Again, that's not a "free choice."
If you are given a meal (a decent society) and don't pay for it and then go to jail because you refused to pay is this some great restriction on freedom?
Yes.
In a purely free society you can take whatever you want when you want it and the only restrictions on your behavior is the ability of the owner of that thing to stop you from doing so. Its your choice vs his choice and settle it however you can. Prior to the invention of "society" this was called "nature." That is, "I'm going to eat you, and you are going to try to escape. Whoever is the fastest wins."
We didn't really like living this way, of course, because of the simple problem that nobody could really gaurantee always been the fastest or the strongest. Living in fear of predation by someone/something stronger than us is a MAJOR source of stress for humans; it's a pain in the ass, it makes us less productive, it makes us less happy and less comfortable. So we invented society and with that came the rules that make predation by one human against another strictly off limits. The benefit of this rule is, we can let our guards down and focus on more important things like watching Netflix, blues concerts and arguing with people on the internet. The downside of this rule -- if you can even call it that -- is we are no longer free to take what we want when we want it just because we're stronger than the person who has it.
Surrender some freedom, get some benefit. That's the funding basis of "society."
If it is just you then I can come and take all you have by force and if I am more powerful you can do nothing.
That is not freedom.
Yes it is. You're free to come and take what I have and I am free to try and stop you. Nothing and no one will interfere with either of our choices and we are COMPLETELY free to settle this ourselves. Whichever one of us has the bigger gun or the bigger sword or the bigger rocket launcher will prevail.
That is indeed FREEDOM.
Because we live in a civilized society, we no longer have the right to settle disputes with violence. We gave up that freedom, and for the most part we don't really miss it. We could, for whatever reason, choose to take that freedom back, but to do so we would have to give up the safety and security we bought with it.
Incorrect. COMFORT is not free. Freedom is the price of comfort.
Those who value freedom accept a lower level of comfort. Those who value comfort accept a lower level of freedom.
It requires having institutions that protect and defend rights.
That, again, is comfort.
Freedom requires no institutions whatsoever. In the absence of other human beings, your ability to do whatever you want whenever you want it is completely unrestricted; you can build shelter where you want, hunt and fish where you want, eat, shit and fuck wherever and whenever and whatever you want. Add another human being into the mix, and your freedom is still absolute; you can both do whatever you want, including kill and rape each other.
It's only when you don't want to have to worry about what the other humans are going to do to you that some of those freedoms are given up for the sake of cooperation. Now you can live together comfortably, and focus on other things. Marriages, families, tribes, clans, these are all the prototypes of the broader sense of what we call society, and they ALL involve two or more people agreeing that there are some things they will never ever do to each other. But marriage, like family, does not make people more free, it makes them more cohesive and unified.
