In a recent article in the Sunday Times property section, Phil Spencer called for the barricades to be stormed. He took great offence (no pun intended) to the fact that communities were erecting security fences and creating their own private, secluded worlds seemingly cut off from the real world that you, he and I inhabit. What he fails to understand is one of the deep psychological underpinnings of human nature: the need to surround yourself with those of a similar mentality, especially with regard to such things as property, trust and respect. Some people feel the need to wall themselves off from the threats that the wider community now carries, and in a free sociey, why shouldn’t they?
Mr Spencer claims that these gated communities separate rich from poor, cut off once publicly accessible roads and undermine law and order. But the reason for cutting off these roads to public access is that many people are failing to respect the private property and the lives of others, while the state is failing in its primary duty to provide security and administer justice. Unable to rely on traditional institutions, the residents of gated communities choose to protect their personal domain in other ways.
Throughout our lives we consciously erect barriers to others based on previous experiences and similarly exhibited character traits. We do so to protect ourselves from wider harm, trusting those with an equivalent outlook. Attempting to create a free, respectful and trustworthy society of individuals through political interference steeped in the ideas of political correctness and multiculturalism has failed. The gated communities are the burgeoning pockets of resistance, the resting place of decent civil society free from the cloying fingers of statism. Society would be stronger now if political interference over the past 50 years had not been so pervasive.
It's not just the population of the UK that faces the prospect of their private details being (mis)handled by the state machinery. Our American cousins are being harassed into accepting REAL ID, a standardization of driving licenses across the United States and the creation of an interlinked database with access enabled for all those who work for the various levels of all government within the US. In other words: a national identity card.
The recent pronouncements from the Department of Homeland Security make it very clear that unless certain actions are undertaken then access to services will be withdrawn. States have to apply for a waiver so that they can seek more time to comply with this unnecessary piece of tacked-on legislation from 2005. If States don't, then their residents will find themselves holding valid drivers licenses but unable to access federal services or, more importantly to the majority of Americans, to use their licenses' as identity when flying. The DHS will ensure that their employees will persecute any travellers who choose not to sign up to REAL ID.
If you give the keys of a brewery to an alcoholic there will be trouble, and with a government drunk on power there can only be trouble in store for Americans. As we Brits have clearly seen over the past 12 months the state is utterly useless when it comes to handling anything involving our private details is . Time after time they've lost documents, disks and laptops, compromising the personal data of their citizens. Yet if we hope to have any day-to-day functionality then we have to comply with crass legislation involving disclosure of more and more of our details.
Here's hoping that enough States stand up to this outrageous piece of legislation and protect their citizens from the overbearing federal government. The ACLU’s page can be found here: www.realnightmare.org.
Recent official documents suggest that the UK government's unpopular Identity Card scheme will not come into effect until 2012, two years later than planned. That, of course, is comfortably beyond the date when the next election has to be called. And the way the economy is going, Gordon Brown is going to need all the time he's allowed before he goes to the voters.
It reminds me of a line from George Eliot:
"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."
14. "The state is right to protect people from themselves."
People? That means you. Would you like to be protected from yourself? In the first case this means that the state has to take the decisions about what we do or do not need to be protected from. One step down this road and you are lost. The state might decide you need to be protected from smoking. If its scientists tell it that refined white sugar and salt are bad for people's health, it might protect people from those too. Maybe saturated fats, such as butter, as well. Maybe it should protect people from the physical inactivity which might harm them?
After deciding what it considers injurious to us, the state then takes the decision to protect us. It does this by preventing us from doing what we would otherwise have done. It can only do this by force, sanction, or the threat of the same. So the state takes away our freedom to do what we decide to do, and then uses force to make us do what it wants us to.
John Stuart Mill thought that only if someone causes or seriously risks physical harm to others should the state stop them. Should it prevent them using a dangerous bridge? No, he said. It can provide them with information, put up a sign and even urge them not to cross. But it is up to people themselves to assess the risks and take the decision. Some claim that the state knows better than we do. Unlikely, since there is no shortage of media sources telling us about what dangers we face.
And what about non-physical harm? People might be deeply distressed by your non-attendance at prayers, but that does not give them the right to constrain you into worship. The only safe rule is listen to advice, but make your own decisions and take the consequences.
The saying "buyer beware" never rings more true than when a purchase is being made on the black market. Especially when the market in question is that of illegal narcotics.
Of course, both parties seek to benefit from any free exchange, but drug transactions carry significant risks. The dealer could be arrested, or the purchaser could have an adverse reaction. Now a further risk has been added to the mix: the threat of being sued.
A Canadian woman who spent 11 days in a coma recently succeeded in suing her drug dealer. Apparently the dealer knew that the drug was "highly addictive and dangerous" but sold it to her anyway, in order to make money. (Really? I'm shocked...) This made him negligent, and liable for damages.
In fact, the only reason why the case was successful was that the dealer refused to name the person in the distribution chain above him, thus moving the judge to reject his defence. The decision probably won't be too hard to appeal.
In any case, the person who has really been "negligent" here is surely the consumer, indulging in self-abuse via the consumption of drugs without regard to the harm that they can inflict. She should not have had recourse to sue.
That she did is symptomatic of the ever-growing need to seek restitution from others for our own mistakes. We seem to be moving to a culture of blame rather than of individual responsibility.
People need to be made aware that sometimes, if not almost all the time, the buck stops with them.
On Wednesday, three youths were convicted of murder after kicking and beating a man to death outside his own home. His sin? Telling them off for vandalism.
Peter Fahy, Cheshire's Chief Constable, blamed Britain's drink culture and called for a 'crackdown' on cheap alcohol. Apparently, supermarkets and off-licences are to blame for selling booze too cheaply. He even claimed that some of the youths involved in the attack were "reasonably decent people who drink too much and do something stupid and attack someone".
Rubbish. These youths did not kick a man "like a football" as his daughter watched because they were drunk. They did it because they are ignorant, savage, brutal people without a shred of respect for anyone else.
Blaming supermarket prices is absurd. The vast majority of people enjoy inexpensive alcohol responsibly. Most of us drink more than we should from time to time, but it doesn't end in violence. In any case, alcohol is already more expensive and more strictly controlled in Britain than in many other European countries.
'Drink culture' is a handy excuse for the social ills that plague many communities in Britain, but it is not the real reason. It is the welfare state that has promoted family breakdown and eroded personal responsibility. It is politically-correct, target-driven policing that has abandoned our streets to violence and thuggery. And it is the rotten state school system that has left so many young people without any aspiration beyond the bottom of a beer bottle.
Ultimately though, it is the abandonment of parental responsibility that is most appalling and pernicious. And without real change, that threatens to become a vicious intergenerational circle – which will not easily be broken in the years to come.
Richard Tomkins article in last weekend's Financial Timesmakes explicit that the various assaults on the act of smoking have not stopped people from lighting up. The article goes on to map out the various problems facing policy makers in trying to obstruct people from smoking.
The problem with the article is that it falls into the trap as many others on this issue. It follows the illogic of the public health agenda in assuming that the government is best placed to determine whether an individual should decide to smoke. This thinking echoes the Communist paradigm of false consciousness, in its belief that the people are blind to the "truth" and must therefore have their lives decided for them. Whereas, in the real world people smoke for a plethora of personal reasons and should be allowed to continue without a government led financial and moral tirade. Personally, I smoke to relax each month upon learning how much tax the government is taking; then once more to cope with the level I‘m taxed on my cigarettes.
In the same article, attention is also drawn to the potential of Snus, a moist powder tobacco product that is consumed by placing it under the upper lip for extended periods of time. It has been shown conclusively to be a healthier intake of nicotine than cigarettes. So, will the market offer consumers the choice of a healthier nicotine intake, if they so wish? Alas, no. The reason being that it is banned by European Law in an attempt to stop people smoking. Once again, the individual is being refused his or her right to choose how to live, healthy or unhealthy.
2. "When the state gives us rights, we have responsibilities to it in return."
The state doesn't give us any rights; we give the state some powers. The rights we enjoy are not political ones given to us by some gracious authority; they are ones we owe to each other as human beings. Each right has its corresponding duty. One person's right to life corresponds to the obligation upon others not to take that life. One's right to property translates into another's duty not to steal.
We choose governments for our convenience, although some less fortunate people have them imposed by violence. They derive from our rights rather than constituting the source of them. In a free society, for our convenience we might choose to delegate our right to justice to an impartial authority of our peers. We might choose to band together for our joint defence against hostile intrusion. This is how the powers which government wields come about.
We owe responsibilities to each other. Most importantly we owe to others the obligation to respect their rights. But we do not owe responsibilities to the state; it owes to us the responsibility to carry out fairly and properly the tasks we have assigned to it. Government is not our master, to keep us in line and occasionally give us some rights for ourselves. It is our servant, employed by us to perform as instructed.
The English common law tradition recognizes that people can do whatever the law does not specifically forbid, but in the continental Napoleonic Code tradition, people can only do what the law specifically allows. This leads people falsely to suppose that the state is giving them these rights, when it would be more accurate to say that the state is recognizing those rights. Our responsibility to behave fairly and decently is something we owe to other people, not to government.
[This is the first in a new series of blogs to be published over the coming months. Each piece will look at a common error people make about free markets and the free societiy, and explain why they are mistaken. We hope readers of this blog will be able to make use of these arguments themselves, and in doing so convince others of the overwhleming case for liberty - Ed.]
1. "Only the guilty have anything to fear from surveillance or police searches."
The cry of oppressive and intrusive authority has always been that "only the guilty have anything to fear." It isn't true. Even the innocent have to fear an over-mighty and intrusive state. It has always been the case in free societies that each individual has a private domain which he or she is allowed to keep private. It's not that it holds guilty secrets, but that it holds private things that are no-one else's business.
Why should the state be allowed to open our mail, to snoop on our electronic communications, to tap our phones and to spy on us with its cameras? We are right to wonder why an innocent state would want such information about us. The mere possession of such information poses, in itself, the risk of abuse. Those with access to it are put in positions of power over others; the information could be used to blackmail or intimidate. It need not be about illegal activity, merely that which would cause embarrassment if it were known.
In free societies we put limits on the law. We deny it the right to snoop on the off-chance of finding guilt, but require it to show good cause for its investigation. We demand that it states what crime is suspected, rather than allowing it general warrants to see what it might find. We are not servants and underlings to be ordered about and kept in place by a mighty state: rather are we free citizens who sustain that state to serve us. It has no right to powers beyond those we accord it, and we do not choose to give it the right to know more about us than it needs to know in order to serve and protect us.
Alain Roberts climbed Portland House the other day - a tall building (mainly full of quangos) near London's Victoria Station. He did it all with his hands and feet - he used no ropes, pitons or other kit. At the top he was promptly arrested.
The charge? Wasting police time.
Now I don't know what makes the police think their time is so valuable that the antics of this harmless eccentric amount to a waste of it. Presumably they reckon that while they were taking tea on the roof and waiting for 'Spiderman' Roberts to arrive, they could have been out booking motorists for doing 36mph, or harrassing middle class citizens for trying to stop thugs breaking into their homes.
The police didn't have to be there. Their action reminds me of the supposed lawyer's bill: To crossing the road to update you on your case, £100. To crossing back after realizing it wasn't you £100.
We seem to live in a society where we invent crimes for no good reason. Why punish people for smoking weed (or tobacco for that matter) when the only person caused any harm is themselves? I'd really prefer it if the police sat at home rather than having to think up new reasons to arrest folk.
In a recent article in the Sunday Times property section, Phil Spencer 
It's not just the population of the UK that faces the prospect of their private details being (mis)handled by the state machinery. Our American cousins are being 
People? That means you. Would you like to be protected from yourself? In the first case this means that the state has to take the decisions about what we do or do not need to be protected from. One step down this road and you are lost. The state might decide you need to be protected from smoking. If its scientists tell it that refined white sugar and salt are bad for people's health, it might protect people from those too. Maybe saturated fats, such as butter, as well. Maybe it should protect people from the physical inactivity which might harm them?
The saying "buyer beware" never rings more true than when a purchase is being made on the black market. Especially when the market in question is that of illegal narcotics.
On Wednesday, three youths were convicted of murder after kicking and beating a man to death outside his own home. His sin? Telling them off for vandalism.
Richard Tomkins article in last weekend's Financial Times 
Alain Roberts climbed Portland House the other day - a tall building (mainly full of quangos) near London's Victoria Station. He did it all with his hands and feet - he used no ropes, pitons or other kit. At the top he was promptly arrested.