Liberty Alone

One of the things which came out of the debate on school dinners recently was the claim that poor people cannot make a choice.

Apparently being poor, or living in a deprived area means that the ability to make a choice is beyond you.

This is utter rubbish. Its offensive and smacks of the sort of Tory view I though liberals were meant to be against - ‘The little people must be looked after’. Its Tory Radicalism and analogous to the concept of ‘white man’s burden’.

What it boils down to is that, in the opinion of those who claim they cannot make the choice, is that they often make a choice which these people disagree with. Perhaps they think they know what’s best, but a fundamental of liberalism is that the individual is best place to decide what is best for them. The trade-offs concerned are unique to each individual, the circumstances of each choice is unique.

This usually raises up talk of non-perfect information. The claim being that the poor do not have enough information to make the choice. What hubris makes you think that you have enough information? You know nothing of the lives you are seeking to interfere with. For all you know a person may know everything you know about food and nutrition (or whatever choice is to be made) but chooses to make a different choice.

If, as may be the case, you believe that people don’t have as much information on the topic you’d like then you can try to educate them. You can donate to a group who is involved in that cause. What is not valid, what is illiberal and authoritarian, is to seek to force what you think is the right thing to do upon others or to seek to use the power of the state to gain this end.

Footnote:
This has set me thinking about when a choice can be considered a free choice - more on that later…

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