Andrew Slominski

Ah. The perennial cry of one new to the sport of ’scapegoat hunting’…

My comment would be, before all of this “mess” few people would say that libertarians or their ideas (like the free market) were in control enough to make any difference. Now that this “mess” is upon us, many are quick to blame the free market an libertarian ideology for our current problems. How can it be that we were obscure and marginalized one day, while the next we were so in control and in power to be able to mess everything up?

http://don-paskini.blogspot.com/2008/12/libertarianism-child-protection-fail.html

You should respond if you think, as I do, that he has been unfair…

Seeing this incident as unrelated to other aspects in society would be like watching a black and white movie.

The difference between libertarian vs. conservative mindset, is pretty much summed up in your second sentence. That government “gives” freedom to society. Government has no authority over my god given natural rights or nobody elses since I have no signed contract with them. There fore government should not have any authority to remove people’s children which is a very scary concept. Especially when statistics tell us that children are 5-6 more likely to die in government custody compared to staying at home in disfunctional homes.

libertyblogger.net

Whilst Baby P was not able to exercise his responsibilities, his rights remain unaffected. Including the right to live without being harmed by others – a right which it is indeed the state’s role to ensure (if it has any role at all). Since he was a person, Baby P could not belong to his parents, so if he was harmed, some state process should have sorted the problem and removed him to a less harmful situation.

Not sure whether that process should be police, social services or some other method – the logical Libertarian response would be to go back to first principles and find the way of responding to such problems that involved the clearest defence of the rights of those who cannot defend themselves with the least infringement of the rights of others (and it is worth restating, these do not include the right to be a parent, as it is not anyone’s right to ‘own’ a child).

Liberty is based on rights and responsibilities. As a libertarian, you have to balance the state and the individual’s role in these, but you cannot fall into the strange trap of assuming that liberty of the individual equals potential slavery of the child, who is a seperate individual.

I did think quite long and hard about how the BabyP case ought to affect that perspective. The first thing I found is that there are at least another couple of dozen inidents of the death of a child (half under one and most by parents themselves) in “child cruelty” type incidents (rather than accident or bizarre whole family suicide type incidents I assume) every year in Britain. In other words, BabyP is not the unique case that the (quite justified) moral outrage it has generated seems to suggest. Maybe it’s mostly because Haringay is seen as having “form” on this issue after Climbie.

But the message is that whatever various social services and child protection agencies do know they “fail” a lot more than they’re telling us. My suspicion is that this is down to most other cases being completely under the radar of the state protection apparatus until it’s too late (and if so – what use are those state agencies?). Determined sadists are often quite good at covering their tracks. Just look at both Fritzl in Austria and our own version in Sheffield the other week. We can be shocked and say someone must have noticed that level of abuse even with the most determined concealing by the perps, but no. It happens and nobody managed to stop it or even recognize it.

Also, even in an anarchist worldview, the care of a child is something that is a joint trust between parents and the rest of society – society would have ended up paying for the effects of his tortured life, as Martin Narey (deliberately) controversially said, if he had grown up to become a “feral yob”. Indeed, as Guido says, our welfare and benefits systems include some level of perverse incentive for people to have children who probably shouldn’t; or at least shouldn’t at a point in their lives when they can barely support themselves.

At the moment then we “contract out” to effectively disinterested parties (the state – who get paid in reality whatever the outcome and only get into any bother at all in the most egregious and publicly visible cases of failure) to carry out a function more properly suited to much more local, neighbourhood, and more importantly family, scrutiny. Where, in a “market anarchist” worldview, ought such oversight to lie? Can we imagine on whom there would be an economic incentive to ensure as far as is possible the safety of someone else’s child?

As others have mentioned, institutions such as the RSPCA (though I think they have been ceded too much power often) and the RNLI, already carry out an effective job in their respective fields. Something like the NSPCC would emerge as the champion of the most vulnerable in the last resort and would in a private law society be likely to take action to defend the “self-ownership” and freedom from aggression and coercion of a child, even against its parents. Should a hospital even allow a child born to someone who has not the means or willingness to make proper provision for bringing up a child (which could probably be evidenced from their pre-natal attitude or lake of attempt to make provision) to be taken home in the first place without much more scrutiny as to how good care they’re going to get?

Remember too, that we believe that in the absence of state-capitalism and the grossly distorted playing field that creates through privilege and patronage to the detriment of the poorest, even those poorest would be better equipped economically to make provision through friendly societies and such like for health care and so on. So I’m not suggesting that the poor should not be allowed to take their babies home. Just that in such an environment it would probably be more noticeable, not less, as to which parents had even made an honest attempt to make provision or establish a support network of family first, community second and paid for assistance third, and perhaps the economic incentive might fall on the delivering hospital at least to ensure that such prima facie support was available. They could then even at that early stage alert an organization such as NSPCC or find themselves on the receiving end of a negligence claim if anything bad happened.

Finally (I think), in such a more human scale society, I suggest it would be easier, not harder, for friends and neighbours to intervene earlier. It is in most of their economic interests often too not to be supporting or fostering in their midst the sort of home circumstances in which these sort of psychotic evil doers can function with impunity. Would the mother’s partner’s sadistic friend really only have been a problem for the child? Would not neighbours and other family members have an interest in ensuring they were driven from their midst? At the moment everyone is too tied up in making ends meet in an unfair world perhaps to care too much what happens next door until it spills over more obviously into their lives.

In summary, I’m not sure I can see how in an anarchist, private law type society, it could be any worse than relying on the economically disincentivised civil servants to whom we contract out our social and neighbourly awareness “duties”. And the altogether more humane, less oppressed society that ought to result from such freedoms may well be able to intervene earlier and more consensually in order to protect their own interests as well as those of the child.

The role of the charitable and non-profit sector in supplying public services is something that I’m very keen on in general. The question of whether it can take the place of social services is perhaps for another day!

I see myself as a libertarian and in cases like this I go back to Adam Smith and the Theory of the Moral Sentiments, on sympathy: “By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him”. For me the bottom line is that you don’t need the government to express care, compassion, and concern in society; people do this naturally as can be seen in the outcry over the tragic case of Baby P.

How does the libertarian model allow the kind of intervention necessary to prevent this sort of horrible case? As pointed out in other comments, child abuse is already against the law; but how do we enforce this without some overwhelming state bureaucracy like social services? Defining “libertarianism” as only wanting “market forces” is wrong. Wanting minimal government doesn’t exclude co-operative or collective action (provided, of course, that it is lawful and voluntary). “Candid” in the comments above has already suggested my preferred solution: charities.

Without government funding is a charity capable of running a large scale “service” to the general public? The RNLI provides a successful volunteer lifesaving service for people at sea. Maybe more relevant to this question are the RSPCA (again, mentioned by Candid). They bring private prosecutions against abusive and neglectful animal owners, helped by government legislation e.g. the Animal Welfare Act. A similar charity for children should be doing the same: stepping in with inspections and action where necessary.

The problem with children’s charities stepping in now is that the government are already there, and this distorts the actions that charities take. From the NSPCC website on Baby P regarding their action: “We are working to shape the debate about child protection: talking directly to government and professionals who work with children, submitting evidence to the Laming review of the child protection system in England, and keeping the media and wider public informed.” Also, if government involvement leads people to assume they are already funding the efforts for improvement (via taxation), this reduces the amount of money charities would otherwise get.

What would I suggest as a plan for action?

If not already possible (I’m not a lawyer), pass legislation helping charities to take effective legal action rather than “shaping the debate”.

Make charitable contributions for certain charities tax deductible for income and inheritance tax – donations should increase allowing charities to expand their efforts without government funding or involvement.

Finally, once charities start to work through the changes, reduce government participation, scale back social services.

Tell people: We care, that’s why we’ve passed legislation to help the dedicated professionals employed by these charities, and we’re leaving them free to do their job. If you care too, you should donate some money or spend time volunteering. It should be “we can do something” instead of “someone must do something”.

I honestly believe there’s enough goodwill out there to fund this voluntarily, and I also believe that charities will work more efficiently than the government. If not, I would definitely question the reason for the government to take everyone’s money and spend it on something they don’t care enough about to fund voluntarily.

In terms of preventing crime they’re not actually very good at that. They’re more into punishing after the thing’s happened.

Their best bet is to catch people committing small crimes and in doing so prevent escalation to worse crimes – but domestic abuse is notoriously tricky to prosecute because by its very nature it all happens behind closed doors and in secret.

So do we give police the power to put families under surveillance – bug their houses, set up hidden cameras, that sort of thing – cos that’s the only real way you’re going to get the sort of evidence you need to secure a conviction. What sort of evidence would you need to get a warrant for this sort of thing? How would you prevent these powers being abused? Do we really want the police to have these kinds of powers?

This is sort of the problem here. Society says that we shouldn’t just punish people who commit crimes against children, but actually prevent them committing crimes in the first place and we really don’t have a clue how to do this. We’re trying to predict the future and that always ends well, doesn’t it?