It feels circular to me / tautology. It took coming from an amoral system to get to a moral one too. So that can’t derive out otherwise. We came to a realization this certain broad stroking ideal value of freedom, but then must, as libertarian seem to not understand, hedge back from the externalities. Where freedom typically leads to amoral harms to others even when reasonably considerate. All actions have equal or greater reactions.

The social contract, when ideally exhibited, leaves people that generally believe the same thing together to individually not conflict most all the time. Manifesting an almost self deontology of reciprocal means. Allowing for the feel of un-governance / those imaginary lines that binds us. The individual is relied upon to make these moral decisions. But not all play by the rules, and most will be swayed by perverse incentives or otherwise bend sentient desires over group conformity and well being. We are rooted in our biological nature here despite the myth of modern liberalism played out (not a personally value claim). Selfish desires conflict with morality. It’s the urges we have versus the story we tell ourselves to feel okay about ourselves.

Freedom isn’t free right? So we have to manage and mitigate the cost of it by seeing the outweighed utility values or else freedom wouldn’t be a good approach. At the end of the day… It ends up always being a utilitarian and possible virtue ethic preposition. These degrees of freedom so to speak shape utility just much as utility shapes freedom.

So it comes back around that we created freedom out of the amoral but now we have to refocus this circular process to affirm the ideal. So then the distinction here doesn’t really shake out for me much different between utility and freedom. It just feels like explaining why we should put the cart in front of the horse. Not that this can’t have value in evaluation and perspective.