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A study of the scope and complexity of the problems of liberty.

IN SPEAKING OF LIBERTY, relationships between persons are sometimes classified into types. One such attempt was the listing of the ""four freedoms"" - freedom of speech, of worship, from want and from fear -which seems deficient since all these freedoms are enjoyed by an inmate of a federal penitentiary. Anyone who considers these freedoms to be complete in their coverage, and who is distressed because he does not now enjoy full freedom, can easily acquire ""freedom"" for the rest of his life by committing a crime leading to a life sentence in a penitentiary.
There have been other attempts to list the types of liberty. There could be any number of listings, because any classification must of necessity be arbitrary.
It may be useful, however, to consider three distinct areas of liberty:
1. Beliefs - thoughts, ideas, faiths
2. Physical relationships
3. Economic affairs
The nature of the first and second - beliefs and actions - includes such commonplace items as one’s belief about the shape of the earth or tlie existence of a Deity, and the association of courtship or of a fishing trip.
Economic affairs are those of production, exchange and use of goods and services, which are involved in human activity because they are both desired and scarce enough not to be free - potatoes, houses, opera and all the others.
Confusion among the three areas of liberty may result from their being joined, as they commonly are in daily affairs. All three are involved, for instance, when two workmen discuss religion while operating at the ends of a crosscut saw, or when a man pays alimony for having beaten his wife after she had expressed her opinion of him.
The three aspects will be discussed separately, or unscrambled, as an aid to understanding the elements of the problem of liberty.

F. A. Harper

Dr. Floyd Arthur Harper (February 7, 1905 – April 1973), better known as F. A. Harper or "Baldy" Harper, was an American academic, economist and writer. He was a professor at Cornell University, where he had served as Professor of Marketing for over a decade. Harper was member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He had helped start up and had been a member of the staff of The Foundation for Economic Education from 1946 to 1958, codirected the William Volker Fund from 1958 to 1961, and founded the Institute for Humane Studies in 1961, later becoming its President in 1966, a position he held until his death.

At his death, Harper was eulogized by Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), dean of the Austrian School.