Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast with your host Anastasia Globa. Today is Thursday March

22nd. In a recent podcast George Mason University Economics Professor Tyler Cowen

made the controversial case for embracing growing positive liberty as

opposed to the negative liberty that libertarians usually advocate. In today's

podcast Cato Institute's own Tom Palmer argues that moving towards more positive liberty is a perilous

approach that could lead us to something like the very opposite of freedom.

First let's just define our terms. Would you please differentiate between negative and positive liberty?

Well, negative liberty, as a distinction normally means that you are free from the unwelcome

interaction of others, that people cannot force you to do do things and that says you're free from them.

Those who have talked about positive liberty have talked about what you're free to do.

And that covers a multitude of different theories.

Some of them view positive liberty as just an increase in opportunities

or an increase in wealth.

Others have considered it to be in charge of your own desires.

You're only free if you desire the things that you desire to desire.

So for instance, if you smoke, but you would rather not smoke, you're unfree if you continue smoking. You're only free if your actions are in conformity with what are called your second-order preferences.

That's another theory of positive liberty.

And then a third one often associated with this is the idea of collective liberty, that real

positive liberty is being involved in the public square determining those

policies that will then be imposed on everyone. So positive liberty is not just one thing. It's a term that's

used frequently in very confusing ways by philosophers without distinguishing

the different senses in which they use the term.

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