Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

30 • Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom
These “false” freedoms are motivated by a number of confusions:
1. A confusion between freedom and “other good things,” to use
Hayek’s phrase (quoted at greater length later in this section).
2. A confusion between things that “enhance” freedom and freedom
itself—this largely overlaps the first confusion since things
that enhance freedom are usually thought of as “good.”
3. A confusion between things that help develop, support, or maintain
freedom and freedom itself.
Claim-freedom
First we will look at a “third” concept of freedom, one that is often confused
with positive freedom. These are the “claim” rights or freedoms, to
use Hardy Bouillon’s (2004) insightful phraseology. These are material
claims, such as “freedom to have a job” or “freedom from want.” Even
when they appear not to describe material things, they lead back to material
things. For example, “freedom from disease” actually means access to
health care, clean water, and so on. As will be discussed below, various
forms of claims involve the confusion of “other good things” with freedom
and/or the enhancement of freedom with freedom.
We need to glance briefly here at the differences between rights and
freedoms. Freedoms may be considered rights, but all human rights may
not be freedoms. In other words, freedom is a subset of rights. Humans
may have a right to democratic governance, but democratic governance
is not a freedom, something that will be discussed below. Because this
paper is concerned about freedom, it has not, and will not below, discuss
whether humans have rights outside of freedom, but rather whether
a number of “claims” represent freedom using the analytical tools
described earlier.
This is relevant because many such claims are no longer merely labeled
as “rights”; they have been recast as freedoms. Instead of the claim that
people have a “right” to work, the claim becomes that people have a “freedom”
to work, in other words, a “claim-freedom”. Democracy is no longer
a “right,” according to Freedom House, it is a freedom. To clarify succinctly:
things which may or may not be human rights have been with
little logic defined as freedoms.
This raises several questions. Hayek (1960/1978), like Berlin,
McCallum, and Carter, argues convincingly that for freedom to be limited,
there must be an “intention” to limit it. The free market allocates
goods and services according to the freely made choices of a number
of individuals. It creates “spontaneous order” that does not involve the
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