Young Americans For Liberty: Thomas Sowell on Freedom of Choice

Freedom of Choice and personal and economic freedom in general is just that. The freedom to decide what is best for yourself. Not what is best for others. Not the freedom to hurt people other than in self-defense, but the freedom for one to make their own decisions and have the personal responsibility to live with the consequences of their decisions. To consume alcohol or not, to smoke tobacco or not, to even use marijuana or not, to marry or not and the same things for gays. The freedom to gamble one's own money or not. The freedom to watch an adult film or not. The freedom to read adult material and listen to graphic music and watch graphic entertainment or not. Not the freedom to make these decisions for others, because you approve of them. Ot to deny others from making these decisions for themselves, because you don't approve of them.

If there is a free market and of course there isn't and I've argued this a lot in the past, but if there were a free market it would be an individual market based on choice. Where we can all make these decisions for ourselves and then be held responsible for the decisions that we make. A free market of individuals, not a market of business's that would go unregulated and untaxed with the freedom over our own lives as far as what we consume, because even if there are a lot of different products, there would be very few competitors, because of all the unregulated monopolization in the market. But a true individual market where all free adults make these decisions themselves with a wide-range of different business's and competitors, because monopoly is truly illegal. With an educated public that has all the information that they need to make their own decisions.

Freedom of Choice is always something that I believe in as a Liberal. Because that along with Freedom of Speech and equality opportunity and equal rights and justice for all, is really what liberalism is about. I don't want to force people to make the same decisions that I did. Or be held responsible for the decisions that I made. I just want the freedom to make my own decisions and given the responsibility to personally live up to the consequences of my decisions. Not eliminate government and get it out-of-the-way all together. We still need a regulator to regulate how people interact with each other and to punish when the innocent are harmed. But let people make their own personal decisions short of hurting innocent people and hold them personally responsible for their own decisions.