I want broad latitude to decide how I live my life. That aspiration obliges me to accept that others want the same, even when their decisions make me uncomfortable. That is where the difficulty begins:

  • We need rules for living together without every difference ending in coercion.
  • Defending liberty requires explaining which rules I consider legitimate, who may enforce them, and what limits they must respect.

My starting point is to favor voluntary agreements and require a specific justification from anyone who intends to replace them with compulsory decisions.

  • I do not consider invoking the general interest sufficient.
  • I want to know who gains decision-making power, who loses it, and how the person bearing the consequences can seek redress.

I use that criterion to organize my ideas about property, contract, markets, and the State.

They are convictions that leave questions open, especially when vulnerability or harm to third parties rules out easy answers.

Property to Sustain a Project of One's Own

I defend property because it gives a person a sphere of decision over specific resources.

  • A home, savings, or the tools of a trade can support a project that does not depend on obtaining permission at every step.
  • I care about that relationship between having resources at one's disposal and being able to choose. Liberty loses part of its substance if someone else can arbitrarily take away the means with which I try to exercise it.

Continuity also matters to me. If I save for a future need or devote years to developing an activity, I consider it reasonable to keep the legitimate result of that effort.

  • I want known rules that allow people to plan, transfer property, and undertake commitments.
  • At the same time, a deed or a bank account does not make every origin of property just. Fraud, misappropriation, and harm caused to others require examination and redress.

Owning something does not grant permission to use it in any way whatsoever.

  • If, in a hypothetical example, an activity carried out on my land contaminates my neighbor's water, my right must coexist with theirs.
  • The issue is to identify the harm, prove the connection, and determine responsibility. Invoking property does not by itself resolve the conflict.

A relevant objection remains: what does this defense mean for someone who owns almost no resources?

  • My approach would be to examine what obstacles prevent that person from saving, working, starting a business, or obtaining housing, while also considering the help they may need.
  • Defending property requires me to care about the possibility of acquiring it as well.
  • I do not have a single settled answer for every case of exclusion.

I value contracts as a way to build commitments between different people.

  • They allow one person to accept an obligation in exchange for another without sharing an ideology, customs, or the same idea of happiness.
  • When I hire a service or enter into a partnership, I want to agree on what each party owes and what will happen if something goes wrong.

To defend that agreement, I need to take Consent seriously.

  • I do not consider a signature or a checked box sufficient if it conceals deception about a material term, a threat, or deliberately withheld information.
  • I want understandable terms and ways to seek redress.
  • Freedom of contract loses credibility when it becomes an excuse for evading what was promised or exploiting consent obtained through fraud.

Necessity creates an additional difficulty. Someone who urgently accepts a job to pay the rent may have few alternatives.

  • That pressure deserves attention, although it does not allow every unequal agreement to be classified automatically as coercion.
  • I need to distinguish a threat made by someone from difficult circumstances and examine what real options exist.
  • I must also ask whether the proposed solution expands those options or ends up closing some of them.

Imagine, for example, a person who receives a job offer with a decisive clause that they learn about only after moving to another city. Before celebrating their freedom to accept, we should clarify what information they received and what commitment the company made. Contractual responsibility extends to both parties.

I prefer to let people make agreements broadly, with protection against deception and mechanisms for resolving disputes. That leaves questions to be clarified:

  • Which terms may be validly agreed, which rights deserve special protection, and when intervention protects the weaker party.
  • I would have to assess each proposal by its reasons and consequences.

An Open Market with Rules for Everyone

I see the market as a sphere of cooperation among people who offer, choose, and exchange.

  • I am drawn to the possibility that someone can try an idea without needing an authority to deem it convenient for society as a whole.
  • The buyer may have different reasons from the seller. Their agreement does not require them to share a collective project.

In "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945, sections V–VI, pp. 524–527), Hayek explained how prices can convey information and coordinate the decisions of people with dispersed knowledge. I find in this a reason to favor decentralized decisions. That argument leaves work to be done: examining the conditions of each market, its failures, and the harms its participants may shift to others.

My defense of the market includes the ability to reject an offer and look for another.

  • That is why I attach importance to competition, access for new participants, and rules that allow people to seek redress for breaches.
  • I find it difficult to call an activity free when established operators obtain barriers from those in power that are designed to keep potential rivals out.

Nor do I automatically identify the interests of a company with those of a free society.

  • A company may offer something valuable and also seek favors, protection from competitors, or advantages paid for by others.
  • I want to judge those demands by the same criterion I apply to any organized group.
  • An activity's closeness to my ideas should not earn it an exception.

I also need to distinguish a loss caused by competition from harm that violates rights.

  • If a customer prefers my rival's offer, that loss does not entitle me to demand protection.
  • If my rival steals from me or dumps waste on my land, a different responsibility arises.
  • The consent of those doing business does not allow them to dispose of the rights of third parties.

I do not intend to turn every human relationship into a commercial transaction.

  • I want to preserve space for care, friendship, and help without payment in return.
  • My framework must allow different forms of cooperation, including those whose value the participants do not wish to express in a price.

A Limited State Must Justify Its Functions

I lean toward a Limited State, focused on functions it can justify and subject to effective controls.

  • Justice, security, and defense form part of that core, together with the protection of rights and the enforcement of contracts.
  • Its purpose would be to make it possible for people who disagree to live together.
  • I defend equality before the law: the rules must also bind those who exercise power, without privileges based on office, connections, or membership in a group.

Speaking of a minimal State requires specifying how far that minimum extends. I do not want to use the expression to treat questions I still need to discuss as settled.

  • Protecting vulnerable people and certain essential infrastructure are two frontiers of my reflection.
  • I must explain what responsibility belongs to public institutions, how it is financed, and what role families, associations, or businesses may play.

The situation of a person who cannot care for themselves forces me to test my principles.

  • It would not be enough for me to say that voluntary aid exists without examining whether, in that case, it arrives in time and is sufficient.
  • Nor would I accept every intervention merely because it announces a charitable purpose.
  • I want to assess the specific need, the effective help, and the responsibility of whoever administers the resources.

For works or services considered essential,

  • I would ask what problem requires a common solution and why it cannot be resolved through other agreements.
  • Then another question would follow: if public intervention is needed, must the State finance the service, set rules, or provide it directly? Those are different decisions and deserve their own arguments.

Subsidiarity guides that distribution of decisions:

  • favoring the decision closest to the people affected that is capable of addressing the problem.
  • If a family, an association, or a municipality can resolve it, anyone proposing to move it to a higher level should explain why.
  • Proximity does not guarantee justice or competence either.
  • I accept revisiting the distribution when the problem exceeds that sphere or when nearby power violates rights.

Elinor Ostrom's research on polycentric governance (2010, pp. 641–643 and 648) shows the importance of adapting the rules of cooperation to the context. Communities and public or private organizations can take part in governing common resources. That diversity deserves attention: defending autonomy allows us to explore different institutional arrangements and compare their results without assuming a universal solution.

My requirement would be to keep public functions under review. I want to know their results, their costs, and the available ways to seek redress. I also want a power to be reduced or eliminated when it is no longer justified.

Private Power Must Also Be Accountable

Limiting the State leaves another question open: what happens when a private organization decisively shapes our options? My concern for liberty must extend to that power as well. The fact that a company is private does not by itself resolve problems of dependence, abuse, or defenselessness that may arise.

Consider an everyday situation: a platform gathers communications, documents, and professional relationships and then makes them difficult to recover or transfer. To assess the user's freedom, I would need to examine the accepted terms, the information available, and the possibilities for leaving. Saying that the user can leave is insufficient if it does not clarify what they retain, what they lose, and what alternatives they have.

Privacy is part of this concern.

  • I want to understand what information I surrender, what it is used for, and how it affects decisions others make about me.
  • I also want procedures for correcting errors and challenging consequential decisions.
  • Digital control deserves attention whether it is exercised by a public administration or by a company.

Anyone who exercises power over other people's important decisions must answer for their actions under known rules. Measures that limit that power must also be justified. I am willing to revisit the applications and boundaries of this framework; to do so, I need to discuss specific problems and the reasons for each solution.

I propose the same exercise to you: choose one decision you would accept delegating and another you would want to retain. Explain what responsibility you assume for the second and what limits you would demand from whoever makes the first. Then we can discuss our differences. How do you define yourself, and where do you stand?