An article on the BBC News/magazine website caught my eye last night, titled “In defence of the nanny state”. I let out an audible groan but thought I’d read on.
I was pleasantly surprised to see a fairly good overview of libertarianism, before it unfortunately veered off into a misunderstanding of liberty and a defence of authoritarianism, or “nannying” as the author prefers to call it – well, who wouldn’t? it sounds much nicer and benevolent. But I have seen the author Alain de Botton interviewed before, and should have guessed.
A key assumption of modern politics is that we should be left alone to live as we like without being nagged, without fear of moral judgement. Freedom has become our supreme political virtue.
It is not thought to be the government’s task to promote a vision of how we should act towards one another or to send us to hear lectures about parenting, chivalry or politeness. Modern politics, on both left and right, is dominated by what we can call a libertarian ideology.
Erm, not quite. Firstly I don’t think this is an assumption of modern politics as successive government have expressly sought to interfere in our lives. But that aside, freedom does not mean individuals are beyond moral judgement, or being nagged, it is just that this is not for the state to do.
Sections of the public grow more or less apoplectic at the idea that governments might want to teach us anything. Even modest measures like trying to get people to eat less fatty food or drive less petrol-guzzling cars tends to provoke howls of protest that this is going simply too far.
It is a sign of this climate that the current government has almost given up all attempts to tell us anything. It seeks just to nudge us in extremely modest, quiet ways to donate our livers if we have a car crash or to file our tax returns on time. But that’s about as far as it dares to go.
All this concern with freedom can be traced back to thinkers like John Stuart Mill, who in his famous book, On Liberty of 1859, explained: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”
In this scheme, the state should harbour no aspirations to tinker with the inner well-being or outward manners of its members. The foibles of citizens should be placed beyond comment or criticism, for fear of turning government into that most reviled and unpalatable kind of authority in libertarian eyes – the nanny state.
Manners, politeness, civility, etc, are societal norms enforced by ‘society’ – that is parents, families and friends. The purpose of the state is to uphold and protect the freedom of individuals in order that they – that is to say that collectively society – can live their lives, pursue their own success and happiness and raise their families, all without being ‘steered’ or ‘nudged’ or more explicitly coerced by the hand of the state.
But let’s take an example which tests Alain’s argument more directly. The Labour government tried to address the issue of “antisocial behaviour”. What is antisocial behaviour? It is not crime as such, but it is what happens when the natural constraints of society – manners, politeness, good behaviour and civility, etc – crumble, leaving unpleasantness to leach into and impose itself on the liberty of others.
A libertarian does not say that such people should be able to pursue their unpleasantness unchecked or uncriticised, it would say the protection of every individuals liberty needs to be in balance and therefore this “new” phenomenon needs new measures to deal with it, new powers.
Equally a libertarian does not say children ought to be left unchecked or uncriticised to be rude or disruptive at school. A libertarian would give the teachers the freedom to enforce societal norms rather than standing up for the freedom (or rights) of the child.
Libertarians believe in liberty in the sense of negative liberty as espoused by the likes of Berlin, Locke, etc. Libertarians are not normally supporters of positive liberty. Libertarians believe in freedoms not rights.
We don’t currently live in a “free” society in the true sense of the term. Every day, our minds are assaulted by commercial messages that reach us from all sides. The whole billion-pound-a-year advertising industry runs counter to any assertion that we’re currently free and un-nudged as it stands.
A libertarian state truly worthy of the name would accept that our freedom is best guaranteed by an entirely neutral public space. It would judge that it was no assault on liberty to deprive us of all advertisements in fields, city streets, taxis, websites, phone booths, tube stations, dentists waiting rooms, airport concourses or Hollywood films.
An alternative option would be to build a more plural system of advertising, where the traditional commercial messages paid for by Procter & Gamble or Nike were balanced out by ones promoting ingredients of the good life as defined by Aristotle and others. Advertisements for 4×4 jeeps would run alongside ones evoking the importance of what the Greek philosopher eloquently termed kalokagathia or nobility of spirit.
Here is where he goes really off piste. His interpretation of liberty seems to be that individuals must be protected from all coercion, including assaults on free will such as commercial advertisements. I don’t know of any libertarian who would really argue that case seriously. For starters all freedom of action is constrained by our external environment. Is one’s freedom curtailed because one cannot go out due to having a child to look after? Well, yes it is, but that is a natural constraint.
A libertarian society would allow companies to advertise freely providing all the contractual relationships with suppliers, tv companies, nes papers, radio stations, etc, were voluntary. Libertarians may debate over drawing a line with advertising targeting children since children are deemed immature and unable to exercise free will independently. Equally, libertarians would not allow companies to fly-post entire communities with advertising, since there is a line to be drawn for public spaces since public spaces (e.g. planning permissions).
A Libertarian would most certainly NOT support a plural system of advertising where commercial adverts were balanced by philosophical adverts. That would require coercion upon television, press, radio companies and others, and so would be a complete violation of freedom.
Finally, people do not see an advert and then find themselves walking unwillingly into a shop and unwillingly taking out their wallet, and unwillingly buying something. Adverts encourage and entice, but only play on wants and desires of individuals. Adverts don’t compel people to buy something they really don’t want.
We are holding to an unhelpfully sophisticated view of ourselves if we think we are above hearing well-placed, blunt and simply structured reminders about being good. When we fail to be kind, we are not usually happy about our lapses. The mature sides of us watch in despair as the childish sides of us trample upon our principles and ignore what we most deeply revere. We may begin to wish that someone could come along and save us from ourselves.
The true risks to us turn out to be different from those conceived of by libertarians. It is not always or even primarily the case that we find ourselves at the mercy of some external, paternalistic authority whose claims we resent and want to be free of. Only too often, the danger runs in an opposite direction. We face temptations and compulsions which we revile, but which we lack the strength and encouragement to resist, much to our eventual self-disgust and disappointment.
Again, libertarianism does not mean any individual is “above…reminders about being good”. It does not also mean individuals should not have regrets or feel disappintment or disgust with oneself. That some individuals lack the “strength or encouragement” to resist temptations is simply no business of the state.
In a society that took seriously our laziness about being nice, an occasional paternalistic reminder would not necessarily constitute an infringement of our “liberty” as that term should be properly understood. Being free should not invariably entail being left totally to one’s own devices, it should also be compatible with being admonished and harnessed. Complete freedom can be a prison all of its own.
It is perhaps in the end a sign of immaturity to object too strenuously to sometimes being treated like a child. Why does the idea of a nanny state always have to be so terrifying? The libertarian obsession with freedom ignores how much of our original childhood need for constraint endures within us, and therefore how much we stand to learn from certain paternalistic strategies. It is not much fun, nor ultimately even very freeing, to be left alone to do entirely as one pleases.
This last bit is not even worth rebuking, I have gone over the arguments above. But tyring to justify state ‘nannying’ by saying we all accept it in child hood, is just wholly absurd. Freedom, as i have said, does not absolve individuals from criticism, guidance, parenting, nagging, advice, or anything else.
Freedom protects individuals from coercion by other people and the state, it allows society to self regulate its norms and conventions. A libertarian society does not seek government involvement in the lives of its citizenry more than the least extent necessary.
Those modern ‘liberals’ who obsess over “rights”, and shun traditional discipline, and who take an extreme ‘reletavist’ view of the world are actually dissolving societal norms which allow for such self regulation. The result is the requirement for ever more state intervention, and with ever more intervention then freedoms can only be protected through “rights”, which necessarily blur negative and positive liberty. Perversely this can only lead to the kind of society Alain de Botton imagines a libertarian society would be, yet the truth is precisely the opposite.
