Enlightened self interest. The universe has no self interest.

@NewbieMAGA That’s not at all what the Declaration of Human Rights asserts. If you think the right to food, clothing and shelter means these things can’t be taken away from you once you have them, then I’m certainly OK with that.

The problem is that liberty is tried to health, food, clothing and shelter. If you don't have those things your ability to participate in society is limited.

The first question to tackle is what does liberty mean. For the sake of argument assume it is roughly synonymous with freedom. Freedom to do what you desire or at least what you "need" to do. Of course there are restrictions. Some imposed to maintain social order, other restrictions are simply a matter of the resources available to you. Those resources may be restricted by poverty, your intelligence, mental and physical health, or the society to which you belong. Your responsibilities also place restrictions on your ability to use the resources you have available. For example some people have children, elderly parents or other dependents that use their resources. One often additional limitation on freedom is dependency.

In the mythology of North American freedom one group of men stand out, the trapper/ Mountain man. How free exactly were these men? First you have to describe their dependency. They depended on the complex culture they left behind for guns, lead, traps, powder, salt, utensils, tools, horses, mules, trade items, and knowledge. Often they depended on native wives for clothing, cooking, medicine and communication. Past dependence there are other restrictions on movement imposed by native tribes, weather, the vagaries of nature, geography, age and other infirmities, the fads of fashion, and competition. Freedom it turns out is always a trade off.

As a practical matter freedom has more to do with free from than free to. In the US tradition that means free from excessive taxation, regulation, conscription for foreign wars, class restrictions, religious persecution, censorship, restrictions on movement, etc. Although we think of rights as positive in practice they are restriction on the power of the powerful in many cases.

Because of the way complex societies function freedom is self reinforcing. The more freedom your average citizen has the more freedom will evolve. This has a lot to do with resources. The more resources the average citizen has the more freedom the average citizen will acquire. Provided they don't trade security for freedom. Free people it turns out our risk takers.

One of the ironies is that the more free the average person is the less free the rich are. All social interactions are both trade offs and compromises. A society of rich and poor means the poor can't impose on the freedoms of the rich as much as a middle class. The poor for example don't move to suburbs and crowd out estates. The poor don't vacation to the beaches the rich have houses near. This is the third point about freedom because it is always about who's freedom. That may seem to contradict the principle that freedom is self reinforcing but that is in the aggregate.

There are a lot more complexity than I have covered. Consideration has to be given to resource limits and population density for example. As a rule of thumb however giving resources to the poor and bringing them into the middle class expands the liberty of the middle class but weakens the upper class. Bread and circus is the rich and powerfuls sollution.

@wolfhnd
Very useful discussion thank you.