In my previous post I attempted to explain Americans’ irrational and undoubtedly dangerous obsession with guns by referring to a quintessential, and sometimes flawed thirst for freedom. The concept of freedom is especially thought provoking in that with freedom comes responsibility. Healthcare is a common example. When individuals are free to opt out, a responsibility arises: those refusing to purchase health insurance are responsible for a personal and occasionally social risk.

In this post I would like to expand a bit further on freedom. I believe there is a distinction between individual and social freedom. Individual freedom is directly connected with an individual responsibility, whilst social freedom, the freedom of society to make decisions regarding privileges, is directly connected with social responsibility. In Europe, most societies have exercised social freedom to mitigate a number of the individual responsibilities; as a result both individual responsibility, and individual freedom are slightly more muted than in the United States. Consequently the European public has become acclimated to the state providing a healthcare and pension safety nets, free tuition at university level, affordable public transportation, and a number of other privileges. Ideally in such social democratic societies individual responsibility are yielded to and have been replaced by social responsibility.

Unfortunately the public in Hungary, and I suspect in a number of Eastern Europeans societies, have an inadequate understanding of the costs and responsibilities associated with privileges provided by the state. Of course some of these government provided services are crucial, but many in Eastern Europe incorrectly believe they have innate rights to these services without bearing social responsibility, without accepting tradeoff costs. Most Hungarians have a difficulty distinguishing between a right and a privilege.

Fundamentally all rights are privileges at their origin, but most liberal democracies have agreed on certain unalienable privileges that should, at least in theory, never be abolished or violated. These I would refer to as rights. As examples: the rights to free speech, the right to practice religion, or the right to trial are all indispensible core-democratic values.

In modern day democracies social freedom have also allowed democracies to steadily create a number of institutions providing citizens with array of beneficial privileges. As a society we have increasingly agreed to fund projects and programs from taxpayer money, such as the aforementioned free tuition for college students, universal healthcare for citizens, or good quality affordable public transportation. Social services frequently have economic benefits from a utilitarian stance, often overcoming negative economic and social externalities while monopolizing on positive ones. Regardless of the benefits, liberal democracies can undeniably exist without these privileges. While a right should never be sacrificed, a privilege can and ideally should continuously be reformed and modified.

Just as individual freedom comes with responsibility for the individual to make conscientious decisions, similarly socially provided privileges comes with responsibilities for society to actively participate in producing, maintaining, and reforming such privileges. Normally this realization is steadily fabricated upon society designing and introducing a new privilege. Society learns to accept that tradeoffs are associated, as for every privilege we are opting to constrain certain individual freedoms for all or a select number of citizens (the freedom to not pay taxes, to not buy health insurance, etc.), and the responsibilities associated with the new public initiative also need to be met. Without an active and responsible society, socially provided privileges inevitably fail.

Most Hungarians grew up in the current semi-democratic state, or have recollections of the old communist regime. When their privileges were established, Hungarian society did not have the opportunity freely decide and construct their own system. Hungarian society did not have a chance to exercise its social freedom, to decide on a societal level whether to accept the tradeoffs and social responsibilities associated with providing certain privileges. In practice these institutions were unnaturally forced upon Hungary, as well as most Eastern European societies.

Undeniably, Hungary has gone through nearly fifty years of a relatively authoritarian system, where privileges were arbitrarily created and forced on society. Changing the system from within was next to impossible; if you wanted improvements, you needed to beat the system instead of be the system. Hungarians began learning how to creatively cheat and manipulate, not pay certain taxes, smuggle in western products, plagiarize and cheat in academia… And with such acts, people began to realize that through cheating certain freedoms could be obtained without sacrificing the privileges “forced” upon them. This fraudulent attitude is problematic, as while individually the “win-win” premise might hold (especially with a dominant hegemonic superpower (USSR) in the picture) but when an entire society’s philosophy relies on beating the system, the foundations will eventually crumble. I believe this crumbling is the Hungarian status quo.

Because social freedom did not exist when the privileges were constructed, today the social responsibilities for these privileges also lack. My absolute favorite example are the passengers on the Budapest transit without a passes or tickets, who acts outraged when the ticket controller requests tickets. “Why would I pay for such a s___ty service? Once the transit authority gets its act together I might consider buying a ticket, till then f__k off.” This attitude is omnipresent.

Generally Hungarians are known to avoid taxes:

Why should I pay taxes? I won’t receive pension when I retire anyways!

Or with a student barely passing any of his/her university courses:

Tuition? Of course not! Let’s protest!

When they tried to introduce a symbolic ~$1 fee for the doctors office (with a yearly cap!), many were quoted arguing

I pay taxes, I deserve this service for free!

In what I consider a healthy democracy, be it more European or American in priorities, a right is unalienable and fundamental. A right cannot be taken away from the people, because the people understand that without said right, the foundation of democracy crumbles. Anyone who is following Hungary sees that these fundamental rights are constantly being violated today.

The opposite is true in regards to privileges. In what I consider a healthy democracy, a privilege is an opportunity progressively gained or provided through social consensus and social freedom, but one where the citizens understand that certain tradeoffs and responsibilities must be accepted. In Hungary privileges are assumed to be rights, and responsibilities are ignored. The distressing situation within higher education exemplifies this issue. Many Hungarians believe that they are given higher education as a right, thus there is no need to take it seriously; they have the right to decide what is worthwhile to study and what is not. Since the institutions are teaching “unimportant” material, in order for them to obtain their a diploma, something they as students should obtain by right, they can act however necessary. Instead of petitioning to change the system from within, they cheat and plagiarize in masses. Many Hungarians believe institutions are at fault for not providing them their right to a good quality education, but what they do not realize, is that they are part of, and should be responsible for those institutions.

Lastly, in what I consider a healthy democracy, a freedom is the ability to act freely within a certain dimension socially or individually. Individual freedom requires individual responsibility, while social freedom requires social responsibility. However rare, in a truly ideal society both responsibilities develop and coexist regardless of whether social freedom has decided to provide a privilege, or maintain individual freedom. I believe in Eastern Europe there’s an awkward predicament, where there is a vacuum of individual responsibility due to privileges being relatively suddenly introduced and forced upon them by communism. Simultaneously there’s a lack of social responsibility due to the absence of social freedom to collectively decide and construct society’s privileges.

I feel recent Hungarian history explains the extreme short sightedness, the lack of interest in the abolition and violation of democratic foundations and rights, and the difficulties with institutional reforms and consequently long term sustainable growth. Thus if Eastern Europe, especially Hungary (which I would argue is one of the most severe cases) ever wants to advance beyond this state of limbo, then participants of these societies must spread the importance both social and individual responsibility, while cultivating their understanding of the tradeoffs associated with the different types of freedoms, and privileges. Unfortunately this limbo-state has endured for more than twenty-five years, and as the law of inertia suggests, change in movement will be quite difficult. But I have hope, Hungary has overcome so many hurdles, it can overcome the current predicament too.