You’re 3.5x less free than you could be to do what you want with your life (due to the way we work)— here’s why
It is commonly said that people in Western democracies are free. This is true to a large degree. We enjoy historically unprecedented levels of freedom. We have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. We are free to start businesses, invest in the future, and improve our lives.
Yet, it feels different as I stare out my office window.
When I mention this to my colleagues, they usually respond with, ”Well, you are free to quit,” or ”You are free to find another job.”
This is true, but it also somehow misses the point. I am not in the office because I want to, yet I am free not to be here. How can this be?
The reason is a commonly overlooked aspect of freedom: it can be meaningless.
In an article from 1975, the philosopher Max Hocutt identifies a distinction between what people may do from what they can do.[1] Bob can shoot or rape his neighbor, but he is not free to do so. His country has laws against it; if he performs such misdeeds (and is caught), other people will punish him for it.
Conversely, there are things Bob is permitted to do that he cannot do. No one would try to stop or punish him if he, for example, tried to lift his car.
Freedom, in this sense, is what we are permitted to do, and not prevented from doing, by other people; and political freedoms are what we are allowed to do by our governments. Capabilities, on the other hand, are what we have real opportunities to achieve; they are what we can actually be or do.
This is how freedom can be meaningless. It is intrinsically good to be free to lift your car — but, as argued by Hocutt, that freedom doesn’t matter unless you can actually do it.[1, p.261]
To be meaningfully free, you must not only be permitted but have real opportunities. We must not only be free but also capable.
In this sense, my colleagues are technically correct. My government permits me to quit and do what I want with my life. In actuality, however, this doesn’t matter — because my freedom to do so is empty.
Why?
Because even if I quit, I can’t do what I want.
To be capable of anything, I need at least two resources: health and time.
I can’t do much without health; if I am sick, starving, or dehydrated, there’s not much I can do. Likewise, I can’t do anything without time. Take it away, and I cannot enjoy my house, be with my family, or work on my projects.
Herein lies a dilemma: Nature demands that we, in most situations, sacrifice some of our time for our health.
We experience this dilemma on a daily basis. I am in the office to be in good health, but this costs me time. Quitting my job would give me time but risk my health.
As such, neither keeping nor quitting my job allows me to do what I want. To do what I want, I need both health and time, but there is no opportunity to have both.
And freedom without opportunity is an empty gesture.
Consequently, I am not meaningfully free to do what I want with my life.
“So, what are you saying? Should we all just do what we want? If we did, society would collapse. Who would produce the food and clean our toilets?”
Precisely.
So far, we have been thinking categorically. Able or unable. Free or unfree.
But the question isn’t “Are we capable? Yes or no.” The real question is: how free are we? And how free CAN we be?
Imagine that freedom could be measured and that your freedom score is 5. Would this be good or bad?
Well, that depends on what’s realistically possible. A score of 5 is excellent if 1 to 5 are the only possibilities. It is terrible if the maximum is 100 and mediocre if the range is 1–10.
To understand our situation, we must compare it with what is achievable.
We already know what’s possible for an individual. Look no further than the billionaires who don’t have to lift a finger to be in good health.
This is what most people, myself included, aspire to in modern society. A passive income large enough to escape the hamster wheel.
The problem is that Nature demands that someone somewhere must do what’s necessary. If you don’t, then someone else must do it for you.
Consequently, if we want everyone to be as free as possible, we must ask: how much do we need to work to make everyone be in good health?
Consider the following graph.
Being in good health requires a living-wage worth of goods and services. To provide this to everyone in the USA (in 2019), each working-age person would have had to work 10 hours per week.
Let me say that again: 10 hours per week.
In other words, everyone can work a 10-hour day and then have a 6-day weekend. Or why not a 40h work-week and then a three-week weekend, or work one month and rest for three.
And everyone would be in good health.
Currently, this is the limit. Given the current state of technology, we cannot work less than this if everyone is to be as free as possible; it is the best possible freedom score.
So, what’s our actual score? I think you know the answer.
Most people must work more than ten hours per week to care for their health.
If measured by the average workweek, then we are far off. In 2019, it was around 35 hours — 3.5x more than the 10-hour benchmark. And that’s the average — many had to work much more. And many people did, yet failed to care for their health.
This challenges the claim that we are free in the West.
Sure, we are largely permitted to do what we want with our lives. But how meaningful is that freedom? How able are we, truly, to do what we want with our lives?
Answer: we are 3.5 times less free than we could be.
Bibliography
[1] Max Hocutt. “Freedom and Capacity”. In: The Review of Metaphysics 29.2 (1975). Publisher: Philosophy Education Society Inc., pp. 256–262. ISSN: 0034–6632. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20126774 (visited on 07/18/2021).
