger of dissolving into autocracy…
Start an online forum with zero moderation and 100% free speech, and watch how all that absent rule-enforcement gets replaced by the mob justice of doxxing and SWATting and death-threats toward whoever says something unpopular. Watch the forum become moderated again, but this time by the clique most able and willing to use those tactics against whoever they specifically don’t like.
Make the decision that society just needs to get all the crime out of its system… go ahead and introduce The Purge; tell everyone to go nuts, there’s no laws and no enforcement for the next few days. Then, sit back and watch all the most corrupt cops and judges and jailers decide which laws actually should still be enforced, and how. Watch them use their own freedom and their own resources to enforce all their favorite laws plus a bunch they just made up. Who’s to stop them? It’s freedom!
Sing the praises of a Free Market, lift all restrictions on what businesses can and can’t do in the name of profit. After all, a bureaucracy that polices buying and selling, well, that’s just a communist dictatorship stomping on all our rights! Then don’t have the audacity to be surprised when the biggest, richest corporations take advantage of that freedom, and go on to put their money into politics, until all elected politicians are basically their puppets, and democracy is replaced by a … capitalist dictatorship stomping on all our rights.
Total freedom opens the door for tyranny, and establishing the right amount of freedom is a delicate task, and I’m not convinced there are any humans actually good at it.”
– me in my head this morning