Libertarianism versus State-Nannyism: Who’s Right?

Let’s assume that we’re in a democratic society. The essence of a representative democracy is that we elect politicians, who then decide over the rules of society by majority. And consequentially, that we follow and respect the rules that are thus constructed.

Within this context, democratic society should be able to achieve some kind of balance between the two extremes: total state control and total individual freedom. Different political views will be debated and whoever gets the majority will decide the rules.

For representative democracy to be fully representative, politicians should make clear to voters their principles, aims and preferred methods of achieving those aims. And then they should vote accordingly. Of course, representative democracy doesn’t always work this way. The items of discussion are not always known up front, and coalition-building may lead to compromises. Furthermore, a party can be divided or unclear on certain issues, which leaves the voter in hope that their politicians will decide according to his preferences.

Thus, unfortunately, our democratic society is not flawless. Representative democracy can be vulnerable to outside pressures which can tilt the balance of power to one side or the other (state-nannyism or libertarianism). In the past, access of lobbyists for both sides of the spectrum was very similar. With the increased media-influence, however, the political process is primarily driven by control over the masses. Politicians are increasingly pressured by media to conform to “public opinion”, which seems like some form of “new democracy” but which is in fact opinion created by media. Through the use of opinion polls, junk science, pressure groups and media-picked experts, a powerful lobby is created to sway politicians towards more state-nannyism. This state-control will lead to a noticeable shift in consumption patterns, which will in turn benefit some and damage others. The ones benefited by this shift readily provide the funds for the lobbying and pseudo-research activities. These funders might include corporations, philanthropists and the state itself. Noticeable, however, is the relative lack of private donations that these pressure groups seem to get. And those that do get lots of private donations, usually get those for other activities, such as research into cures for cancer.

Libertarianism doesn’t have the same “pressure group appeal” as state-interventionism, because libertarianism leads to more freedom and thus to a less predictable society. This makes it less clear who will benefit from this type of change in society, other than corporations whose products have already been regulated by state-nannyism. Money from these corporations will very likely be depicted by the mass media as tainted. Their contributions will therefore most likely have a negative effect on the impact of a libertarian message. Thus the financial support for the libertarian cause is likely to be small, which makes it hard to get any further than grassroots activity.

The playing field between state-nannyism and libertarianism is therefore no longer equal. The influence of the mass media and the lobby groups can be characterized as an attack on the independence of elected politicians. When they constantly risk bad publicity, politicians can no longer vote with a free conscience if they are to avoid these media backlashes. The mass media expect more state intervention and the politicians simply obey their new masters.

The question of "who is right" is not really a normative question. It is a matter of power balance. In a decent society, both forces are balanced. In postmodern society, dominated by new media which have independent lives now, it appears as though the balance could tip over in favor of the prohibitionists. This could lead to extreme regulation of individual lifestyles – it is fear of this development which is meant when one speaks of the Nanny State. It is yet too early to call the winner of this battle, but the trend is unmistakable. The new norms of consumer society: health, sustainability, animal welfare, recycling and non-pollution are progressively implemented in laws prohibiting certain individual activities. The tactics of tobacco control, a field where prohibitions have progressed into the homes of citizens, are being copied by lobbyists and scientists-turned-propagandists in other fields, from food and drink to travel and energy consumption. The aims are as diverse as reducing the incidence of non-communicable diseases, maintaining biodiversity and reducing climate change. And these aims are claimed to justify the means of banning just about every human activity except working (albeit not sitting down!) and drinking water (non-bottled, of course).

In a normal representative democracy, one would expect that at some point a new balance would be reached according to the political preferences of the people. In today’s media-driven democracy, however, the media itself and their preferred lobby groups cannot be voted away, and they will continue to apply unrelenting pressure on politicians of whichever political background. Only the most independent of politicians can withstand this sort of pressure, but how can these politicians get elected, let alone re-elected? Politicians are mostly judged on the basis of good mass media coverage which will give them a sizeable number of followers. Their only alternative is an extensive grassroots network of opinion leaders which is mostly ignored by the mass media.

It is my humble opinion that representative democracy will be unable to stop the progress of the state-nannyists. We need something more for that: it is the mass media that need to make a U-turn on these issues to make a real difference. What we need for that is exposure, a scandal. The more junk science lobbyists apply, the more vulnerable they will be to a popular media backlash. So our job should be: keep exposing junk science. The second opportunity for stopping this trend is in my opinion philosophical. The weakness of the prohibitionists philosophical basis is that it is extremely utilitarian: the ends justify the means, because more people benefit from the ends than are hindered by the means. That is mostly because the consumers (the sinners) are counted on the benefit-side, because they are being liberated from the control of the big corporations, which is for their own good. The trouble with utilitarianism in this extreme form is that it doesn’t value an individual human being as an end in itself. Even when his or her behavior is slightly off the norm. When human behavior is framed in terms of health care costs, it is clear to me that whoever speaks like that regards human beings purely as subjects of the state and not as sovereign individuals. This type of reasoning has nothing to do with liberty and everything with the authoritarian state.

I carry the view that state-sponsored health care is a form of solidarity which requires certain obligations from the people, both in paying taxes and taking care of their own health. But I would never trample upon their right to listen to their own body and mind in order to decide what health risks are acceptable for them or not. They can consult their doctors for advice, but they themselves decide over their lifestyles and no one else. Not many pleasures in life come without health risks. No health risk = no pleasure. But is health not a pleasure on its own? No: health is a condition which cannot in itself be experienced, since it is merely an absence of illness. In fact, it is the absence of illness which allows us to not worry about our health when experiencing pleasure. And there is no definite moral norm as to how much indulgence in risky behavior is acceptable in a lifetime, so we have to leave it to the individual to make these choices. It is this basic principle that would guide my policy, since the opposite approach is zero-tolerance, which can only lead to a totalitarian state (even if its government was democratically elected).

Things can turn out differently for “collective goods” such as the environment and animal welfare. I am convinced, however, that consumer responsibility for these collective goods is limited, since the impact of products and services on these commons is mostly determined by the production process. Responsibility for that should lay with producers. Consumers, on the other end of the value chain, can only pressure the stores and brands by choosing a certain product over the other or by refraining from the use of certain products. Regulating production would seem a much more effective approach in this area. The trouble is that we live in a global market economy, in which producers can choose to produce in whichever state has the most relaxed regulations. And production means jobs and export, which means income for the state. At state level, there is a competitive advantage in relaxing regulations for producers. So this type of regulation can only be effectively applied through a global governing body. The lack of such a body therefore makes it very difficult to regulate production adequately. Attention then shifts to other parts of the value chain such as distribution and consumption. This is one of the main reasons for consumer action movements to spring up all over the planet. They pressure nation states into implementing import regulations. They also call for advertising bans, sales regulation and bans on possession or consumption of certain goods, on the basis of the impact of the production processes of these goods.

The first problem with this type of policy is that the environmental damage has already been done in the early stages of agriculture, hunting, mining and production. Goods, once produced, will find their way to the consumers, if not legally, then illegally. Import and sales bans will most likely lead to increases in smuggling.

The second problem with this type of policy is that it could be difficult to ascertain the production process of a product without access to proper documentation. This would require paper trails coming with the products, which show the product’s route through the value chain (production, transport, wholesale) to the consumer. These paper trails can then be used for certification purposes, to make quality levels of products more communicable.
The current paper trails and certificates are mostly private initiatives, which are implemented due to increased pressure from consumer groups and mass media. A question which surrounds these groups is their support among the general public. They usually get good publicity, so they could have a genuine share of sympathizers. But whether they function on private donations, corporate sponsorship or government subsidies is sometimes unclear. Some certification schemes have a networking type of governing structure, like FSC, which is mostly financed through contributions from forest management organizations.

This also raises questions about the value of certain certificates. Since these certificates influence consumer choices, they represent value to the sales-people marketing their brands. They are therefore also used to achieve better product placement, for which companies are willing to pay. But are certifying authorities independent enough to maintain a certain set of criteria and judge each applicant equally and fairly? Some have been questioned: e.g. the FSC-label has been accused of conflicting interests. In general, these certification schemes are very liable to becoming product placement schemes, especially if large customers demand from their suppliers that their products are certified. When demand exceeds supply, this could lead to large price differences between certified and non-certified products. This leads to pressure to increase the volume of certified products, and relaxing the certification standards is an effective way of achieving that.

Without access to reliable certification, the alternative of complete bans on certain product categories regardless of their actual production processes becomes quite attractive. This would not be fair to the actual producers. For example, one could ban all clothing imports from Myanmar because of child labor, but Myanmar having an image of child labor doesn’t mean that every article of clothing from Myanmar is produced by children. This sort of subtlety is not in the prohibitionist’s book, however.

My conclusion about the certification schemes is that these schemes are in themselves not part of a prohibitionist agenda. Especially in network-type schemes, the standards seem predominantly pragmatic, meaning that certification criteria may change with fluctuating demand and supply and developments in public opinion. Criticism of these schemes seems to focus on the criteria not being strict enough, and the prohibitionist mindset is apparent more with these critics than with the certifying authorities. In other cases, the certification is regulated by governments (e.g. the EU) and the criteria are laid down by law, for example for classifying products as “biological”. This type of regulation is not prohibition. Prohibitionist lobby groups could use this type of regulation to take non-certified products off the market.

Another variant that could be distinguished is that in which individual health crosses over to environmentalism, as it has done in the case of “environmental tobacco smoke”. By portraying the smoke produced by the consumption of cigarettes as a form of pollution which harms the health of anyone near the smoker, the issue of smoking has been transformed from a health issue to an environmental one. Environmental issues are a common responsibility and therefore much more prone to regulation. And rightly so: government’s task is, among others, to watch over the common interests of the people, and the environment is one of them. I would not argue with the classification of tobacco smoke as a form of pollution either. The level of health threat from this pollution, however, is another matter. It dilutes very quickly, and the chemicals involved need to be present in humongous quantities to pose a significant health effect, even in the long term. This is where junk science comes in. The tobacco control movement has taken the art of molding statistics into desirable outcomes to a whole new level. The effect of this is that they can win any debate. They do this by making sure that the media believe their version of the science and disbelieve any opposing research. This is achieved by demonization of the tobacco industry. Any research showing that environmental tobacco smoke is harmless, must have been carried out with tobacco industry money, and therefore must necessarily be false. If the tobacco control organizations are to be believed.

This tactic has since been copied in other areas. Research is being done into the relationship of any kind of food consumption and obesity, and invariably the outcomes that show a positive correlation get published. Meta-analysis of published research is carried out to amplify the earlier findings. And any dissenting reports are dismissed as “propaganda from the food and drink industry”. Well, who’s creating propaganda here? If even fruit juice is not safe from the scorn of the public health lobby, nothing is. And with statistical research, any product can be blamed for something.

Conclusion: the question is not who is right, but who is in power? And the answer is: the state-nannyists are approaching absolute power over the political lawmaking process. This is not wrong because state-nannyism is wrong per se, but because absolute power is wrong. The state is by definition nannyist to a certain extent. There would be no rule of law possible without a few restrictions to human behavior. E.g. we respect each others property and do not steal it from one another. But a society in which leading mass media constantly call for bans every time there is an incident or a piece of junk science is published, the power balance will be tipped entirely in favor of the state-nannyists. The majority of people will come to think this is the normal way for the state to act. And libertarians, who do not conform to their norms, will simply be branded extremists. This is not the type of society we should want to have.

Even though I regard myself as an environmentalist with leftist tendencies, I regard this tendency towards state regulation as a great threat to personal liberty. I therefore side with the libertarians on this issue, even when it comes to matters of the environment or animal welfare. It is a matter of principle.

What we need, however, is a strategy to maintain at least a little bit of power, to make sure the principle of individual freedom of consumption is treated equivalently to the norms of health, environmentalism and animal welfare. The problem is that, in a debate, you cannot counter emotional reasoning (such as that of the prohibitionists’ “think of the children” mantra) by rational arguments. There are two possible approaches to this: take the prohibitionists out of their comfort zone and force them to debate rationally, or counter the prohibitionists with emotional reasoning of our own.

The first strategy might be carried out by engaging in meta-communication and explicitly addressing the fact that the prohibitionists are playing on people’s emotions. This should then lead to an agreement to argue only on a rational basis, in which case the libertarians could get the upper hand. Only in a rational debate can junk science be attacked seriously. You need a good moderator for this type of debate, though, which makes this approach more applicable in the political arena than elsewhere.

In the mass media, emotions tend to get the upper hand, so going the emotional route (the second option) might be more advisable. Maybe the prohibitionist play on emotions should simply be countered by eloquent expressions of fear. Only when they start to back down can the debate be held on rational grounds. Otherwise, keep elaborating on the fear their policies are invoking, and try to make them express explicitly where they will draw the line, in such a way that they can later be confronted with the lines they have drawn in the past. If this line is shifted, the slippery slope will be visible for anyone to see.

And finally, there is the recourse of civil disobedience. If enough citizens simply ignore the laws, they become unenforceable, and the state loses legitimacy. Basically this is what happened during Prohibition in the United States, leading to an eventual overturning of the law. I would seriously prefer it not to get this far. In the meanwhile, maybe we should start by (re)reading Henry David Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience, just to prepare ourselves.

Michiel van de Sande, November 2, 2012.