Although Philip K. Howard’s new book, Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society, is a slim work (for the record, it is just 84 pages long, not including the endnotes and acknowledgments, so it is even shorter than John Stuart Mill’s classic On Liberty; see here, for example), Everyday Freedom is worth reading because it contains many important ideas. Today, I will review the first part of Everyday Freedom, i.e. up to page 23, starting with the introduction.

After sharing an anecdote about a public school teacher, Mr Howard formulates his clear and bold thesis in the introduction to his book: “People must have ‘everyday freedom’, by which I mean the individual authority … to act as they feel appropriate, constrained only by the boundaries of law and by norms set by the employer or other institution” (p. 5). Alas, while this formulation certainly sounds beautiful, it is a totally tautological or circular one, for it begs the fundamental question: where should the “boundaries of law” (and of norms, for that matter) be drawn? John Stuart Mill, for example, used the concept of harm to draw this line. That is, for Mill, people should be free to act however they wish unless their actions cause harm to somebody else. So, as I began reading Everyday Freedom, I asked myself, where will Mr Howard draw his line? What will be his contribution to this age-old question?

It suffices to say that, instead of diving into these key questions straight away, Mr Howard pulls out a veritable sophistic rabbit from his trusty bag of rhetorical tricks. Specifically, he tries to distract his readers with a red herring or non sequitur in Chapter 1 of his book, where he identifies the main foes of freedom — or should I say, the main foes of his conception of freedom. Among these freedom-reducing enemies or scapegoats are “red tape and legal process” (p. 8); “centralized law and regulation” (p. 9); and “modern law” (p. 10). Alas, the logical fallacy here is glaringly obvious: Mr Howard is painting with too broad a brushstroke. Does he really mean all law and all regulation, or just those that are not justified by some consequentialist cost-benefit test or some alternate deontological rule? Also, what would a “decentralized” system of law look like?

Again, Mr Howard switches gears, so to speak. Chapter 2 surveys the main benefits of letting people do what they want, at least within the boundaries of law and norms. Putting aside the pesky line-drawing problem I mentioned above, there are two reasons why freedom is generally good. One is that it creates personal accountability (i.e. what I like to call the freedom to fail or to make mistakes); the other, it allows people to get things done. Agreed: freedom is generally a good thing; the pesky problem is where to draw the line?

The answer to my line-drawing question, however, will have to wait, for in Chapter 3 Howard picks up where Chapter 1 leaves off. Specifically, he identifies three big problems with modern law: too many rules, too many procedures, and too many rights. Okay, now we are getting somewhere, but Howard’s legal diagnosis poses a new question: how much is “too many?” We will have to read on!