We like to think of ourselves as free.
We call America the “land of the free.” We talk about individual liberty, personal choice, and the right to do what we want.
But what if much of what we call freedom is actually an illusion?
I don’t mean that we aren’t free at all. I mean that we’ve convinced ourselves we understand what freedom is while simultaneously building a society in which freedom is increasingly unevenly distributed.
And I think the first, most important reason this happens is remarkably simple:
We don’t have a shared definition of freedom.
What Does It Mean to Be Free?
By the simplest definition, freedom means that I can do what I want.
That’s it.
If you’re alone on a deserted island, that definition works pretty well. You can run around naked if you want. You can sleep all day. You can build a shelter, destroy your shelter, or do essentially anything else that doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s existence.
But we don’t live on deserted islands.
We live together.
And the moment other people enter the equation, freedom becomes more complicated.
The reason most of us don’t run around naked in the middle of a city isn’t necessarily because a law specifically tells us not to. It’s because we recognize certain unwritten rules about how we live together. Society came first. Laws came later.
Those rules—written and unwritten—establish the boundaries within which our individual freedom exists.
That matters because when we say we want to be “free,” many of us are still using that primitive definition: freedom means being able to do whatever I want.
But what happens when everyone gets to do whatever they want?
Freedom Requires Other People
We are not likely to build a successful society if everyone’s freedom is defined as unlimited personal choice.
Why?
Because empathy isn’t distributed equally.
There will always be people who value themselves more highly than they value others. And if freedom means simply doing whatever you want, then someone who sees another person as inferior can reasonably conclude that their own freedom includes the ability to control or exploit that person.
That’s where “might makes right” comes in.
In a world governed purely by power, the strongest person gets the most freedom. The person with the most resources, physical strength, influence, or authority gets to impose their will on everyone else.
That’s not freedom for everyone.
That’s freedom for the powerful.
Democracy offers us something fundamentally different. It starts from the idea that, at least in principle, we are equals.
And if we are equals, then my freedom cannot simply be whatever I want it to be.
My freedom has to coexist with yours.
Your freedom ends where someone else’s freedom begins.
That is the foundation of freedom in a democratic society: each of us should be as free as possible without taking away the freedom of someone else.
Freedom and Power
This is where the relationship between freedom and power becomes important.
If one person has substantially more power than everyone else, that person can exercise substantially more freedom.
And in a capitalist society, power and money are closely connected.
Consider a simple example.
If I make $400,000 a year and you make $50,000, I have resources that you don’t have. I can afford to hire you. I can make choices about your employment that you may not be able to make about mine.
In that sense, I’ve purchased some of your freedom.
The more wealth someone accumulates, the more opportunities they have to influence other people’s choices, institutions, laws, and public policy.
Money becomes power.
And power becomes freedom.
That helps explain why extreme wealth inequality isn’t simply an economic problem. It’s a problem of political freedom.
When Wealth Becomes Power
We sometimes look at enormous fortunes and ask why someone would possibly need that much money.
I think that’s the wrong question.
The more important question is:
What does that much money allow a person to do?
At a certain point, wealth stops being primarily about buying things. You can’t meaningfully spend your way through billions of dollars of personal consumption.
What you’re accumulating is something else.
Power.
You can spend enormous amounts of money fighting legislation. You can influence elections. You can shape public policy. You can influence culture. You can maintain control over organizations and institutions.
Sometimes people will spend $20 million fighting a change that might cost them only $4 or $5 million.
Why?
Because the $20 million isn’t necessarily being spent to protect $5 million.
It’s being spent to protect control.
Consider union busting. The goal isn’t simply to save the company money. It’s to maintain control over the workforce.
Or consider efforts to influence culture. The objective isn’t necessarily to make money directly. It can be about maintaining a particular social order—a worldview in which certain people remain dominant.
The accumulation of wealth, then, isn’t always about accumulating money for its own sake.
It’s about maintaining the power that wealth provides.
The Freedom We Don’t See
Once you look at freedom through this lens, some things that previously seemed unrelated start to look connected.
Take the person working three jobs just to survive.
We might say that person is technically free. They can quit. They can change careers. They can make their own choices.
But how much freedom does someone really have when their economic circumstances leave them no realistic choice but to work three jobs?
Contrast that with someone who has enough wealth that they never need to work another day in their life.
Both people are “free.”
But clearly, they do not have the same amount of freedom.
This is the part of inequality that we often fail to recognize.
When one person accumulates enormous amounts of wealth and power, that doesn’t exist in isolation. In a society where resources and opportunities are finite, the distribution of power affects everyone else.
The freedoms of the very wealthy expand while the practical freedoms of the very poor can shrink.
Why the System Resists Change
This also explains something that can otherwise seem baffling.
Why do people with enormous amounts of wealth spend enormous amounts of money fighting relatively modest changes?
Because the money isn’t necessarily the thing they are protecting.
Power is.
If you’re spending money to prevent workers from organizing, you’re protecting control.
If you’re spending money to influence public policy, you’re protecting influence.
If you’re spending money to shape culture, you’re protecting the ability to determine what kind of society you live in.
Money is the mechanism.
Power is the objective.
And once you understand that, wealth inequality becomes much more than a question of who owns what.
It becomes a question of who gets to decide.
Freedom, Power, and Money
This is ultimately how I think we need to understand these three concepts:
Freedom.
Power.
Money.
They are interconnected.
The more power you have, the more freedom you can exercise.
And in a capitalist society, the more money you have, the more power you can accumulate.
So when we see staggering levels of wealth inequality, what we’re really seeing is a staggering inequality in power.
And when power becomes sufficiently concentrated, the democratic principle of equal freedom begins to break down.
This is why I don’t think the question of wealth inequality can be separated from the question of freedom.
If your freedom depends partly on your ability to exercise power, and your ability to exercise power depends heavily on your wealth, then extreme concentrations of wealth necessarily create extreme concentrations of freedom.
The billionaire isn’t simply someone who owns more things than you do.
The billionaire has a vastly greater ability to shape the world around them.
That’s power.
And when one person has vastly more power than everyone else, we have moved away from the democratic ideal of people having equal standing.
Giving Power Back to the People
So when we talk about restoring power to ordinary people, we can’t avoid talking about wealth inequality.
In a capitalist society, wealth inequality is not simply an economic issue.
It is a power issue.
And power is a freedom issue.
If we want people to have a meaningful voice in their society, then we have to consider whether they actually possess the power necessary to exercise that voice.
That means asking difficult questions about wealth, political influence, labor, corporate power, and the ways money can be converted into control.
We can argue about capitalism and socialism.
We can debate individual policies.
We can fight over political labels.
But beneath all of that is a more fundamental question:
Who has the power to decide what happens in our society?
If the answer increasingly becomes “the people with the most money,” then we have to acknowledge what that means.
We have not eliminated the rule of the powerful.
We’ve simply found a different way to measure who the powerful are.
And if we genuinely want to give power back to the people, we cannot treat wealth inequality as a side issue.
It has to be central.
Because freedom without power is largely theoretical.
And democracy without relatively equal power eventually becomes something else.
I can also make this more journalistic and polished, more provocative/op-ed-like, or more conversational and personal, depending on the audience you’re targeting.
ChatGPT was used to format my dictated thoughts into this blog format.