What has the Liberal Left got to say about obesity? Or parenting? Or green taxes? Or organ donarship? In short, where does it draw the line between public and private issues – and what kind of government intervention, if any, should it support?
We are increasingly aware of the public consequences of private decisions – but where do we draw the line? These are the questions posed by The Politics of Public Behaviour, published by Demos today.
The liberal case against intervention from government in these issues is easy to make.
Libertarians argue that it instrumentalises citizens, reducing politics to the achievement of goals established not by people themselves, but by a small governing elite who believe they know best.
The suggestion is that there should be no politics of public behaviour. It is argued that ‘social problems’ are overstated – life expectancy continues to increase rather than decrease for example. And, perhaps more potently, that liberal principles demand that people should be left to make their own choices, negotiating the trade-offs and consequences of their own decisions.
The difficulty for the Liberal Left is that its instincts pull it in another direction too. First, it recognises interdependence between citizens in the modern world. From the costs of people’s healthcare through to the impact of lifestyle decisions on the environment, the wealth and wellbeing of different individuals in society has become increasingly hard to disentangle.
We know, for example, that parenting is as important as schooling; we know that obesity costs the NHS £1bn each year. One person’s actions have consequences for another, that our choice of lightbulbs affects our chances of tackling global warming. Second – and more challenging still – the signature of the left is concern for the well-being of others, not just recognition of interdependence. So when evidence emerges that a healthy lifestyle can add up to 14 years to life expectancy, what should government do?
Scratch the surface and these questions lie behind the ongoing contortions of all the three main political parties. Each is trying to settle upon a legal and economic framework that captures mutual obligations but preserves individual liberty. In late 2007 the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions described ‘a new contract of rights and responsibilities for the next decade’, promising to define and formalise social expectations.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has pledged to protect individuals from excessive intrusion from the state by ‘apply[ing] the liberty test, respecting fundamental rights and freedoms… wherever action is needed by government’.
Yet the Liberal Left should not be satisfied with this. There is something static and unambitious about government as part referee, part accountant. For progressives, government should be about more than agreeing the rules for individuals to play by, and distributing the costs of social problems without interfering in people’s lives – important as those things are.
The path through the politics of public behaviour is to prize freedom and self-determination, not just liberty. In this sense, governments should seek to create agency rather than just choice. This means handing choices back to people where possible and making sure those choices are realistic in practice.
This raises some important issues. On green taxes, charges, measures need to be taken to avoid simply creating a mirage of personal choice. The aim should be to present people with accurate costs of different options (i.e. including their social costs) rather than to eliminate any one option in all but name from some groups in society.
To give an example, the aim should be to clarify the real costs of travel by car, train and plane, so that people can assess their relative value for money, rather than to price people from one section of society off the roads and out of the skies The principle should be that indirect taxation should neither rely on inequality, nor accentuate it. So moves towards greater indirect taxation should be ‘offset’ by other measures in the tax and benefit system to prevent disproportionate effects on low income groups.
In public services, the ambition to promote freedom suggests a state built more deliberately around Amartya Sen’s conception of ‘capabilities’ – what he describes as ‘a person being able to do certain basic things’. Individual budgets in social care are already starting to achieve this by helping people set their own goals and craft their own solutions to the problems of everyday life.
The liberal left should be asking where else this principle could be applied. Could doctors be helping patients commission personal trainers, budgeting classes, cooking lessons or group therapy sessions to help address chronic obesity? Could more benefit claimants be helped back into work by allowing people to chart their own courses back into employment?
The goal of maximising freedom should be used to set boundaries for more coercive or paternalistic measures. Liberal paternalism, for example, helps marry collective dilemma – like finding organs for people who need them – with personal freedoms and the ability to opt out. Similarly, ‘soft-paternalism’ allows people to set rules and boundaries that they want others to enforce.
In the some states in the US, for example, people have the legal option of banning themselves from casinos. They can sign documents precluding future entry and foregoing any potential winnings, which can be annulled after a ‘cooling off’ period. People are given the freedom to set their own boundaries.
Life, of course is more complicated that unmitigated freedom for all. There are always times when the state needs to step in to protect individuals from direct harm from one another; sometimes decisions will be too complex for people to be expected to make alone. In some areas of policy basic rules or conditions may be required to prevent abuse of welfare systems.
But an underlying principle of freedom helps explain where and how these measures should be deployed by government as it inevitably engages in the politics of public behaviour. It is not just more policies that the liberal left needs, but design principles for collective frameworks, guidelines for social investments, and boundaries for the state in an ever more interdependent world.
There is also the pragmatic libertarian argument, that even if you set your public policy goal towards increasing freedom in terms of “capabilities” and allow government intervention on that basis, the old rule of unintended consequences returns and you will find that government not only fails to achieve its goals but ends up making things worse. The current biofuel fiasco is a great example of this. Is that the sort of things that green taxes will be spent on?
The alternative is to say that government cannot create capabilities. It can, to a limited extent, redistribute them or it can destroy them. The best way to allow such capabilities to develop, instead, is within the sphere of the rule of law and guaranteed civil rights and that things like what you eat and whether you choose to smoke or not is best left to the conscience of the individual and the social opprobrium of the community. The state is too blunt an instrument, and policy wonks and politicians too compromised by ideology and special interests, to actually deliver benefits at such an intimate level.
Hi Nick,
i recognise the cohenrence of that argument, but i don’t think it is a Liberal Left position. As you say, it is a forceful argument against state intervention - but i think the liberal left needs a story about being:
- clear what it want to achieve (freedom not just liberty - and greater equality of freedom)
- skeptical that governement holds all the answers
- optimistic that government can help people find the answers themselves, through the power and resources that it commands
Best,
Duncan
Just because it’s not a “Liberal Left” position doesn’t mean it’s wrong!
What is the case against government interference?
Surely the question should be,
What is the case for government interference?
Unfortunately Labour tend to ask the former.
By the way, what is the difference between freedom and liberty? I understood them to be synonymous.
I’m not surprised to see the tention within your position. Liberal and left are opposing positions. The left want to interfere in peoples lives to make them better but usually end up making things worse. The Liberal want to let people make their own decisions even if that results in some negative outcomes.
I don’t see how you can reconcile the two, there is a choice between authoritarianism and liberty. You can’t have both.
QuestionThat: agree that it doesn’t automatically make it the right answer. What i meant is that Libertarians are often entirely coherent but set themselves different goals to the Liberal Left so don’t really have the answer to ‘what is a liberal-left position on this’?
Falco: the tension you describe is what makes the Liberal Left interesting i think. I like Sen’s quote that ‘Liberty is among the possible fields of application of equality, and equality is among the possible patterns of distribution of liberty.’ Addressing that issue seems to be what the Liberal Left should aim at. In other words it should look for forms of government intervention that increase personal freedom - and narrow inequalities in that field.
Uk Liberty: relating to the last point, i was trying to argue that freedom encompasses positive freedom, to take control of your own life as well as negative freedom - liberty, freedom from interference from government.
Freedom (or liberty) means absence of coercion. “Freedom to” is a much abused concept. I am free to own a Ferrari. This doesn’t mean that I can. But the concept of freedom has been abused to such an extent that “freedom to” has no come to imply a “right to”, with all the implications that has for other people’s freedoms - I have a right to an education and you have a duty to pay for it.
You can argue that this is morally correct, but just don’t argue that it’s anything to do with freedom.
Bernard Shaw satirised the traditional British view of liberty as the universal right to have tea at the Ritz - the point is that freedom should be about what you can do in real life rather than just what you are legally permitted to do…
Bernard Shaw was a socialist, not a liberal. And like him, you are arguing for collectivism rather than liberalism. You believe in the supremacy of equality. I believe in the supremacy of liberty. As I said earlier, this is fine, but don’t pretend that your position has got anything to do with liberty. Look it up in a dictionary - “absence of coercion” is what mine says.
And there’s another point the right wing libertarians are not taking into account. You can’t have the freedom to do something unless you have the opportunity to do it.
In theory everyone has the opportunity to become PM. But if the system is biased against working class people, then the problem lies with the system, not the definitions of ‘opportunity’ and ‘liberty’. Then the system does need repair.
The use of the word “liberal” in this sites title is clearly refering to it’s contemporary usage, particularly in American politics where it tends to mean centre left. In the past, right wing pundits often complained that the media had been taken over by a vast liberal conspiracy. Hence the name of this site (at least that’s my guess).
Now, would you libertarians mind not endlessly raising that stupid point at every opportunity.
And since we’re on definitions (from Miriam Webster)
freedom: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
Given that definition, affordability is a constraint so government intervention does indeed make people more free. And of course the moral case for it is pretty strong too.
“affordability is a constraint so government intervention does indeed make people more free”
Well it doesn’t really, because aforementioned intervention also involves taxing people, therefore making them less able to afford whatever it is we’re talking about and therefore less free.
And besides, it is helpful to the clarity of the conversation if we use liberty/freedom in the definition I’ve given while talking about equality or wealth for what you want to talk about.
The problem with intertwining the two meanings is that while seeking some “freedom to” you decide to swap it for some “freedom from” - we think we’ve just swapped one kind of freedom for another. But at this point you may well discover that your “freedom to” is in fact just a little bit of equality. And worse, you aren’t in a position to change things back because you’ve lost your “freedom from”.
As another way of looking at this, we could think about the old Soviet Union. There, everyone had access to education and healthcare, guaranteed by the state. Would you argue that the Russians enjoyed a significant measure of freedom?
“And there’s another point the right wing libertarians are not taking into account. You can’t have the freedom to do something unless you have the opportunity to do it.”
Sunny - It is not that we don’t take into account, we just argue that freedom (of our kind) is what breeds opportunity (of your kind). There is even a contemporary word for this contention: Rawlsekianism (a combination of the libertarian Hayek and the social democrat Rawls).
See: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/12/04/is-rawlsekianism-the-future/
Unlike Tories (of certain stripes at least), we aren’t interested in entrenching a class system that benefits only the few. Our values include that of equality and social justice. we merely contend that without liberty, none of those values are possible, since a coercive state managed by a bureacracy makes a poor replacement for the protections offered by the rights of property, free association and exit.
This post is using a very nonsensical (American) definition of “liberal”; as such, since you can’t even get basic terminology right, why should we read any further than the first few lines?
we aren’t interested in entrenching a class system that benefits only the few. Our values include that of equality and social justice.
Its not something I disagree with. And the point is, how do we get rid of that class difference entrenchment without some redistribution of wealth and opportunity? Maybe you can debate that with Bishop Hill?
Jeannie - um, where?
Duncan, I have an issue with this statement… or maybe I’m not clear about its implication:
To give an example, the aim should be to clarify the real costs of travel by car, train and plane, so that people can assess their relative value for money, rather than to price people from one section of society off the roads and out of the skies The principle should be that indirect taxation should neither rely on inequality, nor accentuate it. So moves towards greater indirect taxation should be ‘offset’ by other measures in the tax and benefit system to prevent disproportionate effects on low income groups.
When you say you want to give people its true cost, how would that work? Isn’t that indirect taxation an attempt to factor in the indirect costs? So for example, when we slap a £25 congestion charge on higher pollution vehicles - that to me sounds like an attempt to factor in the indirect cost of pollution.
Hi all,
Bishop Hill: you are right that people weren’t free in the Soviet Union. There may have been some ‘positive freedoms’ as you mention, but very little negative freedom (liberty). The government didn’t empower people, it restricted what they could do with their lives. The challenge for the liberal left, which i accept Libertarians would take issue with, is to promote positive freedom and negative freedom at the same time.
As you say, there are trade-offs here - your taxes may pay for my public services (or visa versa) so you are losing some of your liberty to fund my positive freedom. There is tension between the two - which liberals on the right see as unacceptable and liberals on the left seek to negotiate. The issue for left is where to set the boundaries that will not be crossed - red lines that prevent liberty from being eroded - whilst seeking to address inequalities in ways that give more people greater control over their own lives.
Sunny: what i was trying to say was that indirect taxes are a good way of including the social cost of something like flying in the price of a flight. Carbon emmissions are an externality - so the task of government uses taxes and similar tools to make sure that the true costs of something are reflected (e.g. putting a price on carbon; taxing fuel). The value of this is that there is still choice available to consumers - but many, seeing the full cost of the journey, will decide to spend their money on other things (e.g. going out for dinner) or more carbon efficient ways of travelling (e.g. the train). This way the governnent sets the framework, but people themselves negotiate the trade-offs. And markets come up with new fuels, which have create carbon emmissions, because there is an incentive to do so.
The problem that the left has with this kind of thing is that indirect taxes often fall disproportionately on the poor. The effect is that some people simply can’t afford to fly because of the (hypothetical) new taxes - so people worried about inequality often oppose measures that are good for the environment. My point was that, instead of opposing them altogether, the left should push for complemtary measures in the tax system (redistribution) so that the effects of the taxes are not regressive and we still get the environmental benefit of the taxes themsleves. So green taxes etc shouldn’t depend on inequality, or make it worse.
“the point is, how do we get rid of that class difference entrenchment without some redistribution of wealth and opportunity? ”
You could take away most of the money that rich people have. The problem with this is that it would destroy property rights, (rights are only in existence so long as they are universal), and screw the economy.
Or you can wait, things will change over time provided you provide decent educational oppertunities, (bye bye comprehensives), it will take longer but has the advantage of actually working.
Re the Americanisation/Liberty argument, please, for flying f*cks sake, learn the difference between negative liberty, (liberty) and positive liberty, (being an interfering, authoritarian b*stard).
“positive liberty, (being an interfering, authoritarian b*stard).”
Actually, Falco, much as I agree with most of what you say, the concept of positive liberty does not necessarily enable the state. It merely concerns itself with internal impediments to individual autonomy (rather than external threats as negative liberty does). It is perfectly possible to be concerned with positive liberty while still maintaining that the state should be minimal, since only a small state is able to offer the sort of social situation in which positive liberty is able to develop. Others will dispute that but it is not positive liberty itself they are contending, but a different (and wrong) way of achieving it.
Duncan - Perhaps we would need to see a more concrete proposal for what you have said but I think it is economically incoherent. What you are basically saying is that you would like to tax people based on the choices they make, but you can’t because that will necessarily impact more on the poor. So instead you will tax them on the basis of income but at the point of where they use (are forced to use) carbon generating goods or services. BTW, it is worth noting that according to Stern, car drivers are already paying MORE in taxes than the value of the damage to the environment they are causing is estimated to be, so perhaps your system would advocate (in reality) reducing taxes on cars and petrol.
The main problem with this is that it assumes that earning power is arbitrary - that it isn’t itself a choice that people, to some extent, are able choose. I.e. someone might choose to study for a Phd and be poorer because of it, or they may choose to get a job now or train to get a more productive job later. Or they may spend a lot of time being completely inactive. Under a free market system, people have to evaluate how much they want to be able to drive a car (for example) and, therefore, whether to make the sacrifices involved in getting a regular job to pay for it. Under your scheme, by contrast, rich people have to be punished for choosing to drive a car, while poor people have to be compensated for not being able to afford the punishment. This would incentivise inactivity (or even studenthood as is one of my sins:)) and encourage people to be less productive than they otherwise might choose to be because the various taxes are scaling on things they are doing are scaling perfectly just to “pinch” at the right level.
Sunny - “how do we get rid of that class difference entrenchment without some redistribution of wealth and opportunity?”
You can’t but you are assuming that the redistribution has to be coerced (and by a state). The free market is all about the redistribution of wealth via consensual transactions. So long as state mandated monopolies are avoided, everyone has the opportunity to better themselves materially so long as the rule of law and property rights are properly enforced.
Most people also have moral values that include helping those worse off and putting them into a better position, and would be prepared to help the poor via voluntary and charitable means. Hence redistribution can happen but directly, unmediated by expensive bureaucrats who take a large cut of all tax takings home for themselves:)
Interesting discussions… my only point is that it is cheap to refer to dictionaries.
The whole point is that those are contested terms- arguing about what does the word “liberty” mean is in essence arguing about what it should mean.
So, dictionaries are below the belt. Cheap shots.
You can approach this problem from a more practical direction than traditional notions of freedom, which are of course extremely important yet many find them unpersuasive. (One interesting thing however is that traditional notions of freedom often lead to better ways of doing things practically).
This approach is where we look at who is fit to solve a given ‘problem’ (assuming there is one).
What is peculiar is why, so very often - all too often - a top-down decision-maker or central government is considered to be better at delivering a solution.
It seems to me there is plenty of precedent to suggest otherwise, and indeed anyone looking at (say) Ministers’ CVs will find that few are any more competent within their portfolios than any one of us. History proves we do not have the skill to manage everything from the centre.
Perhaps the ‘liberal left’ should be that in mind.
When you say you want to give people its true cost, how would that work? Isn’t that indirect taxation an attempt to factor in the indirect costs? So for example, when we slap a £25 congestion charge on higher pollution vehicles - that to me sounds like an attempt to factor in the indirect cost of pollution.
Please don’t conflate congestion and pollution!
Nick, I agree that positive liberty does not necessarily enable the state. It does however enable interfering authoritarian b*stards.
Hi Nick,
i accept your point about people choosing different career paths, but it also clear that many people earn less not because of choice, but because of circumstance - whether that is genes, educational opportunities, or other factors. So there is a balance. But i’m sure you accept that too.
On the economics point, i was trying to say that we shouldn’t shy away from indirect taxes because of inequality because they are a useful tool. Instead we should address inequality. Or at the very least mitigate against the effects of indirect taxes on inequality with other measures.
best.
Duncan
“i accept your point about people choosing different career paths, but it also clear that many people earn less not because of choice, but because of circumstance - whether that is genes, educational opportunities, or other factors. So there is a balance. But i’m sure you accept that too.”
Yes. I wouldn’t, on that basis, endorse coercion to address those inequalities, however.
“the point is, how do we get rid of that class difference entrenchment without some redistribution of wealth and opportunity? ”
Nothing is more likely to entrench class difference and perpetuate economic inequality than instituting the precedent of redistribution, as it is not a one-off measure which solves the problem in one bound - instituting redistribution makes the state’s ability to reduce inequalities dependant on maintaining class differences.
The success of redistribution as a policy is only possible if the policy goals increase in their unobtainablility - which is obviously perverse and undesirable.
Dependancy culture is the clearest manifestation of illiberalism at large, whether it means drug addiction, lack of transport choices, benefit dependancy, fiddling with laws and systems until they break under the weight of interference or whatever else. This is because it is the dependancy which stops you from being free to do what else is required.
There is no generalised case to be made for intervention/interference - only in exceptional circumstances where the reasoning for making it is clearly and overwhelmingly made is it acceptable, and even then much thought should be given to the method of doing so (take Iraq as an all-encompassing example).
Until the government can shake off it’s habit for interference it will continue to oppress the people by its actions.
The concept of “positive liberty” is a reasonable and important idea, wrapped up in an unapologetic, in-your-face lie. Liberty, or freedom, is the absence of restraint. That’s all. Period.
It’s perfectly true that being free to do something is not the same as being able to do it and that this lack of ability is sometimes caused by social injustice. But a reasonable point like that does not need the perversion of language you’re employing. In an unequal society, where there is sometimes exploitation, being free to do something is not enough. Freedom is not enough. See how easy it is to be honest about this?
Next, try being honest about what the word “Liberal” means. This is not a Liberal website.
There seem to be two main ways that society is getting people to live healthier, more environmentally friendly lives. The first is equating healthy, clean living with social status. This creates a generation of upper middle class snobs who look down their nose at anything that isn’t organic and grown in Hertfordshire. The other is shock tactic guilt tripping. Making people feel bad because they’re overweight or have a car or smoke. Both these tactics work to an extent.
However they work on the basis of lowering the self-esteem and self expectations of the vast majority of people who can’t afford the money or time to live these clean, holy lifestyles. What we need is a paradigm shift where people are encouraged to improve themselves in their diet, their travel habits but also their economic and social outlook. Place basic educational psychology and entrepreneurship classes alongside maths and english in schools. Make people BELIEVE they can improve their lives. Make people BELIEVE things can be better. The most pervasive and enduring element of class is that people do or do not believe that they are entitled to social and environmental improvement based upon their experience. Expectation is intimitely tied to experience. Of course I have my doubts as to whether such widespread belief in social mobility is desired by society as a whole.
In conclusion, less elitism, less guilt tripping, more self-esteem building please.
The problem with /making people believe/ something is that it all goes horribly wrong when the belief and reality do not mesh - like “get yourself a good education and you’re BOUND to get a better job!”
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