In the Globe and Mail, Thomas Homer-Dixon writes of the economy, The rules of the game have now changed. Our global financial system has become so complex and opaque that we've moved from a world of risk to a world of uncertainty. In a world of risk, we can judge dangers and opportunities by using the best evidence at hand to estimate the probability of a particular outcome. But in a world of uncertainty, we can't estimate probabilities, because we don't have any clear basis for making such a judgment. In fact, we might not even know what the possible outcomes are. Surprises keep coming out of the blue, because we're fundamentally ignorant of our own ignorance. We're surrounded by unknown unknowns.

This subtle distinction -- a world of risk versus a world of uncertainty, danger verus the unknown -- made lightbulbs click 'on' in my head. I've been trying to understand why I had and have such difficulty answering the simple question, "Is there reason to hope that liberty will return?" (See earlier blog post "Is There Hope For Freedom" for reference.) I think the difficulty is because so much of the data and evidence upon which anything other than a guess must be based is just clear to me. I don't trust any government figures or spin; at this point, the whole political hierarchy is a confidence game aimed at securing the next election and/or shifting blame. I don't believe anything coming out of the financial sector; at this point, the whole economic hierarchy is a confidence game to bilks the average Joe and Jill and, then, shift blame. I don't trust the ball-less wonder that is the mainstream media; it is still discussing whether or not we are in a recession.

Happily, I still believe my own eyes and I think the intellectual framework through which I view dynamics like the economic meltdown is sound. These are the mainstays of how I navigate my way personally and as a libertarian through a world of risk: my own eyes and the framework I've evolved. For example, with reference to the economy, I've noted the rise in grocery prices in this blog for at least year now and the framework of Austrian economics made me assume the rise was largely due to the extreme inflation of the money supplythrough which the Bush administration financed the Iraq war without having to directly tax people to do so. I used this assumption to make sure to stock our pantry and freezers Mormon-style with at year's worth of food. I now buy groceries only when the prices offered reflect the type of deep discount that marks a 'loss leader.'

The question of "when freedom?" is far more difficult to assess for several reasons. There are no clear markers like a price per unit rise in milk. Moreover, the world has become so chaotic with so many factors about which I have no reliable data that there is no way to offer a prediction worth more than a guess. I know things are bad and I suspect they will get quite a bit worse. Perhaps I should take the Samuel Konkin III approach and say "the worse things are, the better things are" -- meaning that people will only tolerate a certain level of oppression before rebelling. But I always and adamantly disagreed with my much-missed comrade on that point. I pretty much think "the worse things are, the worse things are" and I am loathe to base my assessment of freedom's timing upon a paradox. Besides which, I see no compelling reason to believe people will rise up to demand their freedom; the way people have accepted the total stripping of their civil liberties (and those of their children!) at airports has made me cynical about the existence of a tipping point at which the masses scream NO!" or the prevalence of "rugged individualism" in the American psyche. Over and over, history has demonstrated that oppressed peole are as likely or perhaps more likely to walk together with their children to collective death as they are to pick up a weapon.

Moreover, even if people did rebell en masse, I see no reason to believe the political outcome would be better than what they rebelled against. Was Soviet Communism better than Czarist Russia? I don't know, and I suspect the answer would depend almost entirely on who you were under those respective systems.

These days, all I can speak of with authority is the truth of my own life. I am freer today than I was last year...not because of the greater society but in spite of it. Indeed, my freedom has come from more diligently insulating myself from many aspects of society's madness and becoming more self-sufficient. In coming months, this blog will undoubtedly reflect this journey...which I am also enjoying immensely BTW.

So the real answer to "when freedom?" is "I do not know. I do not have the information necessary to make even an educated guess. The world has become too much of an unknown." But, a purely personal level, my answer changes -- "freedom came about three years ago when I made a commitment to economic independence and the frugalista lifestyle. And it just keeps coming."