No Dilemma

I mentioned Claire Wolfe’s “Living Freedom” column in Backwood Home Magazine before, because Claire is an individualist who believes in living free and her “blog” entries frequently have practical information for independent individualist, so this is not meant as a criticism, but an observation only. Her recent post, “One of those small, everyday moral dilemmas,” she presents a case that she regards a moral issue, which it is only if her resolution involves compromising a principle.

There is apparently a small family-run business in her town that has the exact flooring material she is looking for, but she can obtain the same material at a chain store 90 miles away for $100 less. The savings is significant to her and could make the difference between doing the floor or not; but she very much would like the small family-run business, which is new, to succeed, and she likes the people who run it.

Of course all she has to decide (which admittedly may not be easy) is which is objectively more important to her, the success of the new store and its availability to her in the future, or saving the money and definitely doing her floor.

Normally I would have very little interest in this so-called dilemma, except that I have been reviewing some of my old articles and ran across this passage under a section entitled, “Freedom is Independence.”

“Every dependency is a chain that limits your freedom. To the extent your choices or actions depend on anyone else’s choices, actions, or agreement, you are not free.

“This fact is often wrongly confused with trade. A trade is a transaction mutually agreed to by both (or all) parties. When I buy products at the local grocery or hardware store, I am not dependent on either. I can buy those things somewhere else, or not at all if I choose. Obviously I cannot buy them if nobody offers them for sale, but that is not a dependency. I can still produce them myself or hire someone else to produce them for me. The fact that they are available in stores only broadens the horizon of my possible choices.

“If I have a friend who owns a grocery or hardware store, but I do not believe he has the best prices, I am free to shop elsewhere. If our friendship is threatened by my shopping elsewhere, and I choose to shop at my friends store for the sake of that dubious friendship, not because I judge it to be in my own best interest, that is an act of dependency; because my choices are dependent on what my friend thinks of me, not on my own objective judgment.”

I do not think there is a real parallel between that last paragraph and Claire’s question, and so long as Claire makes her decision based on her best objective evaluation of what will best serve her interest, whatever she chooses will be the correct choice, morally. If, however, she considered the feelings of the stores owners, or her own feelings, (perhaps a slight sense of guilty about disappointing the owners who have been so helpful) and allowed those feelings to influence her choice, it would be an immoral one, which would limit both her independence and her freedom.