Liberal Vision

Time for a Nanny Unit

The question of what sort of nannying Alain De Botton would like, got me thinking about those who desire nannying and the people would rather run their own lives.

This led me to wander if it is possible to reconcile that liberal aspiration with a ‘Nanny State’?

It seems that many people believe nannying is a good thing. According to de Botton people need help with what to eat, smoke and drink.

For those who would rather control their own lives this is all a bit annoying as they get dragged into the nannying. Perhaps one could describe this as a ‘tragedy of the nanny’.

What if the ‘Nanny State’ gave way to a nanny unit?

Those who need nannying would pay into a fund for this service. The payment could be progressive or a flat rate. The charges might be based on the level of nannying you desire. For instance, if you would like someone to come and bring you your five a day mix of fruit and vegetables you would pay more than if you simply got sent a regular text message reminding you to eat your apples and broccoli.

The people who wish to control their own lives would not receive any nannying and would not pay into the fund.

An immediate problem is whether people would opt in or opt out of the nannying unit. For those who believe in nannying the opt out route would be most attractive.

The decision on opting in or out is probably best done on the basis of cost.  Is it cheaper to enrol everyone automatically or make them pay a large entrance fee when they opt in? Should one pay a substantial amount to opt out once in?

For those readers who think it is high time for me to remove my tongue from my cheek, the Republican Senator Ron Paul has recently suggested that Americans be given the option to pay a 10% tax for the rest of their lives and in return never ask anything from government bar some basic State provision such as protection by the military.

I should stress I came up with the nanny unit before reading about Paul’s proposals.

A libertarian guide to Valentine’s Day

It’s that time of year again when every economic liberal can celebrate the reduction of our highest emotional connection with another human being by supporting the greeting card, floral and sugar processing industries, whilst ignoring the troubling history of the festival.

The original St. Valentine, about whom little is known, is claimed as a  priest martyred in the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius II (@270 AD). His principle crime was helping Christians marry, the pre-medieval equivalent of birth control.

His doom was only confirmed after arrest when the pagan Emperor tired of his endless attempts to convert him, and romantically sent him clubbing with his mates; where upon he got hopelessly stoned and entirely lost his head. He was reportedly buried on February 14th.

The Saint’s Day itself was inaugurated in 496 AD by Pope  Gelasius and may have been a direct replacement for the Roman Festival of Lupercalia. A thoroughly unpleasant 3-day rite that began with animal sacrifice, involved young nobles running around town naked, and concluded with the beating of women with whips in the hope of improving their fertility. A tradition continued today by young British holidaymakers throughout the summer.

There are references throughout history after that including the acres of greeting-card quality poetry in the age of courtly love; Shakespeare’s cheery musings in Hamlet; up to the modern reinterpretation of the Valentine ode “Roses are Red, Violets are blue” by the balladeers of Aqua.

Why should libertarians care about this festival?

First it  despised by anti-consumerist elements on the left. Antivalentinism detests the crass commercialism of the festival and worries it distracts attention from the true joyless collectivist meaning of love, something unfairly distributed and horded by those rich in social skills and good looks in the capitalist system. Besides which they harbour strong suspicions that Kraft and Hallmark could pay more tax.

Second it is loathed by authoritarians. Saudi Arabia occasionally  bans it as a Christian holiday, and consequently enjoys a black market in roses. Gay rights campaigners in China use the day for protest marches. Nationalists in India threatened to shave the heads of  celebrants in 2004.

That cheesy card you send extolling the virtues of your dear one beyond any actual qualities they might have is a direct snub to dictatorship.

Third the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was a direct consequence of prohibition, and the gangsterism it encouraged.

Fourth it’s not a state-approved official holiday. Whether or not you participate is up to you.

So whilst sitting in an over-priced restaurant filled with over-perfumed couples anxious about whether or not to reciprocate a relationship status update on Facebook, might not be your thing… it is surely your duty to support the cause of global freedom today by buying your loved one a walnut whip. Or not.

Enjoy the freedom to choose.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Political Writings (1970 edition)

Author: Barry Stocker

Immanuel Kant spent his whole life in the east Baltic city of Königsberg.  Königsberg is now the Russian city of Kaliningrad, in the Russian enclave of that name between Poland and Lithuania.  In Kant’s time, the city was the major centre of East Prussia, that is the most eastern lands of the Germanic Kingdom of Prussia which was ruled from Berlin.  Kant was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Königsberg, and is usually considered one of the greatest philosophers, even the greatest, ever. His work covers all branches of philosophy over many volumes.  His political theory is mostly found in Part One of Metaphysics of Right and in five essays: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, ‘Theory and Practice’, ‘Perpetual Peace’, ‘Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’, ‘The Contest of Faculties’.  Some attention has also been devoted to his theory of art and beauty in Critique of the Power of Judgements, as a way of approach questions of political judgement.  Samuel Fleischacker has made a major contribution to this discussion.  Kant’s most famous book, The Critique of Pure Reason, sets up the idea of reason as connected with the work of law courts which prevent despotism, equivalent to abstract ideas unrestrained by experience, and anarchy, equivalent to unformed sensory stimulation

Kant was deeply effected by the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly David Hume, along with Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and others.  He defined Enlightenment as the capacity to think for yourself and to only accept what is based on experience and reason, rather than on tradition, revelation, or authority.  The appropriate political structure for this is a republic.  For Kant, a republic did not mean a state without a monarchy, it meant a state where governmental power was distinct from legislative power.  Kant argued that it is despotism for one body to have the power to both make laws and implement them.  Ideally laws should be made by a representative assembly elected by all those capable of independent judgment, as the best way of forming laws based of the universal moral laws of rational humanity.  Kant strongly emphasised the rational aspect of humans as the most important aspect, and the aspect which gives us autonomy, that is the capacity to rule ourselves and establish moral principles.

Kant criticised ‘democracy’ as a system where the people make laws and implement them.  He is thinking here of the original meaning of democracy, as a system in which city assemblies of all citizens both make laws and govern the city.  What Kant is partly arguing for is the importance of division of powers, for a political system that allows individual freedom from an over powerful state.

The scope of government is limited for Kant, though less so than in the slightly later  German liberal thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt.  Kant thinks that liberty and prosperity rest on the process Hume and Smith describe, in which economic competition leaders to great prosperity; and that the state should not impede this process.  Government should protect property rights, maintain law and order, and defend national frontiers.  It should also raise taxes from the rich to keep the poorest out of destitution, and raise taxes more generally to provide for orphaned an abandoned children.

Kant opposes all wars of aggression and forcible incorporation of any people into a state.  He refers to a principle of hospitality in international relations, in which we all obliged to respect the stranger visiting our land.  He regards colonialism as an abuse of that hospitality.  Republican states are pacific states according to Kant, which are concerned with the welfare of the population, not dynastic ambitions for more territory and more colonies.  Kant argues that increase in republican governments throughout the world is inevitable.  That is because of the way that competition, between states, leads to agreement on cooperation in order to avoid mutual destruction.  This process should be completed by some kind of global law enforcement agency to preserve peace.  The argument is not for a form of global government, but purely for a body that enforces peace, and the laws that guarantee peace.  Conditions for peace include a ban on standing armies and on national debt, since the latter tends to finance war.  These are issues of what Kant calls international (relations between nations)  and cosmopolitan (universal) right, building on the issues of public right within nations.  The cosmopolitan order is one which is assisted by commerce, a constant factor in the progress that Kant finds in humanity.  Trade and exchange are a power for the increasing recognition of the moral  equality of all individuals, and the recognition of the moral interests of humanity as a whole.

“You should not trust government” – Clegg

Henry Porter interviews Nick Clegg about the Protection of Freedom Bill in the Observer today. The Bill is a small but important step in repealing powers the government does not need. A welcome achievement for liberals within the coalition. What caught my eye however was the following quote.

“I need to say this – you shouldn’t trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government – full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.”

It’s an extraordinarily libertarian comment for a serving MP, let alone the Deputy Prime Minister, and gives us hope that the usual process of institutional capture, where politicians drift from serving the public interest to that of their civil servants, is being held at bay.

That noted, Porter is also reasonably critical of the Bill itself:

“I find it hard to ignore the imprint of Labour’s boot on the statute book. The formalised mistrust of every adult who has anything to do with children in the vetting and barring scheme has not been abolished, merely reduced to affect half the estimated nine million to be vetted under the original scheme.”

This is fair, although given a significant part of the Conservative party shares Labour’s instincts to regulate behaviour, unsurprising. The Bill by consequence is lighter on repeals than reforms.

It is though a welcome direction of travel, and a quote we hope that is much repeated in future discussions of proposals to expand the state.

What price to avoid a bad headline

I find the votes for prisoners debate simultaneously frustrating and trivial.

Prisoner votes are not a clear matter of principle; it depends on whether you believe the deprivation of the right to vote under universal suffrage should be a part of all or some custodial sentences, alongside the more fundamental withdrawal of liberty. If it should, should it be implicit, or stated explicitly at the time of sentencing.

Bar the courageous 22, for politicians, motivations in this debate are more base. Most for example would like to avoid a Daily Mail headline, or similar on an opponent’s leaflet that says ‘x’ decided to give Ian Huntley the vote. Bravery in the face of media populism is in short supply in front-line politics.

Some are opposed to the European Court of Human Rights having legal authority over Parliament. I noted in November that these often the same people quite happy to use the exact same court and exact same clause to defend the rights of Gibraltarians to vote in 1999. The point of the ECHR is to defend the rights of individuals against arbitrary state power. I find it difficult to sympathise with those Conservatives and Labour nationalists who regard that as a bad thing.

Some are not opposed to the principle of Human Rights, but feel they should be decided at a national level. Given the point of such rights is that they are universal, or if subjective, subject to such a degree of consensus that difference applies largely in interpretation. I find this view uninspiring as well.

We signed up to the ECHR as a sovereign nation and in general it is a force for good. Disagreement with individual decisions should no more undermine our membership, than decisions such as hanging the mentally ill, imprisoning people on the grounds of being Irish, or discrimination against homosexuals, persuade us to scrap the High Court.

Most British-made injustices are markedly more serious and offensive matters than whether or not Labour will embarrassed by persistently topping the polls amongst “yobs and thugs“.

The final point is that I am markedly more concerned that ordinary decent people occasionally find themselves voting for criminals, than whether or not ordinary decent MPs occasionally find themselves tipped into office by the votes of criminals. Eric Illsley for example, having looted the taxpayer whilst an MP, may now, if denied the vote during his sentence, sting us again for a compensation payment due to the cowardice of his colleagues in the face of a trivial decision.

Good job Parliament!