Abuse of freedom of choice

Incidence

Markets enable but also constrain freedom of choice. The classic liberal view is that, in a pluralistic modern society, markets function as individual “preference satisfaction machines”. You are free to use your own money to buy whatever goods you want in whatever quantities you can afford. This freedom to transact was historically liberating. But markets also constrain people’s freedom of choice. They allocate goods based on the ability to pay, so production in general is driven by the preferences of the wealthiest. The preferences of people with little money have little effect, and for people with no money they go unmet.

Claim

Liberty, then, as We have said, belongs only to those who have the gift of reason or intelligence. Considered as to its nature, it is the faculty of choosing means fitted for the end proposed, for he is master of his actions who can choose one thing out of many. Now, since everything chosen as a means is viewed as good or useful, and since good, as such, is the proper object of our desire, it follows that freedom of choice is a property of the will, or, rather, is identical with the will in so far as it has in its action the faculty of choice. But the will cannot proceed to act until it is enlightened by the knowledge possessed by the intellect. In other words, the good wished by the will is necessarily good in so far as it is known by the intellect; and this the more, because in all voluntary acts choice is subsequent to a judgment upon the truth of the good presented, declaring to which good preference should be given. No sensible man can doubt that judgment is an act of reason, not of the will. The end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason. Since, however, both these faculties are imperfect, it is possible, as is often seen, that the reason should propose something which is not really good, but which has the appearance of good, and that the will should choose accordingly. For, as the possibility of error, and actual error, are defects of the mind and attest its imperfection, so the pursuit of what has a false appearance of good, though a proof of our freedom, just as a disease is a proof of our vitality, implies defect in human liberty. The will also, simply because of its dependence on the reason, no sooner desires anything contrary thereto than it abuses its freedom of choice and corrupts its very essence. (Papal Writings, Libertas, 1888).

Joseph Stiglitz argues that “superficial” and “misguided” interpretation of freedom that has gained ascendancy in the period of neoliberal globalisation. The way the idea has been defined and pursued has led to the opposite of “meaningful freedom”. It has failed “to give due recognition to how interdependent people are in a modern economy” and led to a vast reduction in the “freedoms of most citizens”.