Think of the Children?

How should a libertarian respond to demands that for a solution to the brutal abuse of children by their parents?

This question has exercised several bloggers in UK recently. I commented several times here and there in my usual incoherent fashion (as DavidNcl). Here I’d like to draw those comments together and try and say something a little more coherent – but more long winded.

I’m not going to get into the vile particulars of any specifc case. You can use google if you feel you need to know the details. I’m not doing this to spare your feelings but rather because the horror and revuslion that humans feel when confronted with this stuff is used, cynically, as a tool by agencies such as the NSPCC to advance a collectivist, authoriatian political agenda and I do not want to do the same.

I’m not really singling out the NSPCC – there are in fact a wide range of other agencies operating in this problems space and others. But take a few moments to read about the nature and scale of the NSPCC’s campaining operations:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/aug/01/childrensservices.comment

http://www.deabirkett.com/pages/journalism_film/journalism/it_needs_to_be_stopped.htm

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA361.htm

All of these are links to leftist writers in leftist media. There’s more too. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSPCC):

The NSPCC’s campaigning role has often been controversial. The Guardian reported New Philanthropy Capital recently concluded that its campaigning is “flawed and naïve” and that there is “zero evidence” that £250m the NSPCC has spent on its recent “Full Stop” campaign actually benefited any children.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/aug/01/childrensservices.comment.

Look at that number: £250m – 1/4 billion of your earth pounds!

So … that’s some kind of social context; a context in which a large scale multi-decade campain has been waged. I originally wrote “advertising campaing” but since ‘Full stop’ involves this sort of thing:

“The NSPCC also received complaints, amongst other things, for “cold” mailing young mothers with a “babies’ names” booklet containing instead a detailed list of the deaths of babies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/oct/03/advertising.childrensservices”

This is not “advertsing”.

After decades of emotionally charged pro-state agit-prop it becomes possible for intelligent commenters to say things like:

“However, I look at what happened to Baby P and am very tempted to throw all ’small government’ arguments out the window.  ‘Limited government’ makes sense and I think the state should be rolled back wherever possible, but the government should never walk away from helping those in desperate need and just hope that the market jumps in to save them.” http://www.lettersfromatory.com/2008/12/02/libertarians-have-some-serious-questions-to-answer/

See? Creating this mind set is the actual point of the NSPCC (and War on Want et al). It’s to make people think, or rather feel, that the state can and should solve these terrible problems. It they state could solve these problems, perhaps it should. However the evidnce that the welfare state can solve these problems is beyond poor.

We are currently engaging in quite serious, expensive and intrusive centralised, planned, state efforts to suppress these kinds of awful human acts and not doing well. I think it’s quite obvious that we are failing. Failing miserably in fact.  Do you think that by turning up the dial of state planning and action a few notches we’ll will do much better?  I don’t but the NSPCC spends millions trying to get people to belive that we should turn the dial up another notch and keep on keeping on.

From an economic point of view it’s painfully clear that state provision of “free” services has an effect rather like the so called “dumping” of subsidised foreign goods works, driving out other, better solutions.

Some of the better solutions driven out are the natural, organic responses and mechanisms of families, friends, neighbours, communities and so on. It’s possible to contemplate a wide range of alternative responses (a Private Defence Agency might rescue the child as good advertising practice, or vigilantes may do the job or the daughters would have easier access to firearms or the NSPCC may have an armed unit or whatever).

The essential point is really that there might be very many possible modes of response and that the unsuccessful ones would be selected against over time in a free market. It’s not about specifying the actual machinery that saves the child, but the machinery that gives rise to the child saving machinery.

Often when I suggest markets and organic, emergent solutions as an approach a response like this is offererd (real quote, source not given to spare his blushes (I wish)):

“Sorry but I don’t buy the free market argument when it comes to social services.

By definition, social services would no longer exist if the government withdrew its support for vulnerable people. Yes, free markets encourage innovation but markets also have winners and losers – would you really be happy with ‘losers’ when it comes to child abuse? More importantly, changing from what we have to a completely free market would cause a massive disruption and could let thousands of children fall off the social services map.”

Hmm… but I do want losers.  I want the bad, stupid, inefficient solutions (like this, for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/nov/19/child-protection-computers-ics) to child abuse to “loose” and be abandoned. Currently such solutions (such as the application of bureaucracy) receive state subsidy and drive out better alternatives such as strong, local communities, charity and direct individual action.

Just as the welfare state took time, effort, intelligence and compassion to put in place so it would to remove it. At the end of a decade or two there would be no state social services departments to even have a map. I would expect there to be a much wealthier, much freer and more responsible set of individuals and families, interwoven in stronger, richer more empowered communities and a much more diverse range of service providing agencies (schools ‘n hospitals) than we have now.  The alternative isn’t good.