Whose Life Is It Anyway?

self-ownership is at the core of liberty

No principle is more fundamental to a free society than the idea that your life belongs to you; not to the state or to some abstract collective. Self-ownership is at the core of individual liberty. If not, freedom is merely a privilege granted by others. When government behaves as though they own the lives of their citizens, the door is opened to paternalism, coercion, and a methodical erosion of our liberty.

Self ownership means that each of us has a right to control our own body, choices, and property so long as we don’t infringe on the rights of others. It is not a matter of policy; it is a matter of principle. To reject that notion is to accept the premise that someone else — whether it be a politician, bureaucrat, or majority vote — has a higher claim to your life than you do.

This principle is in direct conflict with nanny state policies, where government seeks to shield individuals from the consequences of their own voluntary actions. Nowhere is this more evident than in seat belt and helmet laws, often defended as commonsense measures to save lives. They may be wise, but should they be mandated by force?

Simply put, if you are not free to take risks with your own life, then your life is not your own. Many argue that because injuries from reckless behavior impose costs on society, interventions are justified. But this is a problem of socialism. The government socializes the cost of personal health decisions, then uses those costs to justify restricting personal choices. Freedom should not be sacrificed to correct the consequences of collectivist policies.

Consider the example of mandatory motorcycle helmets. A rational adult may choose to wear a helmet, and often does. But it is not up to us whether people make the same decisions we would. Individuals have a right to make those decisions for themselves. Any government that can force you to wear a helmet “for your own good” is a government that can force you to eat a particular diet, limit your recreational activities, or prohibit you from engaging in any number of behaviors that involve risk. But, isn’t life itself full of risk?

If we accept the premise that the government must protect us from ourselves, there is no logical stopping point. The result is to treat citizens as children. When actions are divorced from consequences, we incentivize irresponsibility.

Consider drug laws. They are often framed as necessary to prevent addiction, crime, and social decay. But these are arguments focused on outcomes, not principles. If self-ownership means anything, it must include the right to make poor decisions. That does not mean society must endorse behavior it deems destructive. It only means the individual must bear responsibility for the choices made, not be denied the freedom to make them.

To say that the government can control what substances you choose to ingest is to say that you do not own your body — that the state does. Millions of people consume harmful substances every day, like alcohol, tobacco and sugar. However, criminality should be confined to behavior, not our personal choices. A government supposedly committed to liberty and acknowledging the pursuit of happiness has no moral right to dictate what the people can put into their own bodies.

Mandatory vaccinations provide another example. Public health officials argue that mandates are needed to protect the broader community. While public health is a legitimate concern, self-ownership demands that medical decisions must remain in the hands of the individual.

Again, this is not to say that vaccination is unwise or ineffective, but rather that the decision must be voluntary — justified by persuasion and evidence, not compulsion. When the state can force an injection into your body against your will, a fundamental liberty has been lost, regardless of how beneficial the policy may seem.

A free society recognizes that responsibility and risk are inseparable from liberty. If we are to be truly free, we must be free to fail, make mistakes, and also to face the consequences. Consequences inform future behavior. The state cannot and should not serve as our permanent guardian. We elect representatives, not conservators.

In the end, the principle of self-ownership is a dividing line between liberty and tyranny. Once you realize that your body and life are yours alone, it is clear that nanny state regulations, however well-intentioned, collide with the very concept of freedom.

Freedom requires the ability to live your life without having to ask permission. Otherwise, we are not citizens, we are merely subjects. And while subjects may be safe, supervised, and even comfortable, they are never free. As Benjamin Franklin observed, “security without liberty is called prison.“