Blindness all around

Here in Illinois, we had a new law passed last October requiring that every child entering kindergarten have an eye exam performed by an optometrist or ophthalmologist. This is in addition to state-mandated in-school tests already performed in kindergarten. This new school year will have the first students actually affected by the requirement.

And who are big supporters of this? The American Optometric Association and the Illinois Optometric Association, of course- public-spirited organizations that, by a remarkable coincidence, are composed of the very people who will be paid to perform the examinations that every young child in the state will be required to undergo.

Now, human motivations are multifaceted, and I don’t think the average optometrist thinks about it in those terms; he probably really does care about children’s eye health as well as his own income. But in a way, that’s part of the problem. You’re going to be very-hard pressed to convince me that economic self-interest did not play a significant role in the positions taken by those organizations, but the fact that most optometrists really do feel genuine concern for public health is precisely what lets them ignore other motivations that are likely shaping their opinions. The public interest cover provided to aid in rent-seeking doesn’t just serve to bamboozle the public- it is often necessary for the psychological well-being of the beneficiaries.

I’ve come to think that one of the biggest threats to liberty in this country is unthinking trust in the medical profession and the exalted demigod status the profession enjoys. I don’t think the medical profession is more self-interested than any other group, but I see no reason to think they are any less, either, and because of their high status they can get away with more. (Teachers are in an analogous position, further strengthened by the fact that they work for the public sector.) You can cloak all sorts of things as necessary for public health, and people will buy it uncritically. It allows bootlegger and Baptist-style special interest lobbying, except the bootlegger and the Baptist are the same person.

This unthinking trust also causes serious problems when the issue is not rent-seeking but nanny statism. Just as scientists love knowledge and artists love beauty, it is a natural and understandable prejudice of a doctor to consider health important above all else. That’s probably a good attitude to have when you’re cutting a tumor out of someone, but it distorts your perceptions when you look at society, law, and human existence as a whole through that lens. I think this is largely what causes the apparent indifference to freedom, personal preference, and economic considerations often seen in the policy proposals of medical organizations.

I'm going to take up snuff, just out of spite

Well, it’s come: the statewide Illinois smoking ban for bars and restaurants has gone into effect. Freedom and the right to private property are nothing compared to the power of the ever-stronger health fascists. I paid a visit to my usual bar on New Year’s Eve for one last cigar there. Henceforth, when I leave my home, I’ll be limited to doing one unhealthy thing at a time. I’ve already said what at length I think of the ban, its underlying ideology, and its proponents, so I won’t rehash that anymore in this post.

It makes me wonder what cops in Illinois charged with enforcing this are feeling. I’m sure most of them, or at least a lot of them, entered that line of work with dreams of heroism, of protecting innocent people from rapists, murderers, and the rest of society’s scum. It must be quite a downer to go from that dream to the reality of snooping around bars in the hope of catching someone lighting a cigarette.

Hidden ideology

This is long and a bit rambling. You’ve been warned.

A while back, I wrote an article for lewrockwell.com, in which I argued that government education creates social disharmony because it forces people to fight over which views will be taught in the government schools. I was surprised, actually, at how little negative mail I got. I did, however, get upbraided by one reader, who remarked that she had taught in public school for a considerable length of time, and that she and her colleagues had never pushed a particular viewpoint on the children.

I have to say, first, that this certainly clashes with my own experience, in which I got the standard good government center-left view of history. (The Progressives and the New Deal saved us from the evils of laissez-faire, and so on.) Dueling anecdotes won’t get us very far, of course, though I have to say that I don’t think my experience was at all atypical. I would be very surprised if there were large numbers of public schools giving interpretations of history based on public choice theory or the work of Gabriel Kolko.

Second (and this goes to the heart of my original article),I don’t think that value-free, unbiased teaching of history is possible, except with a very basic list of names and dates, with no commentary or interpretation. Even that is likely to express a particular viewpoint or bias, since choosing which events to include and which to exclude from the account requires a judgment on which events are important and ought to influence the student’s view of the world. (In my history classes in public school, for instance, we were taught repeatedly about the Holocaust, but never heard a word about the Ukrainian terror famine or the death toll of the Great Leap Forward. Some atrocities were considered important to know; others were not.)

I am not making some sort of postmodern claim that we can never know anything objectively true about history; rather, I am saying that any historical narrative, even a very accurate one, will inevitably support some views over others. That’s why the problem described in my original article is unsolvable within public schools.

Even offering multiple interpretations does not solve the problem, because even the choice of which competing views to air is not a neutral one. Since there is a finite amount of time in the school day, you must judge which viewpoints and theories are deserving of consideration, and which are not. You must anoint some interpretations as legitimate or reasonable, and implicitly denigrate others. Even if we had school administrators and teachers who had no agenda, beliefs, or prejudices, this problem would not go away. And in practice, of course, we are quite far from that situation.

So, I doubt very strongly that what the writer said was true, because she claims the impossible. However, I also don’t think she’s willfully lying; that is, I think it very likely that she truly believes that she taught an unbiased, value-free history to her students, not based on any particular doctrine. I suspect the same is also true of journalists, to name another group that often expresses obvious pro-big government bias while claiming objectivity.

The reason is simple: I think that many people who profess the center-left/corporate liberal viewpoint that dominates public education and mainstream journalism don’t know they’re expressing a particular ideology. They’ve spent so much time surrounded by that particular viewpoint, going back to childhood, that it no longer seems like a particular viewpoint based on claims that may be questionable- it’s simply The Way Things Are.

Consider how statists of this type often talk. It is very common among “vital center” types to claim that their own views are somehow free of any sort of ideological slant. (Barack Obama is especially fond of talking about “getting past/beyond” ideology.) The views of others are based on ideology or political doctrines; their own are somehow self-evident, arising directly from the facts without any mediation by normative beliefs or philosophical views about government. One example: when smoking bans are debated, opposition to smoking bans if often painted as ideological or based on doctrinaire political philosophy, whereas support of smoking bans is purely a matter of “science”, without any ideological element. Believing that controlling smoking on private property is not a legitimate function of government is “ideological,” but believing that it is a legitimate function somehow isn’t. And in general, the belief that it is acceptable for the state to control vast swathes of people’s lives is not ideological or the expression of a particular philosophy-it’s just being pragmatic!- but principled opposition to government control in any given area is.

(There’s also conservative strain of this kind of arguing, which I’ll get to in a different post, both to keep length under control and because it takes different forms.)

To some extent, of course, this is rhetoric, a way to seem more reasonable than your opponent. But I don’t think it’s all done cynically; I think a lot of liberals and centrists really believe that their policy views are somehow ideology-free.

Keeping rent-seekers fed

This is quite old now, but I want to go back to it; quite often, I read something and my thoughts on it don’t come together until much later. Some time ago at Hit and Run, there was a post commenting on this New York Times article (registration required.)

The gist of the article is that some health groups are unhappy about federal farm subsidies to grain growers, which they claim encourage bad eating habits by encouraging the production of things like high-fructose corn syrup. Their solution is to start subsidizing fruit and vegetable growers, too.

These groups’ desire to fight bad effects of statism with more statism is unfortunate but not really surprising- that’s the instinctive response of most people, and it’s to be expected that this would be especially true of health advocacy groups. There’s something that is interesting about this, though.

I'm embarrassed to say that the rent-seeking opportunities created by the nanny state had not really occurred to me until recently. I say I’m embarrassed because it should have been obvious- expansions of government power frequently create opportunities for politically connected economic interests, and that doesn’t stop being true just because the expansion is in the area of “personal” rather than “economic” liberty.

The possibilities are considerable, especially when you look beyond direct subsidies. For example, we often hear proposals for “fat taxes” and the like, to discourage the purchase of unhealthy food. I am quite confident that such taxes, if created, would quickly create a new battleground, as company lobbyists fought to have their opponents’ products taxed and their own excluded. Restrictions on advertising, also frequently proposed, would create a similar struggle over precisely which products can be advertised and which can’t be. Tariffs could be increased on foreign food products to “fight obesity.” Whether or not a given food counts as “junk” is far less objective than, say, whether or not a product contains tobacco, so there’s plenty of room for careful manipulation of restrictions by whichever food conglomerates get the upper hand.

I’m just an amateur, of course; I’m sure people accustomed to manipulating the machinery of state for a living could, and will, multiply my list of ideas many times over. Big business’s past successes at exploiting the coercive schemes of moral crusaders shows no shortage of skill and creativity in that department.

I must save you from my products!

It should come as no surprise to the seasoned libertarian that "public-spirited" efforts to protect or expand state power are often in the financial interest of some politically connected business interest. Still, I have to confess I was briefly taken aback by the jaw-dropping cynicism of this. Who's proudly protecting our children and communities from the evils of liquor deregulation? Deregulation that would just coincidentally cut into the profits of alcohol wholesalers by reducing the need for middlemen? Why, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America! Hat tip: Agoraphilia.

This may be my all-time favorite example of "politics makes strange bedfellows." The realization that paternalist, moralistic anti-liquor types are actually the unwitting tools of liquor distributors gave me a chuckle.

On fighting for "petty" freedoms

Russell Roberts at Café Hayek raises an interesting question: are defenders of freedom picking the right battles? Roberts says:

Their argument goes something like this: there are so many important issues to fight for, why fight over these nanny state issues? What's the big deal about mandatory seat belts or motorcycle helmets or the ban on trans fats. They basically do more good than harm, goes the argument, so why get worked up over something so trivial? Plus, they say, it turns off those who are skeptical about freedom. They think I'm crazy for getting excited over something so innocuous.

I disagree with these arguments. I think it is a big deal for many reasons. But before I make my case, I'd like to hear you make yours on either side of this issue. Is this kind of seemingly petty regulation worth fighting? Or should we just ignore it and save our breath and energy for more what are perhaps more important issues?

This is something well worth discussing.

First, I would dispute the notion that these sorts of nanny statist measures are in fact "petty." The right to eat or smoke what you want, or other rights to do as you will with your own body and health may not be as glamorous as free speech, but I would argue that they are far more important than people usually acknowledge, because they are pervasive in people's lives in a way that the sexier freedoms usually aren't for most people. The rights interfered with by nanny state laws, such as the right to consume what you want, are rights exercised (or infringed) virtually every single day of every person's life.

That aside, though, there is another point. Big oppressions don't arise from nowhere, especially in a country that still retains some tradition of a liberty; they pile up over time from "little" oppressions. Ten years ago, the sort of measures now being taken against unhealthy food were the stuff of parody; they were what conservatives and libertarians said, sometimes jokingly, would result from the attacks on tobacco. Now they are reality. They have been made possible by past precedent. Slippery slopes are very real in this area.

Past oppression serves as the justification for future oppression. In the golden age of eugenics, people like Oliver Wendell Holmes who wanted to justify things like forced sterilizations justified it by pointing to the existence of conscription- we've already established by accepting conscription that the state can demand the bodies of its citizens, so the legitimacy of forced sterilization for the good of the state naturally followed- it's just another sort of conscription, and often a less onerous form then the military kind. If the state can do A, why can't it do B, which is the same sort of thing as A?

We see the same sort of reasoning used by nanny statists all the time, though thankfully not (as of yet) on such extreme matters. We restrict tobacco advertising; why not advertising of unhealthy food to children? Dangerous drugs like heroin are restrictedl- why isn't tobacco? (Not making that one up.) If the state can do A, why can't it do B, which is the same sort of thing as A?

People hear this and think, "Well, A wasn't so bad." (Remember how people think that these issues are "petty" and "innocuous.") "So, why not B?" And the same thought process will apply for C, D, E, G, and F. The solution is to prevent A, so that the statists can't say, "… so why can't it do B?"

There is a related reason that is not logical or philosophical but psychological. People give up their liberty more readily in small steps than in not big jumps, because that's how beliefs in general usually shift. If the status quo in a particular area of life is little or no government interference, moving to heavy or total government control is a big jump- people will recoil from it, because they haven't been psychologically prepped for it. If the status quo is already a degree of government control, however, moving to even greater control is easier for people to swallow.

The more statism we have, the more psychologically palatable an even greater degree of statism will seem. The first concession to the nanny state seems inconsequential- and each additional concession seems the same way, because the baseline of normality grows more and more statist. Again, the solution is to nip the problem in the bud.

Public smoking ban in Illinois

The Illinois legislature has passed a bill, which governor Blagojevich is expected to sign, that will ban smoking in all bars and restaurants in Illinois. I was struck by a quote from the Chicago Tribune article about the bill, because it seems to capture so much of the statist approach to the subject.

The bill’s sponsor, Karen Yarbrough, is quoted as saying, “Smokers have a right to smoke, but… they should not have a right to force others to breathe their smoke.” This is an argument often made; allowing smoking in privately owned bars constitutes “forcing” nonsmoking patrons to suffer smoke exposure. When someone wants to claim the right to control smoking on someone else’s private property, this argument is almost always deployed.

I hear this so much, you’d think there were press gangs roaming the streets of Illinois, kidnapping nonsmokers and dragging them in chains to smoky bars. Apparently, in the worldview (or at least the propaganda) of the smoking ban proponents, entering a bar or restaurant where smoking takes place is not a voluntary act- it is forced on you, or just sort of happens at random.

This fits in well with a common liberal worldview, I suppose, where normal people are helpless and devoid of all volition, and thus need their liberal betters save them. On this view, people can’t be trusted to make their own choices, and expecting people who dislike smoke to seek out alternative forms of entertainment on their own is too much to ask. Instead, the state has to save them by stopping the people who are “forcing” them to be around smoke.

On a less theoretical and more purely self-interested level, of course, are the people who like going out for food or drinks, but dislike the odor of smoke, and so want to use the government to force bars and restaurants to be more to their liking. This is quite common; I’ve heard people admit to it without any sense of shame or embarrassment, and I’m sure there are many more who think it but want to sound more high-minded. They're about as public-spirited as I would be if I lobbied the legislature to force my local bar to play only music that I like.

The ban takes effect on January 1st. It is, I'm sure, only a matter of time before some public health crusader proposes extending this to private homes. Why not? It follows logically from Yarbrough's argument. Can't have me "forcing" my cigar smoke on my guests, after all.

The unlimited possibilities of nannyism

There’s a great post by Julian Sanchez at his site, taking Ben Adler to task for saying this:

This clearly expresses a fundamental tenet of conservative/libertarian thinking: that engaging in risky behavior with serious social costs is an entitlement. People who are injured by metal bats, or fall ill from smoking or fatty food, cost the rest of us money. We pay their emergency room bill, their Medicare bills or their Social Security disablity insurance.

Which leads Sanchez to remark:

You start with a paradigm case of a self regarding act—choosing to engage in risk behaviors with your own body—which traditional liberal principles would place outside the sphere of state regulation as a core component of personal autonomy. But throw some public funds into the mix and—Abracadabra!—what had been the exercise of an individual right is transformed into the "imposition" of a cost on society. No behavior is so private that you can't regulate or ban it, so long as you're willing to subsidize it first!

This is, of course, exactly how it works. There are limits to how far the average “liberal” wants to take it (though that seems to change every year as they grow ever-bolder), but the idea that the state can regulate whatever it chooses to subsidize is implicitly totalitarian.

Now, there are probably plenty of liberals who consider this potential for unlimited statism to be a feature, not a bug. But liberals never seem to imagine the possibility of someone other than them using the wonderful machine they’ve built. Consider just one possibility.

Is there any principled argument a liberal nanny statist could make against conservatives who want to regulate consensual sex between adults, if such regulation could be dressed up (as it sometimes is) in public health language? The liberal might claim that controlling sex is fundamentally different than controlling smoking or eating, but I don’t see why; both involve state control over what an adult peacefully does with his or her own body. If there is a difference at all, it is one of degree rather than kind. (If anything, I would say that state control of food is more intrusive, since it means losing the right of choice over something virtually everyone does everyday.) The principle that justifies one justifies the other.

The taxpayers often end up paying a financial cost because of sex- medical expenses for sexually transmitted diseases, and of course the cost of caring for the children of people who can’t support their own families. Clearly, a great deal of sex is “risky behavior with serious social costs.” If we don’t have an “entitlement” to do such things, and if one accepts the view that the state should force us to refrain from peaceful but potentially risky activities that might impose a cost on the government, I see no principled reason why the state shouldn’t step in. (This line of argument could be especially lucrative for antigay types who want to bring back sodomy laws.)

What can the liberal nanny statist say? He can make pragmatic arguments against regulating- he can say that the enforcement costs of policing bedrooms will be too high, or maybe driving illicit sex underground would have other bad social consequences- but if he’s consistent he can’t simply say, “It’s just not the government’s business.” If he does say that (as liberals, not the most consistent of people, often do), the conservative can point to the long line of arguments and precedents provided by liberals. Because if you take the underlying premises of the nanny state seriously, everything is the government’s business.