@Yorumi Hrm, well, first off, as it pertains to the issue at hand, I don't think cooperations are people, and thus there ought not to be any innate rights or freedoms ascribed to cooperations from the get-go (money equals speech aka Citizens United stands as one of the most perplexing ideas I've ever encounter). Hence I am willing to go along with any notion of freedom as a (in part) subjective right of the individual against government interference.

By that understanding, one could argue that degrees of freedom were lost. Yet I struggle to talk about loss, when something was not taken, but given up. That is like ... I mean, as long as we are not talking about a tyranny, but people making choice in a democrary of one fashion or another, there is also a negative freedom of interference, meaning chosing NOT to be free of interference by government.

That goes for any right obviously. Like religious freedom can only be considered protected, if the freedom to not believe is safe guarded with the utmost care. That is something, that for some reason, certain strains of party politics always fail to come to grasp with.

But even though, no freedom can be absolute as long as there is more than one individual claiming said freedom. My freedom to take a **** in public might and eventually will conflict with your freedom to take a walk without getting ****ed all-over, to make it really blunt and vivid ^^

Without enforcement by a kind of law any form of freedom is just an idea. That is of course nothing else than the paradox of freedom: the logical conlusion that followed that (to paraphrase Kant) each individual ought to be restricted, but not beyond what is necessary to safeguard an equal degree of freedom for all, is a reasonable baseline, in my view, to weigh these conflicting interests.

In other words, what to do when some folks feel they rather have more government interference (like healthcare in virtually all of Euripe for example) than less, which would in turn force upon them the need to trade their healthcare on a market of demand and supply. More rules, more laws, more government, can equal less freedom, but it can equally mean more freedom, even within a narrow view of freedom as freedom from interference.

IF there is no other option than freedom from interference, than it's not actually a freedom, but a thinly veiled free-market tyranny, no more or less than a newspeak'esque euphemism of Orwellian quality.

In that regard, I feel troubled to argue that there is more or less freedom in total, as I can only account for outcomes not input. That is esp. troublesome, if there is not even an underlying majority desire inherent in formulating that outcome, like for instance in the U.S. where due to procedural rules, a mathematical minority can and in fact does make lawful decisions for any and all.

On a historical scale, the argument in terms of interference is difficult as well. Women were most decidely not free going back (depending on country/region) 200 or just 100 years. In most at least western countries women are more free now than they used to be, like by a huge margin. In terms of positive freedom (like the right to vote), we made huge strides in the western world. But in terms of interference ... well, most of those freedom gained where actually not in defense of women from government interference, but by factual government interference in their favor by curtailing the freedoms of men to make use of women as they wish, as, yes, in effect and in many places legally, as their property. Property meaning anything (including a woman or a slave for instance), that you have a legal claim to, that you actually control, and that you can legally and legtimately do with as you please, meaning also excluding others from using it.

Oh and slaves did commit a crime, if you were to consider the zeitgeist. They were born black, born inferior, useless for other tasks others than the ones assigned, lacking not just the proper gens but social graces and, I guess, tea sets, all in all, unable to live .. free. The point is not the lack of a crime imho, but the lack of choice in committing that crime or having a saying in codifying it. In that regard, slavery makes alot of sense. It's can now be perceived as an attempt of the righteous to enable the sinners of seeking attonement. This is just semantics in the end though, it's matter of eligibility to freedom, not loosing freedom due to any real or imagined violation of said freedom.

Whole point being, looking at one narrow definition of freedom on a global as well as a historic scale, cannot yield any useful results. If we assume there was a fictional place, where there were only a bunch of humans and those were close to absolutely free, each living their individuals lifes apart from each other, with no top-down interference, then we ought to deduct, that freedom of interference is a zero-sum game. Any freedom gained by anyone, for instance to take fish not just lake from A,B,C but also lake D without impunity, that must impede on somebody else's freedom to freely take fish from lake D,E,F. It doesn't matter if there is enough fish to go around, as long as my choice is now more narrow than it used to before the state of affairs changed.

If you add 8 billion people to that and go from fish in lakes to about every commodity and right on earth, well ...

you could come to outright genocidal conclusions, and as a German sigh, I mean, I rest my case in that regard

I think you are right about people being hypocrites. I would dare say I hold this as a sort of divine truth. But I do not agree that people, in the majority, care about political ideas as such and necessarily empower people who would enact such political ideas. Most people would be perfectly fine with a dictator, as long, as I suggested ...

that dictator comes from their "in-group", definitely within their morale circle if you will, and they feel a subjective gain to be had. That is their true hypocrisy.

People stand for nothing, nothing outside of themselves and those closest to them (the inner part of their morale circle).

That's why freedom only works, in my view, as a broad concept, a universal one. As soon as it becomes divisible, it becomes possible and in fact easy to betray it at will. If you want it for yourself, you must want it for everyone else by necessity. That's why I think freedom is on a march to victory. The gains outweigh the losses.

The scales tend to be, in the loooong historical view, not betwen individuals acting out those freedoms, but within the vast spectrum of freedoms, as they collide.

That's why most ideologies are so much trouble. They are not in favor of one freedom above another, that would could be dealt with, that is the eternal balancing act of freedom as a concept that is never static, but that they see one group as eligible and others ... not ...

or they go down the rabbit whole entirely and start introducing new pseudo-actors, that compete for the same freedoms, cleverly claiming, that if those actors are not granted the same freedoms ... one is guilty of that ultimate crime, denying eligibility.

It's a clever framing device, that "the right" loves to use as much as "the left". The key is not who uses it for what purpose, but to recognize that it IS a framing device. It's there to obfuscate, not to enlighten.