Topic > Maximizing the Welfare of a State's Citizens: Negative and Positive Freedoms in Liberal Theory

In this essay, I will argue that in order to maximize the welfare of a state's citizens, the main focus in liberal theory, liberals and their systems should value both negative and positive freedoms. This is due to the negative freedom approach aimed at limiting individuals' externalities and the positive freedom approach aimed at strengthening the lack of capabilities an individual may have. Once we have acted together, an individual can be truly free to pursue their well-being to the fullest extent. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Libertarians should value the “freedom from” approach's conception of negative freedom, in order to prevent the limitation of an individual's pursuit of well-being, by external factors. In this sense, the value of negative freedom focuses on preventing external factors - for example, the violence of an individual such as a thief, from depriving us of our pursuit of well-being, such as accumulating monetary wealth by stealing his car to get home. Work. In this sense, because liberals believe in limited state intervention within the private sphere, essentially our social life and economic endeavors are protected through the police who attempt to eradicate externalities, like the thief, preventing them from achieving our well-being, and so if a person is free from externalities, liberals who advocate negative freedom would describe the individual as truly free. However, evaluating negative freedom alone would be reductive. An individual who faces constraints from within, such as being extremely poor, which prevents him from being free to pursue his own well-being to the fullest extent, but is not in fact prevented by an externality from achieving this goal, would still be considered free, even if it isn't. This demonstrates why negative freedom should not be evaluated alone. To solve this problem, liberals should enhance the aspect of state welfare and intervention that positive liberty can address in an attempt to focus on individuals' lack of capacity. Positive freedom focuses on the answer to what or who is the source of interference that has the ability to determine someone's ability to do or be a certain thing over another. In this sense, the fact of being born with a disability or of being poor, which prevents us from finding a job and hinders us economically, would be tried to be resolved with a welfare system financed by taxes. In this sense, a positive value of freedom within a state would involve active measures to ensure that the individual is able to pursue his or her desires and has the resources available to do so. This has significant strength in that it produces a more just and equal society in which opportunities are not left to those with greater economic capital and who can achieve results because, as negative freedom states, only those who suffer from externalities are truly not free, which is reductionist. . However, positive liberty liberals would argue that a limitation to this argument arises because a government that imposes high levels of positive liberty, as in Australia and Sweden, through heavy tax-funded pension and welfare plans, is itself considered not liberal. since it is the state that steals money from its citizens through the coercion of violence if they do not pay it. In this sense, the state acts as an externality that does not allow individuals full control over optionsof their finances, and therefore the state appears to take on a more authoritarian role due to its use of coercive power to get what it wants. However, in response, liberal theory postulates minimum state taxes in order to secure the jobs of police officers and protect them from externalities. Simply protecting them, but not supporting those who are born into poor or disadvantaged conditions which are clearly not their choice, is simply an unfair freedom as only those in privileged positions will get it. This characteristic goes against the liberal paradigm according to which everyone can seek their own well-being to the maximum extent. In conclusion, the use of both positive and negative freedoms becomes imperative to achieve freedom for all members of society, not only by protecting people from externalities such as violence, but also by enabling those who are born into unfortunate situations. What is “justice” and is it “the first virtue of social institutions”? In response to this question, I will argue that the concept of justice connotes and implements fairness within a given society. This involves providing equal access to resources and opportunities for all members of a population as it creates a sense of unity between them and the power structures that govern them. Justice as fairness is a concept established to specify fair terms of social cooperation within society. This concept highlights two principles that justice imposes within social institutions: first, that every person has the same undeniable right to fully adequate fundamental freedoms that apply to all men within that society – e.g. According to this concept of justice, the poorest man and the richest man enjoy the same equal fundamental freedoms. Secondly, justice, even in socially and economically unequal societies, can exist if equality of opportunity is established in offices for which all can gain equal access to run for office. However, it can be argued that a fundamental problem arises from this. Critics might say that equality of opportunity does not guarantee that, for example, a poor, uneducated person can apply for a professional occupation and beat a rich, educated person, simply because there is no externality preventing him from doing so. apply. However, having the same opportunities to become a rich man and then being able to run for office would resolve this paradox. Justice is the first virtue of social institutions as it seeks to pursue equal opportunities that all members of a given society can access. The basic structure of society is the way in which major social and political institutions, such as the state and the university, which bring society together under a single system of social cooperation, as well as assign fundamental rights and roles in order to regulate the resulting benefits occur over time. An example of this is that some groups of people are richer or poorer than others due to the jobs they hold respectively, which are all part of the basic structure. Justice as fairness takes the basic structure as the main subject of political justice because of the effects it can have on the goals, characters and capabilities of citizens, along with the advantage that individuals can use to gain the upper hand and cause disadvantages to others . In a democratic society, citizens are considered free and equal people, and the principle of justice is what establishes the fundamental rules of cooperation between individuals in that society so as not to limit the benefit of access for some and it does for others. Justice as fairness consists in having adequate unity among the individuals of thatsociety and the power structures within it, in order to produce the most efficient social cooperation that allows individuals to maximize the pursuit of well-being, free from state coercion. In conclusion, I have defined justice as the conceptually and practically objective of implementing equity and social cooperation within a given society. Furthermore, I emphasized that justice is in fact the first virtue of social institutions as it aims to provide equal opportunities to all members of a population through the social and political institutions of society and thus to achieve social cooperation even among that population. , I argue that the point of equality is to provide opportunities to individuals with “different abilities,” rather than recognizing them as untalented due to their brute luck and, therefore, being recognized for receiving subsidized assistance or care from more fortunate individuals . Furthermore, I also highlight the criticisms of my answer. According to Elizabeth Anderson, the point of equality is to offer all individuals access to freedom, fair distribution of resources, and respect which, in turn, allows the full ability to pursue one's goal. of your well-being. She suggests that, rather than eradicating the impact of luck or ensuring that individuals get what they deserve on the basis of morality, the purpose of egalitarian justice is to eliminate oppression and “create a community in which people find themselves in relationships of equality with others." “In my response, the point of equality is for the state to provide opportunities for individuals with different abilities, recognizing them as worthy of receiving welfare and rejecting stereotypes that they are incapable and untalented. Drawing on the work of Amartya Sen, Anderson discusses the concept of well-being and its impact on what one can achieve in life. Where some individuals are backward in basic functionality, such as literacy, mobility, and so on, they are immediately placed lower in humanity's oppressive hierarchy. For this reason, most egalitarians believe that victims of bad luck, those who are born with a severe congenital or genetic handicap or who become handicapped due to factors beyond their control, such as childhood neglect or accidents, cannot be held responsible and deserve the social help due. to their lack of recognition and presumed "value" in the labor market. Here the egalitarian system “guarantees not actual levels of functionality, but effective access to those levels.” Therefore, the point of equality in this case would be to ensure everyone functions as equal citizens. However, this also creates social oppression as it directs disrespect towards the social group on which state interference is focused when they are seen as needing help. On the other hand, some scholars speculate that having the goal of achieving equality is futile. This is because “no two people are truly the same: the diversity of individuals in their talents, goals, social identities and circumstances guarantees that in achieving equality in some areas, inequalities will inevitably be created in others”. Furthermore, some critics argue that there is no point to inequality, since it mostly involves eliminating goods that cannot be equally distributed rather than letting some individuals have more of them than others. In addition to this, luck egalitarians propose an “equality of opportunity” perspective rather than an “equality of justice” perspective. In this case, they propose that individuals start with equal access to welfare and resources, but are forced to face the.405-406.