The topic of this high flying brainstorm is, as you can tell from the title, progress and freedom. These two things are very much related. Here's how I've very terribly illustrated this...
Freedom is the ability to allocate your resources differently. The majority allocates their resources in one direction...and you can choose to allocate your resources in a different direction.
The perfect example is the story of Noah's ark. Does it bother you that the story is fictitious? It really shouldn't. As the story goes...God informs Noah that he's going to destroy the world with a flood. This information provides Noah with the incentive to use his resources to build a giant boat. Even though he shares his partial knowledge with others...he's the only one who acts on it. Everybody else laughs at him because they really doubt the business model. The majority believes one thing and an extremely small minority believes another thing. Both groups can't be right. And in this case, neither can both groups be wrong. Either the world will be destroyed by a flood...or it won't be. Despite the fact that each group is certain that the other is wrong...there's no attempt to restrict each other's freedom. Each group can allocate their resources differently. The majority takes one path...and the minority takes another path. It's a good thing that Noah's freedom was not restricted because it turns out that he chose the right path.
The moral of the story is that heterogeneous activity is essential. Because the future is uncertain...we should hedge our bets by protecting individual freedom. Doing so maximizes the variety of economic activity which maximizes discovery which maximizes progress.
