Thoughtful post, but I would say that freedom is an illusion. You're enslaved to whatever you're thinking about or doing right now. Everything has hidden externalities and opportunity costs. If you have high opportunity costs, it's not free. Also, somebody, somewhere else is incurring some sort of cost. It might not even be a physical cost though. It could just be a slight negative externality in that they could have benefited more had you been doing something else instead.