A liberty one lacks the means to use exists only on paper: to be free is to be actually able to be and to do.

Supports

Sen, Nussbaum · Development as Freedom · 1999

With equal rights, two people do not have the same real possibilities: the right to start a business, to study, or to travel opens nothing to those who lack money, health, or education.
What we prize in liberty are the lives it makes possible: a right its holder cannot take up may keep its value in principle, but by itself it opens no life.
A purely formal definition must nonetheless declare these two people equally free: as a measure of freedom, it is blind to what gives freedom its value.
The relevant measure is therefore the range of : not resources themselves, but what each person, with them and given their situation, can actually choose to be and to do.

Therefore A free society is one that widens what its members can really be and do, health, education, and resources included.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

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Deepenings

The critique of formal freedoms

Legal equality can coexist with actual dependence: proclaimed for all, freedoms remain, for those without the means to exercise them, paper freedoms.
The capability approach does not take over this political diagnosis, but it keeps the warning: a society can multiply rights without widening by an inch what its poorest members can actually do.

How far does this reasoning convince you?

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Entirely

Put to the test

Problem