From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Mon Aug 05 2002 - 02:59:18 MDT
On Fri, Aug 02, 2002 at 05:47:45PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> Olga writes
>
> > But, of course, maybe you meant: people were freer to be as illiterate as
> > they pleased (and in the case of slaves, illiteracy was legally
> > "encouraged"), businesses were freer to hire slaves (for free) and small
> > children (for a pittance) to work inhumanely long hours, people were freer
> > to lynch without impunity, packers were freer to sell you tainted meat
> > products, people could more easily abuse other people in general, and their
> > children in particular ... (and these examples are just for starters).
>
> Unlike mine, I see that all your examples have the same slant. Show me
> some evidence that you are sincerely interested in discussing the ways
> that we have become less free and the ways that we have become more
> free, and I'd be happy to continue this.
>From this corner, Olga is winning hands-down.
Lee, freedom in law doesn't mean a hell of a lot if you're not equipped to
take advantage of it, and legal oppression doesn't matter much if you're
rich enough to make an end-run around it. Both the rich man and the poor
man are both forbidden from sleeping under bridges -- but only one of
them is affected by this law.
Back in the mid-19th century, the well-off were less hampered by laws
controlling how they polluted, how they had to treat the hired help,
how much tax they had to pay, and so on. However, you can't judge the
wealth of a society by looking only at the creme-de-la-creme, and you
can't judge the freedom of a society by looking only at the situation of
the privileged. If you looked only at the apex of the social pyramid,
you'd have to conclude that the Tsar of all the Russias lived in a utopia
-- because for him, mid-nineteenth century Russia was a utopia -- and
all other countries were a bit worse off (because their monarchs held
slightly less absolute power).
If we look at the mid-nineteenth century in terms of the freedom available
to the average person -- not in law (remember the bit about sleeping
under bridges) but in practice -- we get a pretty hellish picture in
most parts of the world. Things have mostly improved a long way since
then, even though the quantity of government regulation has exploded
and become an onerous burden for those who interact with it directly.
Let's pick a big example that doesn't make the history books but damn
well ought to because it affected huge numbers of people: far more than
slavery. Roughly 50% of the population are female. Back in 1850 there was
no equal rights amendment, no quotas, sod-all law concerning employment
of women, far less regulation ... and women were second-class citizens.
In common law, a woman legally died when she married (became of one
flesh with) her husband. Her property became his, her legal relationships
became his, she had no financial autonomy, a husband could not legally
be charged with raping his wife because she had given irrevocable consent
for all time, and so on.
Women were not admitted to institutes of higher education or granted
degrees because they were patently incapable of such feats of intellect
and women who wanted to study were weird and unnatural beasts. Women
did what they were told by the master of their household under sanction
of physical violence. Wife-beating wasn't treated as assault; it was
treated as normal. Women couldn't vote, and therefore had no control
over the administration of their human rights; discriminatory legislation
could therefore be applied to them locally with impunity. (Consider the
prevalence of sumptuary laws controlling women's dress, and the existence
of laws regulating sexual or contraceptive activity, and how such onerous
laws have diminished with time since the female franchise was obtained.)
Very wealthy women could avoid the direct impact of this legal second-
class status. They could hire personal tutors, arrange for a trust fund
to control some of their assets after marriage, pay lawyers, move around,
and so on. But only the top 1% of the population could aspire to such
autonomy even in theory. The vast majority were rather more bitterly
oppressed than women in Iran are today. And this was the state of HALF
THE GODDAMN POPULATION!!! (Sorry, but I had to shout just then. I'll
get a grip on myself.)
Indignation doesn't even *begin* to cover what I feel when I hear people
saying that we're less free today than we were 150 years ago. It's
revisionist nonsense of the worst kind, highlighting the speaker as one
who suffers from a tunnel vision that leads them to completely ignore
the situation of the silent majority of the public while offering
bland generalities. If you were to opine that "business leaders are
less free than they were 150 years ago", then you would have a position
that could be defended, but the blanket statement is Just Plain Wrong,
and Olga called you on it, and you didn't even understand what she was
talking about.
Here's a clue: the world of commerce and business, while important, is
only one corner of the rich tapestry that is human life. And attempting
to draw conclusions about changes in the dimensions of human life by
looking at business indicators is a fundamentally flawed course of
action.
-- Charlie
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