The freedom is to enjoy the things you enjoy as long as you can do it without harming anyone else. The car part is ancillary. I don't even like cars
Replies
Okay but, "without harming anyone else" is not satisfied here? That's our entire point?
aug 29, 2025, 9:25 pm • 3 0 • view
I have to imagine that J.S. Mill could not object to a ban on guns, or automobiles. They inflict harms!
aug 29, 2025, 9:25 pm • 3 0 • view
So does my bicycle though. A lot less, by a factor of a hundred or a thousand. I’m not sure how to disentangle what is liberal or illiberal from technical determination from something like this. It’s perhaps impossible? Is banning “rolling coal” illiberal?
aug 29, 2025, 9:28 pm • 0 0 • view
No, all of this seems fine to me Again, draconic bicycle regulations may well be a bad idea! Lots of things you can legitimately do with the power of a liberal state are nonetheless bad ideas! (We should def ban rolling coal though) (We will probably have to ban gas-powered cars soon)
aug 29, 2025, 9:30 pm • 1 0 • view
many states and cities have regulations on the maximum speed of escooters that passed without significant controversy. presumably, this is because escooters did not exist at the time of the passage of the bill of rights
aug 29, 2025, 9:41 pm • 1 0 • view
I’m more exploring how much “liberalism” relates to technical facts. Things of analysis rather than algebra. In some sense we ban a lot of counter-factual cars with regulation as is. Usually ones that are worse, occasionally ones that are better (see: single stair building code)
aug 29, 2025, 9:40 pm • 1 0 • view
I'm going to assume you haven't read mill in a while. The dude didn't even think you could ban poisons. Just that maybe you could require shopkeepers to keep a registry of who buys them
aug 29, 2025, 9:32 pm • 1 0 • view
Anyway, it's pretty difficult to come up with an example of anything that does not have at least the potential to inflict harm, which means that a ban on (almost?) anything is consistent with liberalism. And that's just not a definition of liberalism that I recognize
aug 29, 2025, 9:33 pm • 2 0 • view
I actually agree this is a problem with trying to use the harm principle to derive the limits on majority rule! I think it misses on both sides
aug 29, 2025, 9:40 pm • 3 0 • view
I felt compelled to look this up to make sure I wasn't misremembering it. This dude is not going to be on board with a car ban (or gun ban)
aug 29, 2025, 9:37 pm • 1 0 • view
Mill is not, in fact, the be-all and end-all of political theory, and there are times when what he says is utter clunkers.* And I say that as someone who *likes* much of what he says! *Particularly his (qualified) defense of imperialism.
aug 30, 2025, 3:00 am • 0 0 • view
Yeah, and that's nuts.
aug 30, 2025, 2:56 am • 2 0 • view