It is very curious that we call the government’s interventions into society with the end of providing “for people’s good” paternalism, wherein the government takes it upon itself to fulfill the “parental role” by either banning or restricting the availability of some large sugary drinks or trans fats or marijuana or alcohol or tobacco or gasoline or meat or video games or fast food or medicine or cheap labor or trade with Cuba or trade with Iran or liberty or life or religion or speculation in the potato market or sound currency or failed banks or failed automative businesses or education or cheap housing or expensive housing or cheap corn or expensive corn or letting rental units be placed next to each other or plumbing or cars or freedom of assembly or protests or bullying or homophobia or racism or young people or old people or hair stylists or ice cream or milk or peanuts or cosmetology or plastic surgery or purses or leather or pockets or high interest rates or bankruptcy or theft or security, and so on ad infinitum. Why is it so curious? I believe this is very easily seen, although of course I know this will prompt no one to action, because that’s the curious aspect about paternalism.
Parents have the responsibility of raising their children so that they can join society as mature, independent adults. All of the parents’ incentives are set up this way; of course a parent will love their children (or they really ought to, and let’s assume these are good parents), but because a parent loves their child they want them to go out into the world and succeed, develop rich and meaningful relationships with others and raise their own children. The parent doesn’t gain, either for themselves or for their children, by keeping their child in the house past the age of maturity. The point of parenting is to teach children to take care of themselves and accept responsibility, to be independent.
That is very much the opposite of government paternalism. Now some deluded idealist somewhere, I’m sure, believes that the government should undertake a role much like parenting, to make people independent, but that’s why I call them deluded. It is laughable and ignorant. The government is not out to make its people independent. In fact, the government subsists in preventing its people from being independent, for independence is when one is free from dependence on something or someone. Government wants people to believe they need the government, and must be dependent on it somehow, either for the role government fulfills in “coordinating and directing social activity” (whatever that means, but I heard it from the mouth of some Scholastic philosophers, so take it for what it’s worth) or protecting us from enemies abroad (nevermind that most enemies abroad were created by the govenrment’s intervention in those societies) or protecting us from enemies within or Medicare or Social Security or subsidized student loans or whatever. The point is that the government needs people to be dependent on it, otherwise it wouldn’t exist; as soon as people were independent, they would have no need for government, and it would be immediately recognized for the transgressor that it is. But so long as people are in a state of dependence on the government, then they are loathe to imagine that they advocate tacitly tyrannical policies (steal from the young to give to the old who have accumulated wealth; we call that Social Security) or that they themselves have sold out their liberty for a few trinkets of security. “Give me liberty or give me death!” Yes? Oh, nevermind, it appears that you’re quite sold on servitude so long as the government will give you healthcare out of someone else’s pocket (but this only to the extent that you still think you’re getting something better than nothing).
Quite simply, if you look at the history of any government that has ever existed, and consider the structure of incentives for those who run government, you see that it is the role and purpose of government to increase the people’s dependence on it. It comes into being because people are dependent on it for their livelihood, and is maintained because people are dependent on it for their livelihood. Government raises people so that they will be model, perfect, servile citizens, the paradigm of dependency.
That’s the irony. It’s even doubly comedic, in some dark sense, when people try to justify the government by paralleling its role in society as that of parents to children, since if people actually followed through with that parallel identity, they wouldn’t recognize any government as fulfilling that role in the first place.
I shouldn’t be mistaken on this point. I do not only mean a sort of vulgar material dependence. People are dependent on government not only for a few nice things they think they receive from it, but they are also dependent on it in a mental sense. Liberals and conservatives alike make government their religion, being dependent on it spiritually as a vehicle for their own self-actualization (just note the parallels between your stock explanations for religious belief and political belief), and are dependent on it mentally as well, being powerless to imagine life or society without the presence of the government. Government seeks to subvert every intention of the individual for independence and autonomy and self-determination into a doublethink, so that their independence lies in dependence to the government.
> Parents have the responsibility of raising their children so that they can join society as mature, independent adults.
You value this. As do I. Millions of others do not share our definition of this, however. How do we convince them otherwise lest their children become suicide bombers and kill those of us who are independent but have no government?
> of course a parent will love their children (or they really ought to, and let’s assume these are good parents)
We can’t, Bryce, because we don’t live on Utopia. We live on Earth. And earth is filled with some good parents, yes, but also some really vile abusive and/or neglectful nasty parents. So we can’t assume this. If there is no government, who then advocates for such children raised in such environments?
> The parent doesn’t gain, either for themselves or for their children, by keeping their child in the house past the age of maturity.
I can tell you plenty of stories of helicopter parents that would love nothing but keeping their kids at home seemingly forever.
> “Give me liberty or give me death!” Yes?
Patrick Henry may not like some (even much) of what’s going on today, but he was also not an anarchist. The Founders understood liberty as a contrast to King George III, not as a contrast to any government structure.
If becoming an anarchist society means everyone decides they hate us and blows us up, so be it. If we can’t live well, then it is better to be killed.
Who advocates for those children born to miserable parents? How about the Church?
Such a dark world for you, Bryce. Do you truly believe that? Better to die than to live with a government over you? These are dark thoughts that will take you down a dark road…
> Who advocates for those children born to miserable parents? How about the Church?
The church certainly should! But (1) the church is too obsessed with navel-gazing far too often to make a big enough impact and – here’s the real key – (2) the church lacks the authoratative power to remove children from such environments. If we attempted such a rescue we’d be labelled kidnappers and potentially attacked (in the anarchyland) or convicted as kidnappers and imprisoned (in our modern America). I love your love for the church to rise up and do better than it does – I’m with you! – but the church (in America at least) has withered considerably in actual ability to transform and truly help society. And again, I don’t disagree with you that no doubt some of this does have to do with dependency on a large government structure rather than urging people to be dependent on God and their church, I fully get that, but does that automatically call for anarchy?!
I think the Church would have greater powers in anarchy, and many people would approve of rescuing children from abusive and neglectful parents. I understand that children would under no conditions have any ability to contract with security agencies, but I also think that there would be lots more room to commit charity towards children.
Reblogged this on Calliope Braintree Rants.
Government “advocacy” of children of abusive parents doesn’t work. The so-called child protective agencies are useless at best, horrifying at worst. State sanctified kidnapping is not the solution, as children of parents who have done nothing wrong are commonly held against their will in abusive foster homes, while murderous parents have their children returned to them. It’s completely fucked up. And anybody who thinks this deranged system works is an idiot.
If all humans grew up in an environment of autonomous self reliance, child abuse would become less and less of an issue. But the paternalistic government intrusion into everybody’s most intimate aspects of life precludes this.
We do not have a control group to compare any of it to…only the current collective sickness.
Calliopebraintree… undoubtedly there is corruption and perhaps numerous cases of state sanctioned kidnapping, as you’re referring to it. But I would argue the system needs reform, not elimination. To your point that child abuse would virtually disappear in an anarchy is to dismiss human nature. Our humankind is a broken messy lot, what the Abrahamic faiths call sinful. Child abuse will continue in any scenario, from the most 1984-esque government to the anarchyland that Bryce proposes. Evil will still exist. For it goes wherever we go.