Negative Freedom
Negative freedom means freedom from coercion. Individuals have negative freedom when no one directly commands them to do things against their will. Individuals have autonomy to direct their own actions unless they voluntarily agree to follow the orders of someone else. A “contract” embodies this ideal of freedom: two people voluntarily agree to some kind of exchange. So long as the contract is free of force or fraud, it is an expression of negative freedom. By historical standards, capitalist markets have done a pretty good job at reducing involuntary coercion in economic life. Compare a free market economy to slavery or feudalism: in both of these sorts of economic systems the direct application of force is a central, pervasive feature of allocating people to tasks. In a capitalist market economy the allocation of people to activities is the result of the self- directed choices of persons: no one is told “you must work for this employer” or “you must buy this product.” In Milton Friedman’s famous words, within a capitalist market people are “free to choose.”
