On 'freedom'

 

The English language says that (usually) 'freedom' is when you're not oppressed by any agent. The Nussbaum acolytes argue that true freedom is when you have lots of choices and capabilities. 

I think it's poor English to say that 'freedom' is capabilitarianism. But it is definitely true that there's little or no meaningful difference between being unable to speak out against the government because the free press is illegal versus being unable to speak out against the government because you can't afford a printing press. (For policy reasons, you may want to draw a distinction between the two; they aren't completely the same thing. But just as easily, for policy reasons, you can draw a distinction between misdemeanors and felonies, or between neutrally chosen Congressional districts, even though those distinctions are wholly artificial and arbitrary.) 

The English language is misleading in that it has a big important word 'freedom', acting as though it represents all kinds of true freedom, when really it just represents a very narrow kind of liberty, ie the negative liberty of being free from active oppression by intelligent agents. But, given that this unhappy state of affairs is a part of the English language, it is also misleading to blithely use the word 'freedom' to mean all kinds of true freedom ie capability. This is an unfortunate situation, and one of many examples of you being under a responsibility to handicap yourself because life isn't fair. If you do want to use the word 'freedom' to mean all kinds of true freedom (ie, capability), you at least gotta be real up-front about it, and state clearly that you're using the word in a less common sense. (And even then, I suspect that it might be a little bit of a questionably honest rhetorical trick.)