Negative Consequence #7: Polarization

A different cost of government intervention is polarizing society. This occurs because interventions assume everyone should behave in a particular way. Imposing one position throughout society, however, forces many to accept policies they find disagreeable or offensive, and this generates anger and frustration.

The single best illustration is abortion policy and Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision prohibited states from adopting laws that ban abortion and placed severe restrictions on regulation of abortion. This created a level of frustration among abortion opponents that could have been avoided with less intervention, such as leaving abortion policy to the states.

A different example is public schools, which must take stands on issues like affirmative action, prayer, dress and speech codes, curricular content, teaching methods, and more. Some parents are strongly in favor of, say, school prayer, while others are strongly opposed. Public schools have no room for compromise on this issue; they must accept the policy dictated by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment. Vouchers, while not immune from this problem, facilitate compromise if government simply takes no stand on whether vouchers can be used at schools that include prayer. In this way, parents can exercise choice.

Gay marriage is another case in point. By being in the marriage business, government is forced to take a stand on what constitutes a marriage and therefore to be either for or against gay marriage. Under a private contracting approach, government need never mention sexuality one way or another.

Still a further example is funding of science, which forces government to address issues like stem cell research. Leaving all funding to the private sector would not eliminate opposition. But critics would not see their tax dollars used to support this research, so their basis for criticism and their degree of anger would be far lower.

In some instances, of course, polarized reactions might be something society has to accept; the Supreme Court’s decision on flag-burning is perhaps an example. But there are far more instances where the benefits of imposing one view are hard to see. This is one reason to keep most policies at the state rather than the federal level.

Negative Consequence #8: Reduced Self-Reliance

A broad range of policies sends the message that people are too dumb to make reasonable decisions on their own. There are undoubtedly people who might benefit from advice, or from sensible rules, or from being protected from themselves. But policies that attempt to protect people from themselves risk reducing self-reliance more generally.

Laws against false and misleading advertising are one example. Some business do attempt to swindle their customers. But prohibiting false and misleading advertising gives people an excuse not to worry about this issue. Government enforcement of the ban is highly imperfect, however, so many questionable claims occur every day. Thus unless people use common sense they can easily be misled despite existing law.

Numerous other policies also reduce self-reliance: prohibitions on “bad stuff” like drugs; nutritional guidelines; regulation of decency content on television; safety regulation; food labeling laws; and licensure restrictions for doctors and lawyers.

Government intervention therefore promotes the false message that people do not need to think for themselves because the government has taken care of it. No matter how large government becomes, however, it cannot be everywhere or make every decision. So unless people use common sense, or rely on private institutions that provide good rules of thumb, they will make many bad decisions or be taken advantage of in many situations.

Negative Consequence #9: Thought Control

A final consequence of government intervention is thought control. By their existence, interventions take a stand on important issues. Worse, many control the information that people receive about which interventions make sense.

The potential for thought control is most obvious for policies like education or funding of research, but it applies broadly. Economic regulation takes a stand on how markets work; taxing corporations perpetuates a view that inanimate objects, not people, pay taxes; redistributing income takes a position on self-reliance; campaign finance regulation and estate taxation endorse particular views of wealth accumulation. And so on.

Thus government cannot intervene without perpetuating particular views about how society should be run, about who should be the winners and losers, and about what is good or bad. If this were done by benevolent, competent people, the negatives might be small, but that is unlikely. People are people. Some policy makers have good intentions, some do not. And even those with good intentions make mistakes. So putting control over ideas into the hands of a few is fraught with potential for disaster.

Many non-libertarians regard this last point as ridiculous exaggeration; they see no evidence that countries like the U.S. are slipping toward Big Brother and “1984.”

I hope they are right, but I fear they are wrong. Government now intervenes far more extensively than it has in the past, and people have come to accept a larger and larger role for government. This intervention affects every aspect of economic and social life. If this trend continues, I forecast that even advocates of intervention may rue the day we started down the slippery slope.