June 2000 Fraser Forum: Vikings and Social Policy
When then-Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau said that government has no place in the bedrooms of Canadians, government spent a little more than 25 percent of national income. Since then, this percentage has nearly doubled, and Trudeau's statement has lost half the sense it had in 1966. A large government means that Canadians no longer sleep in bedrooms, but rather in a vast commons, like Viking clans snuggling under bear-pelts in the mead hall.
This became clear in the recent debate over the confusing federal Bill C-23 that seems to extend government employment insurance and pension benefits to same-sex couples. Some MPs loved the Bill, while others advised that the time had not come when Canadians could invite same-sex couples to the same trough where the majority of couples feeds. The lesson from this episode is not that Canadians are anarchists or prudes, but that when Ottawa funds social programs, private decisions become matters of state, and the state becomes an enforcer for the moral majority.
A government that socializes pensions, employment insurance, and health insurance becomes the only gate-keeper to the garden of collectivized goodies. The state trims this garden to the wishes of a majority of voters. This means we must pause as if poised before Nietzsche's void before allowing Ottawa to decide a matter on our behalf.
Think of the colour of your socks. We find it natural to allow private markets to decide the question of socks, because socks are a private affair. I can wear green without detracting from another's choice to wear red. In a private market every decision is unanimous. Each individual votes according to his wish and gets his wish. If government socialized socks, the colour you wear would become a collective decision. All would have to be consulted, because all would be affected by the outcome of the government's sock law. The most common way of making collective decisions is by majority rule. By redefining a question of a private nature as a matter of public interest, government would force a majority of people's beliefs on everyone. Private opinions on the aesthetics of argyle versus stripes would be forced into the public domain, and folk who would never presume to impose their sartorial choices on others would find themselves dictating fashion to their fellows.
Social security is social only because we have allowed governments to make it so. Politicians are Loreleis seducing us with the song that almost everything is a matter for the state to decide. The proponents of this "l'État c'est moi" school of public policy have lulled our senses into accepting that pensions and employment and health insurance are decisions that have to be taken collectively. The result is that same-sex couples must pay taxes as everyone else does, but have to fight very hard to get benefits the majority enjoys. If pensions and matters of unemployment insurance were private, strife would not show her face. Each firm would tailor its policy on whether same-sex couples can get benefits according to the wishes of its workers. Workers opposed to the notion would group in firms that do not offer these benefits, and workers who like the idea, or are indifferent, would go to firms that offer such benefits.
If this sounds like a fantasy, it is only because we are not able to observe the alternative. Government weakens a firm's ability to decide pension benefits by snatching firm revenues and putting them in government pension plans. We get a hint of how markets can resolve issues about which people feel strongly by examining smoking in restaurants. Where government policies do not intervene, restaurants either declare themselves smoking or non-smoking roughly in proportion to the proportion of smokers. Private markets allow people to agree to disagree. It is surprising that in this era where all exalt the expression of individuality that so many allow the government to stuff themselves and all others in the same Mao Tse Tung jacket of social policy.
In his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper warned that broad-ranging social policies on matters that are not clearly the task of government are a form of utopianism that transforms private beliefs into public intolerance. No one knows for sure what is the public interest and what is the private interest, but a good guide is that if the government is taxing Peter to pay Paul, there is room for mischief and discord. Government should not be allowed to cut the pie of national wealth. Redistribution should not be collectivized, because such an act forces some to subsidize other's beliefs on questions of private conscience. Such questions cannot be resolved by majority rule, but rather by personal example and mutual agreement.
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