When it comes to reforming health care in the United States, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says the "best solution" is for Americans to eat better and change their lifestyle.
“This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health,” Mackey wrote. “We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health.”
This is the final stage of American hyper individualism. What does "Freedom" even mean here?
"Freedom" rhetoric implies two things: freedom from something, and that there is a material difference between American QoL and every other place on earth because of that freedom. Freedom by itself means nothing. It's not like the US is the only country in the world where you can make choices. "Freedom" is a meaningless dogwhistle that Americans instinctively react positively to when used by politicans. It means nothing, really. But the public is scared of some spooky spectre alternative.
In the US context, "freedom" traditionally can only ever include negative freedoms, freedoms ensured by the absence of some active authoritarian force. Of course this is a framework in which the tyranny of the capitalist over the worker isn't tyranny but the exercise of freedom from any checks on that tyranny. Positive freedoms, encapsulated by FDR's "freedom from want", only emerged much later in the US political lexicon: freedom from poverty, hunger, illness, illiteracy, etc. don't count because in the classical liberal/right-"libertarian" framework they require government coercion of capitalists to pay higher taxes, higher wages, etc., i.e. they require an implicit violation of the capitalist's negative freedoms.
This is the final stage of American hyper individualism. What does "Freedom" even mean here?
"Freedom" rhetoric implies two things: freedom from something, and that there is a material difference between American QoL and every other place on earth because of that freedom. Freedom by itself means nothing. It's not like the US is the only country in the world where you can make choices. "Freedom" is a meaningless dogwhistle that Americans instinctively react positively to when used by politicans. It means nothing, really. But the public is scared of some spooky spectre alternative.
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In the US context, "freedom" traditionally can only ever include negative freedoms, freedoms ensured by the absence of some active authoritarian force. Of course this is a framework in which the tyranny of the capitalist over the worker isn't tyranny but the exercise of freedom from any checks on that tyranny. Positive freedoms, encapsulated by FDR's "freedom from want", only emerged much later in the US political lexicon: freedom from poverty, hunger, illness, illiteracy, etc. don't count because in the classical liberal/right-"libertarian" framework they require government coercion of capitalists to pay higher taxes, higher wages, etc., i.e. they require an implicit violation of the capitalist's negative freedoms.
"Freedom" in America just means freedom for business owners to do whatever tf they want.