【金句】Friedrich Hayek - Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like..

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• 來源1 - x.com/thomassowell/s...

• 來源2 - fee.org/articles/the...

Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like. Our faith in freedom rests on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.

自由必然意味著許多我們不喜歡的事情會被做。我們對自由的信仰基於這樣的信念：從整體上看，它會釋放更多有利於善的力量，而不是惡。

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fee.org/articles/the...

From this foundation of the argument for liberty it follows that we shall not achieve its ends if we confine liberty to the particular instances where we know it will do good. Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom. If we knew how freedom would be used, the case for it would largely disappear. We shall never get the benefits of freedom, never obtain those unforeseeable new developments for which it pro­vides the opportunity, if it is not also granted where the uses made of it by some do not seem desir­able. It is therefore no argument against individual freedom that it is frequently abused. Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like. Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.

It also follows that the import­ance of our being free to do a par­ticular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to mis­conceive its function completely. The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use. It might even be said that the less likely the opportunity to make use of freedom to do a particular thing, the more precious it will be for society as a whole. The less likely the opportunity, the more serious will it be to miss it when it arises, for the experience that it offers will be nearly unique.

It is also probably true that the ma­jority are not directly interested in most of the important things that any one person should be free to do. It is because we do not know how individuals will use their free­dom that it is so important. If it were otherwise, the results of free­dom could also be achieved by the majority’s deciding what should be done by the individuals. But ma­jority action is, of necessity, con­fined to the already tried and as­certained, to issues on which agreement has already been reached in that process of discus­sion that must be preceded by dif­ferent experiences and actions on the part of different individuals.

從為自由辯護的基礎出發，可以推斷出如果我們將自由局限在我們知道它會帶來好處的具體情況下，是無法實現自由的目的的。只是在事先知道其影響將是有益的情況下才給予的自由，那不是真正的自由。如果我們事先知道自由會被如何利用，那麼支持自由的理由就會大大減少。我們永遠無法獲得自由的好處，永遠無法獲得它所提供的機會，以實現那些無法預見的新發展，如果它不是在某些人利用它的方式似乎不可取的地方也被授予的話。因此，個人自由經常被濫用，並不是反對自由的論據。自由必然意味著許多我們不喜歡的事情會被做。我們對自由的信仰，並不基於在具體情況下可預見的結果，而是基於這樣的信念：從整體上看，它會釋放更多有利於善的力量，而不是惡。

同樣可以推斷出，我們能夠做某件事的自由與我們或大多數人是否有可能利用那個特定可能性無關。只給予所有人都能行使的自由，那是完全誤解了自由的功能。只有一個人在百萬人口中會利用的自由，對社會來說可能比我們所有人都會利用的自由更重要，對大多數人更有益。甚至可以說，利用自由來做某件事的機會越小，它對整個社會就越寶貴。機會越小，當機會出現時，錯過它的嚴重性就越大，因為它所提供的經驗將是幾乎獨一無二的。

同樣，很可能大多數人對大多數重要事情並不直接感興趣，而這些事情任何一個人應該有自由去做。自由之所以重要，就是因為我們不知道個人會如何利用他們的自由。若非如此，那麼自由所帶來的結果也可以通過大多數人決定個人應該做什麼來實現。但大多數人的行動，必要地局限在已經嘗試過和確定的事情上，而對問題及解決方案要達成共識必須先由各獨特個體得到自己的獨特經驗和作出自己的獨特行動。