Lots of people making the expected “capitalism vs. communism” comparison. Your narratives are philosophically flawed. Enter Isaiah Berlin (might be unfamiliar to Generation Slavoj).
“The two concepts of liberty—or freedom (he uses the words interchangeably)—are the “negative” and the “positive.” The former, generally professed in the West and to some extent even practised there, deals with the question: “What is the area within which the subject…is or should be left to do or be what he wants to do or be, without interference by other persons?” The latter, universally professed and practiced in the Sino-Soviet East, deals with a very different question: “What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, one thing rather than another?”” -US conservative writer introducing the concept.
No, there aren’t. There are that many combinations. There are 4 or 5 options. In the case of the toilet seats, two of them aren’t even choices. You have tho get the form factor and the color that matches your toilet. Well, I suppose you could get a different color, but 99.9% of people are going to want to match their toilet. That really leaves you with two choices; material and hinge design. The display of the toilets is done out of laziness, and out of the big box stores mistakenly believing that most people value tons of options. As you yourself have stated, most people don’t.
Berlin was Russian/British, not American at all, and his writings reflect his education at an English private school and Oxford. To me his “negative” concept of freedom is just the way things were for someone receiving an upper class English education of that era. Just as Roger Scruton follows Plato in thinking of arguments to justify what the rich want to do; not that I would accuse him of practising sucking up to the rich.
Personally I don’t rate Berlin any higher than Zizek. But I do find it interesting that the status of philosophers goes in cycles. With philosophy received wisdom seems to be whatever the academics in the late years of their careers approve of, which is basically what was new and exciting when they were young.
Anyway, I object to someone writing “Your narratives are philosophically flawed” based on the writings of one philosopher who was very much the product of his background, education and time.
Isaiah Berlin also recognised that negative freedom could be used to oppress just as easily as positive freedom.
It follows that a frontier must be drawn between the area of private life and that of public authority. Where it is to be drawn is a matter of argument, indeed of haggling. Men are largely interdependent, and no man’s activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way. ‘Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows’; the liberty of some must depend on the restraint of others. Isaiah Berlin - Two Concepts of Liberty
Some of us want equality of sanitation (among other things), but it seems that other people want the freedom to look down on people without safe toilets while causing the conditions that means that the poor cannot afford to get them.
He influenced Tony Blair, which is enough for me to not want to follow his beliefs. Apparently Blair wrote to Berlin asking for advice soon after winning the 1997 General Election, but Berlin was too ill to reply and died six months later.
To my understanding the horseshoe shape in required in industrial settings and is rarely if ever found in residential applications. You might want to check a plumbing supply company. I imagine there is a company that makes good quality ones in many colors, it’s just likely going to be costly.
