Last week, Dan Klein wrote a critique of my essay, “The Woke Who Did Not Cancel.” I have one big response, plus more specific reactions. Big response: Even if everything Dan says is correct, there’s still a massive puzzle! Given the extreme left-wing orientation of social media firms, why don’t they ban
I think part of this goes all way back to your original post, to the graphic you put up of political donations by party. You say "Wow, almost everyone at Facebook and Twitter donate to Democrats! Isn't odd that they don't cancel more right wingers, then?"
I think, though, that if we consider a few points about that the puzzle diminishes a good bit.
Firstly, not everyone donates to political parties. While I have no doubt that the vast majority of FB and Twitter employees vote Democrat, only a very tiny percentage of those who vote care enough to donate money. Notably, caring a great deal about politics seems to be the key driver of donations, although I don't know how much one has to care to donate 20$. More than I do, at least, but who knows.
Secondly, not everyone who votes or donates to the Democrats is a censorious bastard. There seems to be a good many actual freedom of speech and otherwise fairly sensible Dems out there still, who maybe don't denounce the crazy Woke fringe, but don't really support them either. These folks might get behind a little bit of censorship, or perhaps flagging COVID "disinformation", but they probably are not pushing to ban Joe Rogan.
I think those two points solve a lot of the puzzle here.
Why is there not more cancelling? Because only 10-20% of the workforce at FB and Twitter are super motivated canceller types; the rest push back just a little here and there and won't get behind sweeping bans.
Why is so much of the cancelling rather haphazard? It has to be the type that a large percent of the decision makers (at whatever relevant level) can get behind, and that includes a lot of fairly reasonable Democratic voting folks. They are scared about COVID misinformation, but less trigger happy on abortion debate, perhaps, at least compared to their more ideological firebrand colleagues.
Why don't they ban everyone? Well, see above, but also many of those middle manager types do recognize that alienating 50% of the US user base is probably a bit much.
Why do they trade profits for discrimination? This answer comes straight from the discrimination literature. It isn't the business owners who are super gung ho to ban everyone, as they rightly are trading off loss revenue against ideological or moral points. That calculation does include "If we are seen as more ideologically pure that can net us money... we don't want to look like 4chan." so banning some people through pure discrimination does make sense.
The middle managers, however, are the ones really making specific decisions around low level, not so famous people, and they could not care less about whether company revenue goes up or down the teeny tiny marginal amount banning one more pleb would cause. They are going to get pushback from the higher ups if they ban Trump or Caplan because those names are big enough for higher ups to hear about it, but they are not going to hear a thing if they ban me. All it takes is my name coming across their radar.
Which brings us to the last discriminating actor, the customers themselves. How does my name become a known target to those wielding the ban hammer at FB or Twitter? The censorious and prejudiced customer base that starts flagging my posts as evil misinformation, or hate speech, or whatever. The business is going to respond to the demands of its prejudiced customer base.
So, really, FB and Twitter's behaviors are pretty much what the economics of discrimination literature would predict. Discrimination is most costly to those who own the business, less costly to the workers, and even less to the customers. The very high ups mitigate some of what the middle managers do, but have very little oversight of day to day running of things, and middle managers respond to the demands of the customer when the customers demand things they want to do anyway. Having 10,000 user complaints is a good excuse to ban someone you don't like either.
Note, this also clarifies why certain things do get the heavy ban hammer instead of just the lesser hits: Hunter Biden's laptop, COVID craziness, China/Russia/Ukraine things are all political and government administration issues. Why does Google alter its algorithm for China? Why do Facebook and Twitter censor differently there? Because the higher ups at the company do actually care enough to make those things happen, either because of monetary reasons (want to be in Chinese market, don't want to be attacked by the regulatory state for not censoring what Psaki suggests) or because of ideological (don't want Trump to win so better hide Biden's kid.)
Isn’t it possible that the leaders of Facebook and Twitter actually don’t like censoring and only resort to it in extreme cases? Seems like a better null hypothesis and fits the data pretty well as far as I can see.
I assume a Laffer curve effect to optimal censorship.
censor too much, and your effectiveness goes down, because people will move to other platforms, and will be more conscious that they are bent censored. like in the USSR.
assuming no profit motive, are they actually censoring that much less that optimal?
How about this: part of the product the social media platforms are selling is a place where it’s “loyal lefty users” can participate in the canceling. It’s no fun for them if all the righty users are gone. Keep everyone around and keep everyone slightly angry and self-righteous
"people who run businesses are self-selected to care about profits over other values"
I'm surprised to hear that from you Bryan. Perhaps I'm oversensitive because I run a business.
But why do you claim that? Do you think there's some conflict between commerce and morality?
A charitable interprentation would be that the "other values" you refer to are leisure and financial security. But I don't think of those as *moral* values.
I think you are misinterpreting. He's not saying that they are immoral. He's saying the kind of ppl who become buisness owners are less likely to see their moral obligations as requiring them not to make a profit
I fully agree that "buisness owners are less likely to see their moral obligations as requiring them not to make a profit".
But I don't see how you read that in what Bryan wrote.
Marxists think that way - I didn't expect it of Bryan. Of course "values" is pretty ambiguous, but I do wonder what he had in mind.
When I hire people I want to be sure they're making a profit - as the sainted George Burns (Nattie Birnbaum) said, when negotiating you've got to "always leave something on the table for the other guy", otherwise nobody will want to do business with you!
I could have been more clear and appreciate your point but I still think you are reading in the assumption that Bryan means this remark in a negative sense. I think Bryan -- and I'm sympathetic to this POV -- would say that's an amazing feature of our capitalist system that buisness leaders aren't focused on judging people. We have the freedoms we do because the people who make dildos, sell porn, run substack etc care more about selling products than asking if it's good that people use that product.
I'm not a libertarian like Bryan but I think a world in which buisness leaders cared more about morality than profits (in the sense I think you understand it) would be an awful stifling world. Yes, I think that means those buisness leaders are being perfectly moral in an ultimate sense but in terms of what is often thought of as morality -- judging people and deciding if you want to disapprove -- they don't focus on that.
I'd certainly like Bryan to be more clear in how he worded this -- indeed Bryan's lack of sufficent care with definitions is a constant source of disagreement -- but I don't see any negative judgement here and as a descriptive matter it is true that buisness leaders tend to be more concerned about profit than judging people (even if I and I suspect on reflection Bryan would say that's not ultimately immoral).
- the platforms were pressured by the government to censor things, including COVID information that turns our to have been true
- if the goal is to influence elections, it’s not necessary to censor all - in fact it’s probably harmful - it’s just necessary to censor those who are mostly likely to harm leftist electoral chances.
- if the goal is to influence elections, more quiet versions that outright censorship - minimizing who sees a post - are often more effective than outright bans.
None of which suggests that anything Bryan wrote was incorrect, but it’s not the whole picture here, and is dog that didn’t bark only partially addresses the most interesting questions.
"We shouldn’t be asking, 'Why isn’t cancelling worse?' and giving my answer. We should be asking, 'How bad is cancelling?' - and giving the answer 'Terrible.' If so, we’re at an impasse. Why aren’t both questions worthwhile?
This is similar to questions in my head around gun control and school shootings. "How bad are shootings?" Terrible! But also, "Why aren't school shootings more common (given the quantity of firearms)?"
“But also, "Why aren't school shootings more common (given the quantity of firearms)?"”
A: Because the incidence of school shootings is almost wholly unrelated to “gun control” laws (unless one were to replace “gun control” with wholesale gun confiscation).
Although in fact basic logic demonstrates that school shooting incidences occur somewhat MORE in places that are “gun-free” zones.
They don't do 10x more censoring because of the network effect and economies of scale. A social network's value and stickyness comes from the size of its network.
If you kick out half your network you loose more than half the value. It gives a competitor an opportunity to grow their network. Finally, the cost of engineering and marketing doesn't change much with scale.
Also, if there are no "bad" ideas, what are people going to post outrage about? Kicking Trump and The Babylon Bee off Twitter probably was bad for business. But, kicking them off sent a message.
I suspect he just doesn't believe that's the question you are really asking since it has such an obvious answer.
Banning too much speech not only is likely to result in pushback it makes you look bad and hurts your view.
The logic of cancellation has always been that these are especially severe or eggregious cases (even if it may not literally be true).
You start cancelling left and right and it starts to look like you are just blocking ideas you fear are too convincing. Not only would that cause a backlash by even progressive users but it harms their political cause. Looking weak and afraid is never a winning strategy.
Leftists are far far more likely to be affected by cancellation than anyone on the right. Heretics are always more hated than heathens.
Just look at the people who have actually been cancelled. They are people like David Shor and other liberals working at liberal institutions. Those people actually lose jobs and it creates pressure to say the right thing. OTOH people like Tucker Carlson are only cancelled by the left in the sense that people on the left say they are awful but it doesn't actually impair their audience or prevent their speech.
Tho there are also attempts to cancel from the right on completely different issues -- and those will also mostly target heretics -- but the recent uptick is mostly on the left.
And "left and right" in my post was a turn of phrase meaning indiscriminately so when you remarked on cancelling the left I assumed it was a reference to the broader culture war.
But even on this context Elon is willing to cancel accounts on the left.
I knew the context. I was making a joke at the same time making my point.
Elon, who is alone in terms of a social media platform that no longer skews explicitly left, you are correct has canceled some left accounts.
Are you claiming that any of the *other* platforms have done the same? Or at least, other than a ratio of at least 10-1 and more likely closer to 100-1 or even greater canceling right vs canceling left?
Well thought out and written. Perhaps the Leftwing media doesn't go all out in its censorship over concern of creating a political firestorm? They do just enough by use of arbitrary methods to create doubt and a self-censorship by its users. They might think their expertise gives them a feel for how much they can stroke the teat?
I think there is clearly SOMETHING bad going on in a leftward direction on most of the social media sites. However, you do point out several things that indicate it's not strategically done, rather incompetently and arbitrarily.
I agree with (b) - was going to post that comment myself.
Moreover, by allowing *some* opposition, but defanging the most potent/viral opposition, they preserve the appearance of neutrality to the majority of readers who aren't paying close attention.
If they snuffed 100% of opposition, that would be obvious to everyone, and would drive a large fraction of the usership away to other platforms. That would defeat their ideological purpose - to control and influence public debate.
In addition if you want your ideas to win it's a very bad look to appear weak. Banning a large swath of views makes it appear like you are afraid if people hear them they'll be convinced.
Thats part of why the justification for cancelling (tho often not practice) has always been that it's about stopping a small fraction of views that are so extreme and hateful that they are beyond what our society should accept as legitimate debate. If you expand the numbers too much that no longer passes a laugh test and you look like you are cowering in fear of better arguments.
Not being consistent also gives you plausible deniability in case you fail. If you want to kill all your opponents, but one of them escapes... then from certain perspective, you have publicly failed. The one will become famous.
But if you decide to kill three of your opponents to teach the rest of them a lesson, and you only succeed to kill two of them... everyone will assume that killing two was exactly what you wanted.
I think this is partly right, but also: they want to justify what they do to themselves, not just to the public.
People don’t like to think of themselves as censorious. Hence, some of the most censorious people will say of themselves that they’re “practically free speech absolutists”; it’s just that, in this case, [fill in the blank].
And even if were talking about someone who puts free speech in sneer quotes, I think it’s usually because they think people have “weaponized” free speech. On their view, censoring people is, in fact, the only way to have TRULY free speech, because they think that of certain views are allowed to be expressed, many people won’t feel free to express themselves.
Finally, people in this camp have varying understandings of what kind of speech, if expressed, chills other people. And their understandings aren’t even self-consistent! Hence the appearance of arbitrary sanctions.
I assume you would agree that certain physical *possibility* is a necessary part of freedom.
Imagine that legally you have freedom of speech, but I can tape your mouth with a duct tape which you are legally not allowed to remove. But hey, you are free to mumble incomprehensibly! Isn't freedom of speech a great thing?
Similarly, you are free to start any business you want, but the government is allowed to tax you at 100%, or simply to confiscate your entire business on day one. But hey, you were free to start it! Isn't economical freedom a great thing?
Or you have a freedom to defend your rights at court, but you happen to be a woman in a conservative islamic country, and you are not allowed to leave your house without your husband's permission. The only problem is, it's him you wanted to sue, so he obviously does not give you the permission.
Of course the Left goes much further than this, but in my opinion the difference is simply a question of how much possibility is assumed to be "enough" to make some right or freedom meaningful.
Even Ghengis Khan wasn’t maximalist most of the time. Measuring by the linchpin was guaranteed to leave a bitter taste in males not yet of military age. But it was good enough. And “oderint dum metuant” was a maxim known and followed a millennium or more before Ghengis. BC may understand economic thinking, but betrays an ignorance of practical political thinking and human nature.
I was thinking very much the same thing as I was writing up my response, and added it to my blog post on the matter. Well said. I added yours to my post as well, as I think you said it a bit better.
I think part of this goes all way back to your original post, to the graphic you put up of political donations by party. You say "Wow, almost everyone at Facebook and Twitter donate to Democrats! Isn't odd that they don't cancel more right wingers, then?"
I think, though, that if we consider a few points about that the puzzle diminishes a good bit.
Firstly, not everyone donates to political parties. While I have no doubt that the vast majority of FB and Twitter employees vote Democrat, only a very tiny percentage of those who vote care enough to donate money. Notably, caring a great deal about politics seems to be the key driver of donations, although I don't know how much one has to care to donate 20$. More than I do, at least, but who knows.
Secondly, not everyone who votes or donates to the Democrats is a censorious bastard. There seems to be a good many actual freedom of speech and otherwise fairly sensible Dems out there still, who maybe don't denounce the crazy Woke fringe, but don't really support them either. These folks might get behind a little bit of censorship, or perhaps flagging COVID "disinformation", but they probably are not pushing to ban Joe Rogan.
I think those two points solve a lot of the puzzle here.
Why is there not more cancelling? Because only 10-20% of the workforce at FB and Twitter are super motivated canceller types; the rest push back just a little here and there and won't get behind sweeping bans.
Why is so much of the cancelling rather haphazard? It has to be the type that a large percent of the decision makers (at whatever relevant level) can get behind, and that includes a lot of fairly reasonable Democratic voting folks. They are scared about COVID misinformation, but less trigger happy on abortion debate, perhaps, at least compared to their more ideological firebrand colleagues.
Why don't they ban everyone? Well, see above, but also many of those middle manager types do recognize that alienating 50% of the US user base is probably a bit much.
Why do they trade profits for discrimination? This answer comes straight from the discrimination literature. It isn't the business owners who are super gung ho to ban everyone, as they rightly are trading off loss revenue against ideological or moral points. That calculation does include "If we are seen as more ideologically pure that can net us money... we don't want to look like 4chan." so banning some people through pure discrimination does make sense.
The middle managers, however, are the ones really making specific decisions around low level, not so famous people, and they could not care less about whether company revenue goes up or down the teeny tiny marginal amount banning one more pleb would cause. They are going to get pushback from the higher ups if they ban Trump or Caplan because those names are big enough for higher ups to hear about it, but they are not going to hear a thing if they ban me. All it takes is my name coming across their radar.
Which brings us to the last discriminating actor, the customers themselves. How does my name become a known target to those wielding the ban hammer at FB or Twitter? The censorious and prejudiced customer base that starts flagging my posts as evil misinformation, or hate speech, or whatever. The business is going to respond to the demands of its prejudiced customer base.
So, really, FB and Twitter's behaviors are pretty much what the economics of discrimination literature would predict. Discrimination is most costly to those who own the business, less costly to the workers, and even less to the customers. The very high ups mitigate some of what the middle managers do, but have very little oversight of day to day running of things, and middle managers respond to the demands of the customer when the customers demand things they want to do anyway. Having 10,000 user complaints is a good excuse to ban someone you don't like either.
Note, this also clarifies why certain things do get the heavy ban hammer instead of just the lesser hits: Hunter Biden's laptop, COVID craziness, China/Russia/Ukraine things are all political and government administration issues. Why does Google alter its algorithm for China? Why do Facebook and Twitter censor differently there? Because the higher ups at the company do actually care enough to make those things happen, either because of monetary reasons (want to be in Chinese market, don't want to be attacked by the regulatory state for not censoring what Psaki suggests) or because of ideological (don't want Trump to win so better hide Biden's kid.)
Isn’t it possible that the leaders of Facebook and Twitter actually don’t like censoring and only resort to it in extreme cases? Seems like a better null hypothesis and fits the data pretty well as far as I can see.
I assume a Laffer curve effect to optimal censorship.
censor too much, and your effectiveness goes down, because people will move to other platforms, and will be more conscious that they are bent censored. like in the USSR.
assuming no profit motive, are they actually censoring that much less that optimal?
My intuition is yes. but I cannot be sure.
How about this: part of the product the social media platforms are selling is a place where it’s “loyal lefty users” can participate in the canceling. It’s no fun for them if all the righty users are gone. Keep everyone around and keep everyone slightly angry and self-righteous
"people who run businesses are self-selected to care about profits over other values"
I'm surprised to hear that from you Bryan. Perhaps I'm oversensitive because I run a business.
But why do you claim that? Do you think there's some conflict between commerce and morality?
A charitable interprentation would be that the "other values" you refer to are leisure and financial security. But I don't think of those as *moral* values.
I think you are misinterpreting. He's not saying that they are immoral. He's saying the kind of ppl who become buisness owners are less likely to see their moral obligations as requiring them not to make a profit
I fully agree that "buisness owners are less likely to see their moral obligations as requiring them not to make a profit".
But I don't see how you read that in what Bryan wrote.
Marxists think that way - I didn't expect it of Bryan. Of course "values" is pretty ambiguous, but I do wonder what he had in mind.
When I hire people I want to be sure they're making a profit - as the sainted George Burns (Nattie Birnbaum) said, when negotiating you've got to "always leave something on the table for the other guy", otherwise nobody will want to do business with you!
I could have been more clear and appreciate your point but I still think you are reading in the assumption that Bryan means this remark in a negative sense. I think Bryan -- and I'm sympathetic to this POV -- would say that's an amazing feature of our capitalist system that buisness leaders aren't focused on judging people. We have the freedoms we do because the people who make dildos, sell porn, run substack etc care more about selling products than asking if it's good that people use that product.
I'm not a libertarian like Bryan but I think a world in which buisness leaders cared more about morality than profits (in the sense I think you understand it) would be an awful stifling world. Yes, I think that means those buisness leaders are being perfectly moral in an ultimate sense but in terms of what is often thought of as morality -- judging people and deciding if you want to disapprove -- they don't focus on that.
I'd certainly like Bryan to be more clear in how he worded this -- indeed Bryan's lack of sufficent care with definitions is a constant source of disagreement -- but I don't see any negative judgement here and as a descriptive matter it is true that buisness leaders tend to be more concerned about profit than judging people (even if I and I suspect on reflection Bryan would say that's not ultimately immoral).
I agree with all Bryan’s arguments.
However, we now know:
- the platforms were pressured by the government to censor things, including COVID information that turns our to have been true
- if the goal is to influence elections, it’s not necessary to censor all - in fact it’s probably harmful - it’s just necessary to censor those who are mostly likely to harm leftist electoral chances.
- if the goal is to influence elections, more quiet versions that outright censorship - minimizing who sees a post - are often more effective than outright bans.
None of which suggests that anything Bryan wrote was incorrect, but it’s not the whole picture here, and is dog that didn’t bark only partially addresses the most interesting questions.
Bryan wrote:
"We shouldn’t be asking, 'Why isn’t cancelling worse?' and giving my answer. We should be asking, 'How bad is cancelling?' - and giving the answer 'Terrible.' If so, we’re at an impasse. Why aren’t both questions worthwhile?
This is similar to questions in my head around gun control and school shootings. "How bad are shootings?" Terrible! But also, "Why aren't school shootings more common (given the quantity of firearms)?"
“But also, "Why aren't school shootings more common (given the quantity of firearms)?"”
A: Because the incidence of school shootings is almost wholly unrelated to “gun control” laws (unless one were to replace “gun control” with wholesale gun confiscation).
Although in fact basic logic demonstrates that school shooting incidences occur somewhat MORE in places that are “gun-free” zones.
They don't do 10x more censoring because of the network effect and economies of scale. A social network's value and stickyness comes from the size of its network.
If you kick out half your network you loose more than half the value. It gives a competitor an opportunity to grow their network. Finally, the cost of engineering and marketing doesn't change much with scale.
Also, if there are no "bad" ideas, what are people going to post outrage about? Kicking Trump and The Babylon Bee off Twitter probably was bad for business. But, kicking them off sent a message.
Your argument is LITERALLY Bryan’s economic argument!
I suspect he just doesn't believe that's the question you are really asking since it has such an obvious answer.
Banning too much speech not only is likely to result in pushback it makes you look bad and hurts your view.
The logic of cancellation has always been that these are especially severe or eggregious cases (even if it may not literally be true).
You start cancelling left and right and it starts to look like you are just blocking ideas you fear are too convincing. Not only would that cause a backlash by even progressive users but it harms their political cause. Looking weak and afraid is never a winning strategy.
“ You start cancelling left and right”
…as if they would ever start canceling *left*! 😏
Leftists are far far more likely to be affected by cancellation than anyone on the right. Heretics are always more hated than heathens.
Just look at the people who have actually been cancelled. They are people like David Shor and other liberals working at liberal institutions. Those people actually lose jobs and it creates pressure to say the right thing. OTOH people like Tucker Carlson are only cancelled by the left in the sense that people on the left say they are awful but it doesn't actually impair their audience or prevent their speech.
Tho there are also attempts to cancel from the right on completely different issues -- and those will also mostly target heretics -- but the recent uptick is mostly on the left.
The discussion topic was cancellation of accounts by social media companies…
And "left and right" in my post was a turn of phrase meaning indiscriminately so when you remarked on cancelling the left I assumed it was a reference to the broader culture war.
But even on this context Elon is willing to cancel accounts on the left.
I knew the context. I was making a joke at the same time making my point.
Elon, who is alone in terms of a social media platform that no longer skews explicitly left, you are correct has canceled some left accounts.
Are you claiming that any of the *other* platforms have done the same? Or at least, other than a ratio of at least 10-1 and more likely closer to 100-1 or even greater canceling right vs canceling left?
If so evidence greatly appreciated.
Well thought out and written. Perhaps the Leftwing media doesn't go all out in its censorship over concern of creating a political firestorm? They do just enough by use of arbitrary methods to create doubt and a self-censorship by its users. They might think their expertise gives them a feel for how much they can stroke the teat?
I think there is clearly SOMETHING bad going on in a leftward direction on most of the social media sites. However, you do point out several things that indicate it's not strategically done, rather incompetently and arbitrarily.
I agree with (b) - was going to post that comment myself.
Moreover, by allowing *some* opposition, but defanging the most potent/viral opposition, they preserve the appearance of neutrality to the majority of readers who aren't paying close attention.
If they snuffed 100% of opposition, that would be obvious to everyone, and would drive a large fraction of the usership away to other platforms. That would defeat their ideological purpose - to control and influence public debate.
(and, of course, would cost them money)
In addition if you want your ideas to win it's a very bad look to appear weak. Banning a large swath of views makes it appear like you are afraid if people hear them they'll be convinced.
Thats part of why the justification for cancelling (tho often not practice) has always been that it's about stopping a small fraction of views that are so extreme and hateful that they are beyond what our society should accept as legitimate debate. If you expand the numbers too much that no longer passes a laugh test and you look like you are cowering in fear of better arguments.
Not being consistent also gives you plausible deniability in case you fail. If you want to kill all your opponents, but one of them escapes... then from certain perspective, you have publicly failed. The one will become famous.
But if you decide to kill three of your opponents to teach the rest of them a lesson, and you only succeed to kill two of them... everyone will assume that killing two was exactly what you wanted.
Eh, I’m not so sure this is true.
First, won’t s lot of people assume that if you banned those views, they must be really terrible?
Second, if you ban those views, doesn’t it also make you look powerful? (Because you could successfully ban them.)
In general, I think most people don’t care about the vast majority of arguments. They care about conclusions.
I think this is partly right, but also: they want to justify what they do to themselves, not just to the public.
People don’t like to think of themselves as censorious. Hence, some of the most censorious people will say of themselves that they’re “practically free speech absolutists”; it’s just that, in this case, [fill in the blank].
And even if were talking about someone who puts free speech in sneer quotes, I think it’s usually because they think people have “weaponized” free speech. On their view, censoring people is, in fact, the only way to have TRULY free speech, because they think that of certain views are allowed to be expressed, many people won’t feel free to express themselves.
Finally, people in this camp have varying understandings of what kind of speech, if expressed, chills other people. And their understandings aren’t even self-consistent! Hence the appearance of arbitrary sanctions.
Excellent point. Adam Smith would approve :)
I assume you would agree that certain physical *possibility* is a necessary part of freedom.
Imagine that legally you have freedom of speech, but I can tape your mouth with a duct tape which you are legally not allowed to remove. But hey, you are free to mumble incomprehensibly! Isn't freedom of speech a great thing?
Similarly, you are free to start any business you want, but the government is allowed to tax you at 100%, or simply to confiscate your entire business on day one. But hey, you were free to start it! Isn't economical freedom a great thing?
Or you have a freedom to defend your rights at court, but you happen to be a woman in a conservative islamic country, and you are not allowed to leave your house without your husband's permission. The only problem is, it's him you wanted to sue, so he obviously does not give you the permission.
Of course the Left goes much further than this, but in my opinion the difference is simply a question of how much possibility is assumed to be "enough" to make some right or freedom meaningful.
Even Ghengis Khan wasn’t maximalist most of the time. Measuring by the linchpin was guaranteed to leave a bitter taste in males not yet of military age. But it was good enough. And “oderint dum metuant” was a maxim known and followed a millennium or more before Ghengis. BC may understand economic thinking, but betrays an ignorance of practical political thinking and human nature.
I was thinking very much the same thing as I was writing up my response, and added it to my blog post on the matter. Well said. I added yours to my post as well, as I think you said it a bit better.