I am always fascinated how many of the topics about which I write relate to one another. For example, in "In Defense of Standards" I managed to tie together my writing on our youth obsession, my criticism of Wikipedia, my disappointment with declining standards of spelling and grammar and my fascination with the arrogance underlying authoritarian politics. While that was an unusually large number of subjects to tie together in one post, it often seems that a few basic concepts do seem to explain a lot. And I believe I have found one more topic which links a host of topics. That is the modern tendency to replace private, voluntary controls with coercive, externally imposed controls.

Perhaps a simple example will help. In "The Carrot and the Stick - Or How to Create a Fat, Lazy, Surly Donkey" I wrote about the problem of out of wedlock teen births. I discussed the way that, int he past, the parent and child were shunned and criticized in an attempt to discourage others from following the same course. The "progressives" did away with such criticism, though in this case not to simply eliminate the private controls, but as part of the "sexual revolution". But, having eliminated the private, cultural controls which kept teens from getting pregnant, they found themselves faced with unwanted consequences, and so they looked around for governmental solutions. Basically, they ended up trying to find a political replacement for what was handled privately in the past.

And that is the pattern we have seen again and again. A private solution already exists. It may not be perfect, but it performs some function and has stood the test of time.("In Defense of Standards", "Addenda to "In Defense of Standards"") Along come those who think that any solution short of perfection needs to be fixed ("Utopianism and Disaster"), confident in their own unerring insight ( "Appealing to Arrogance", "The Citizen Dichotomy", "In A Nutshell", "Cognitive Dissonance Part 2"), and they destroy the existing private solutions, only to end up replacing them with a coercive, government solution, which often performs worse than the private solution.

Let us look, for our first example, at charity (" Private Charity", "Private Charity Take Two", "Liberalism's False Dichotomy"). In the past, "poor relief" was seen as the province of religious institutions, charitable foundations and private individuals. No, it did not solve all the needs of the poor, but it managed to keep the worst cases from running about naked, starving in the streets or living in doorways. But it was not "organized" and it failed to deliver perfection. And so we end up with "the war on poverty". However, being driven by rules, providing benefits consistently to those who meet the right criteria, public charity becomes something private charity would not, a way of life. Where private charity discouraged such freeloading by eventually cutting off those who seemed too reliant, public charity cannot do so, and so we end up with multigenerational poverty, children being born for profit*, planned teenage pregnancies, and all the ills of the welfare state. All because private charity was less than prefect.

A similar problem exists in many areas of ethics. For example, the problem of out of wedlock births I mentioned above. Similarly, the issue of racism. Now, I will grant that racism was not being addressed adequately by private pressures in the past. Many areas saw significant advances, many others did not. However, the imposition of government racial laws has not managed to resolve those problems. If anything, the imposition of race as a category of government thought has perpetuated racism. Where, had the government not acted, racism would have slowly worn away over time, we now have race enshrined as a permanent category of thought, with individuals uncertain whether minorities are succeeding because of their own merits or because of favoritism. Not only does this make many majority citizens resent minorities, it also can erode the self confidence of members of minorities, who have no idea whether or not they succeed on their own merits. And, in addition to all this, the solutions imposed required the erosion of individual property rights, rights of association and others.  In short, because reform was going too slowly, the government stepped in, destroyed rights, and still managed to make things worse**.

But that is hardly the only area of ethics where the government has done harm. Both right and left are guilty of trying to force people to behave using government power, and both have had equally dismal records. Ideally, ethics is imposed from within, from one's own understanding of ethical rules. However, as we know that is an unreliable source of ethical restraint, societies have generally relied on social pressures to force individuals to behave, relying upon scorn and other social pressures. However, in our non-judgmental age those pressures have been destroyed, with scorn being directed only at those who try to "impose their values" on others. But without such pressures, the question arises how to discourage undesirable behaviors among the citizens. And thus we end up with both right and left asking for the state to threaten fines or jail against those who act in ways they deem inappropriate. I have discussed this at length in "The Danger Inherent in Banning "Bad Ideas"", so I won't go into much detail here, just point out that yet again the gentle constraints voluntarily imposed by society have once again been destroyed, and the result is a call for coercive controls, which end up doing more harm than good while not solving the problem nearly as well as private controls did.

Which brings me to another area where the state has stepped in and destroyed private controls. And that is civil law. At one time private commercial interactions were entirely governed by contract. That is, the parties involve din the transaction assigned liability, agreed as to terms, and set up all the conditions for the transfer. Along came the "tort reformers" who thought the little guy was getting a raw deal. And so, rather than respect the rights of individuals to negotiate, they destroyed the contract system, eliminated our right to contract as we want, and moved all product cases into the arena of torts, that is the area government by statute and judicial decisions. ("The Problem With Tort Reform", "Red Herring") Once again, an imperfect system, freely entered into by individuals was replaced by a coercive system, one out of which no one can opt. And the results are all around us, companies refusing to provide goods and services because they cannot afford the liability exposure. Doctors refusing to deliver babies in some counties. The plaintiff liability lottery, where some walk away with millions and some get nothing, with payment having little to do with damages. Not to mention states shaking down cigarette makers, fast food vendors and others, using the threat of unknown tort settlements as the stick with which to extort fortunes. All because sometimes the old system did not produce perfect results.

I could go on. I could talk about how business decisions are coming increasingly to move decisions from private choice to government fiat. Or how our private decisions are being taken from us. How the state has coopted education. ("You Don't Drown in a Glass of Water - Vouchers Revisited", "Why Vouchers are not the Answer", "Never Ascribe To Evil, A Discussion of Education") How the state has involved itself in hundreds of decisions that used to be private.

But why bother?

The trend should be obvious to anyone who looks for it. The state has slowly been taking away more and more of our autonomy, deciding we do not know how to handle our own affairs, that we need the benevolent control of the state to live "properly". Which leads me to ask one question. If you support this trend, if you think the state is a tool for good, then answer one question: are you capable of making decisions for yourself? If so, then why do you assume no one else is?

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* I know we have welfare reform. I was a social services worker when the first reforms were put in place. But while extra children do not bring cash benefit increases, they do prolong maternal medial assistance, help with section 8 benefits, provide additional food stamps, more day care subsidies, additional time of exemption from work requirements, and a host of other benefits. So, though we removed one incentive to continue having children, many others still exist, as evidenced by the number of welfare mothers still intentionally having child after child.

** Recently I wrote about the effect of race laws on individual rights in "In Defense of Discrimination","A Statute of Limitations for Race","How to Handle Idiots" and "Back Again". I also wrote previously on the subject of race in "Private Versus Public Racism", "Mainstreaming hate", "Some Logical Problems With Reparations", "More Thoughts on Slavery", "The Important Lesson of Racism" and "How to Become a Victim of Crime".

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POSTSCRIPT

Clearly this tendency toward more state control is part of the tendency I describe in  "The Citizen Dichotomy", "Man's Nature and Government" ,"In A Nutshell", "Cognitive Dissonance Part 2", "Utopianism and Disaster", "The Road to Violence" and "Regulated Speech". As people think others cannot handle their own decisions it becomes necessary for the state to do more and more. So long as we think people need to be told what to do, we will continue to see more and more of our lives open to public debate and controlled by the decisions of others.