How free can individuals be in liberalism under a rational expectation

The editor claims for liberating individuals and the motto of his project is spreading liberalism (In the U.S.A., it is referred as Libertarian or Classical-Liberalism). By contrast, there is another task to consider after liberating individuals to live in a liberalised world. The task is considering what kind of freedom individuals achieve in their aspiring liberalism.

It is also important to note that liberation means to free someone whereas its meaning contains a far more comprehensive concept than mere freedom. Generally speaking, freedom is considered to be the unconditional freedom and limited to a certain individual and a group meanwhile liberty promotes a conditional and comprehensive freedom for individuals and their living world. All the other political philosophies claim for unconditionally expanding their own freedom for their own interest and ego for a limited numbers of individuals belonging to their interest group. On the other hand, liberalism regards highly of expanding the comprehensive freedom sustainable in the long term for all individuals and their living environment by occasionally restricting some form of the short term freedom.

In another word, individuals are not allowed to be unconditionally free in liberalism, and the guiding principle of how freedom is distributed among individuals can be more complicated and restrictive than the other political philosophies. Liberalism attempts to maximise the aggregate freedom by reforming the flow of available freedoms among individuals. Then, as it is so complicated that there are different perspectives on how to achieve liberalism, and it has been debated among unique political philosophers to determine what form of liberalism should be and how individuals should sustain their aspiring liberalism in their living environment.

The firstly introduced concept is the liberalism guided by a philosophical guiding principle promoting as well as controlling the liberty among individuals. In this concept, individuals pursue liberalism as their political ideal where individuals voluntarily act to fulfil their freedom within the condition whilst allowing the others' freedom within the condition and establishing the long term sustainable liberty for all. Individuals are endowed with the right to be free meanwhile they have to fulfil the duty to obtain their right, and there is no authority cohesively enforcing them to do so that they are encouraged to voluntarily trade off between their right and duty. The duty includes the following two things. The one is the virtue where individuals work at something they are excel at to contribute for the others and their environment. The other is the moral and legal guide line which individuals are discouraged from deviating from in order to sustain the balance of their permitted freedom for each individual and their aggregate long term freedom for all individuals. This is considered as the idealistic liberalism because this is the ideal situation where individuals voluntarily pursue themselves for accomplishing their ideal.

The next introduced concept is the liberalism guided by more realistic needs and wants which are notably biological and psychological. Instead of aspiring for an ideal (the comprehensive philosophical and political meaning of freedom), this focuses on the matters concerning with biological survival competition and psychological interference among individuals. Individuals freely trade off their pleasures and pains directly related to their biological and psychological sensation instead of abstract concepts like right and duty. Their limitation of freedom is determined spontaneously at the equilibrium point where each parties of individuals agree on the spot. Furthermore, when it comes to the matter of fulfilling the interest of an institutional group of individuals, then it considers this institution as a big organic body of one individual where the individuals living within it are supposed to act as though they were biological cells and cogwheels of this institutional body. Within it, individuals may have to occasionally sacrifice their freedom in order to increase the freedom for their living institute. There are ongoing conflict between different institutes, between an institute and individuals living in it, and between individuals themselves. Instead of their shared principle, the power balance determines the stable outcome of the distribution of freedom. Therefore, there may need an authority powerful enough to accomplish it although this authority must be rational enough to promote the equitable fair trade among these conflicting parties.

These two concepts seem to be conflicting theories not philosophically agreeing with each other. The first idealistic concept seems to be the closest to the world succeeding in establishing liberalism although it is still unrealistic to expect all individuals living in this world to share one universal ethical principle. It may conversely require a moral entrepreneur autocracy to cohesively teach all individuals to implant this principle into them before enabling all individuals to voluntarily act themselves if requiring to establish in the relatively short term. In order to establish this idealistic concept, it will require time, effort, and perseverance of promoters of liberalism to gradually enable all individuals to be enlightened with the ideal. The second realistic concept may be far more effective to instantly establish the liberalism than the previously introduced idealistic one because the stimulus of inducing individuals are visible and immediately control-able variables. The problem of this realistic concept is that it induces to the state where liberalism gradually declines in the relatively longer term after the physically stronger individuals and institute survive to monopolise the power of the trade. All in all, both the former concept and the latter concept have advantage and disadvantage of establishing liberalism.

In order to keep insisting on liberalism, liberalist theorists and political activists ought to recall both the concepts and somehow synthesise them to create their own theory of form their own liberalist theory. On the spot, it had better refer to visible and understandable variables for majority individuals to settle their agreement for maximising the freedom of all parties simultaneously. At the same time, it ought to recall the abstract principle of liberty in their mind which promotes not only physical but also spiritual/philosophical aspirations of individuals to voluntarily sustain their liberal life and furthermore expand their liberty. Under the certain condition where individuals are rational to chose and their living environment provides them with the rational options, these two concepts are essential to take into consideration to think of liberalism. There are more other conditions of pursuing liberalism than these previously mentioned two concepts meanwhile these two concepts are most hotly debated topics of theories of liberalism. From the editor's point of view, these two concepts can be synthesised together under the condition where both individuals' choice and their living environment's options are rationally available.