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Freedom, Justice and Well-being In several of his writings Norberto Bobbio discussed various problems concerning so-called "negative freedom": P is free to do (forbear) X just in case P is not restrained from doing (forbearing) X. In this sense freedom is a relation that can hold without the free person being aware of it; as such, freedom is not something which can plausibly be considered intrinsically valuable. This is fully compatible with holding that the pleasure or satisfaction a person actually experiences when she is free -or believes to be free- is intrinsically good. The same goes for equality. Equality, as Bobbio has written, is an empty box, which can be filled with different things; as such, equality is plausibly also devoid of any intrinsic value. More plausibly, it can be argued that certain types of equality, such as for instance economic equality, has great positive instrumental value. According to several recent studies and reports, in the last two decades inequality in the distribution of income has been steadily growing both at the national and at the world level. There is reason to believe that the growth of economic inequality is significantly correlated, inter alia, with the decrease in such important indicators of general well being as social trust and social mobility.
