Libertarian paternalism my a***
Dear Professor Le Grand,
As an architect of some novel policies in the past, perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised at your latest offering. Your plan is to make couples who have children outside wedlock become automatically married by the State, even in the absence of a ceremony or taking any vows. I know that you like the idea of what you call “libertarian paternalism” in which the State is allowed to “nudge” people in what it sees as the right direction for their own good, but this really is ridiculous.
Essentially, you are calling for marriage to be the legal ‘default’ setting for new parents. Without having to undergo a public ceremony or take any vows, they should simply be regarded as married in law as soon as the child’s birth is registered. Those who later decide to separate would have to go to court to seek a divorce in exactly the same way as a couple who had married formally in church or a register office. Your argument is that it would make family units more secure. “There would be a benefit to the child as it would make separation that much more difficult,” you said. “There would also be benefits for the woman, particularly, who would acquire rights that many cohabitees think that they have already but actually they don’t. There are no such things as common law wives although people think that there are.” You acknowledge that there were still some “creases that have to be ironed out” such as what to do about cases where paternity is not clear or people with children to multiple partners. However, you rejected the charge of “nanny state” interference and said you were considering whether there should be an opt-out provision for those who actively oppose the concept of marriage. Your default marriage plans are not the first time you have attracted controversy, having previously called for smokers to be forced to buy permits before they can buy cigarettes, the introduction of separate supermarket checkouts for alcohol to put people off buying drink and requiring companies to organise an “exercise hour” for staff to reduce obesity.
I’m not normally one to agree with Ann Widdecombe, but today I will make an exception. “If two people want to have a child outside wedlock and the state comes along and says ‘we will marry you anyway’, all you will get is that men won’t accept paternity of children,” she said. “It is ludicrous, it would be the final nail in the coffin of marriage.” I am a strong supporter of marriage and married couples being given financial and legal benefits over non-married couples because people who commit to each other and their families are more likely to stay together in the long run and this should be recognised. However, the idea that the State should force people to marry undermines the very concept of marriage being a commitment between two people who enter into it willingly. Having an opt-out provision totally misses the point: marriage has to be a choice by two people who love each other - the State should have nothing to do with it. I understand your desire to incentivise couples to stay together but there are a hell of a lot of better ways to do it than this – making divorces much more difficult, removing the couples penalty in the tax system etc.
There is nothing libertarian about your proposal, it’s just paternalism. It is yet another Labour-esque move to make the State unnecessarily encroach into people’s lives. Unlike libertarians, I do believe that the State has a genuine role to play in society, but the idea of default marriages is way way way off the mark. To say that there are ‘things to iron out’ shows that you don’t understand why this policy is flawed on principle rather than simply being difficult to implement (which it would undoubtedly be). Back to the drawing board, I’m afraid.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
The whole proposal would be good news for the lawyers who would profit from the divorce. In effect it would act as a deferred tax on sex.
Ha, I guess so. Lawyers might be the only profitable part of the economy left.
The whole proposal would be good news for the lawyers who would profit from the divorce. In effect it would act as a deferred tax on sex
And there we have the goal, I feel.
This is an outright facistic measure, frankly, and one that all the usual religious groups will no doubt back enthusiastically.
Aside from that, how would you enforce it? Mandatory paternity tests at birth? What if the state get’s the wrong dad? What if identicle twins mate with the same girl? Who’s the daddy, eh?
Agreed. This policy is heading off in the wrong direction from the wrong starting point.
As it happens, the tax and welfare systems are heavily stacked against marriage or cohabitation (especially Tax Credits, hence my enthusiasm for scrapping them and doubling flat-rate Child Benefit). Let’s even that out first and see what happens.
Secondly, marriage is an entirely voluntary private contract and should be regulated as such with a statutory pre-nup that the parties can vary as they wish.
Thirdly, what happens if a man who has been married by force (a bit like women in Islamic countries) gets another woman pregnant; would there be a statutory divorce and marriage to the other woman, or what? He hasn’t even thought this through, has he?
What happens to those serial fathers who have children with several different women? Do they become bigamists by default too?
The man’s a total imbecile…
My only concern is that Cameron is quite keen on this ‘nudging’ stuff – I just hope he doesn’t subscribe to this kind of nonsense. It would make a mockery of marriage, divorce, parenthood, families and no doubt much more.
Hang on,why should married couples get more financial and legal benefits over single people or unmarried couples.So everyone else has to subsidise you and your children.Is that a fair society.If you cannot afford children just don’t have them.You shouldn’t demand that others have to pay for them as well.
DMC, I know where you are coming from, it’s just that the evidence on early interventions for children from deprived backgrounds is so overwhelming that I think they need additional support. Mind you, that doesn’t have to come in the form of cash – it could be vouchers, subsidised services etc.
Mind you, that doesn’t have to come in the form of cash – it could be vouchers, subsidised services etc.
Which is cash in disguise. I’ve worked in firms where, as a married but childless man, I have been openly given less favourable employment terms because I do not have kids. Time off, late starts, early finishes and all the rest.
Having kids is a choice. Yes it’s necessary as a species and as a nation but so are lots of things that we don’t punish people for not doing.
Gah pet hate, only worsened where it dovetails with Orwellian ‘tax credits’. Bah doublespeak. Bah!
This bloke is nuts, he most certainly has a power fetish. He should be carted off with Gordon by the men in white coats!
This type of rubbish just further reminds me why marriage needs to be taken out of state hands.
It’s a religious ceremony, and nothing to do with government. For legal reasons, consenting couples ought to be free to engage in mutual contractual obligations against one another, but that’s it.
And how did Le Grand manage to get a professorship with such profoundly defective ideas? Were Kelloggs running a special offer or something? Collect 1000 Tony the Tiger Tokens, and get a professorship in Advanced Faulty Reasoning?
“And how did Le Grand manage to get a professorship with such profoundly defective ideas?”
Academic rigour isn’t what it once was, that’s for sure…
“Libertarian paternalism” is of course oxymoronic. It make no more sense than “christian atheism”. It is however yet another attempt by the organised progressives/leftists/whatevers to redefine language to their choosing. There is a quiet parallel process going on of making the word “authoritarian” synonymous with “right wing” or “conservative”, and thus making it by definition impossible for a leftist to be called authoritarian- despite of course leftists being the ultimate authoritarians.
Likewise, this is an attempt to neuter the world “Libertarian”, which was itself coined after the left stole, quite blatantly, the word “liberal”, particularly in the USA, where liberal is now the standard term for everything ranging from authortarian socialism to outright communism.
The problem with the likes of Le Grand- and he is just one of a cabal of “advisors” who have enormous influence, as a group, on government policy- is that we can’t get shot of them by traditonial methods like voting. Davey Boy Cameron is a fan of “nudging” too and will be surrounded by the same advisors. Will the Conservatives be drawing the curtain on the nanny state? Not a chance, in their current form. In fact there seems to be ample appetite to expand it- for instance with policies to further enhance the position of the Charity Racket as government contractors.
I call myself a libertarian, and I call myself that because I am sick to the back teeth of successive governments of nominally different colours deciding it is their job to tell me how to live my life. I am not the least interested in being told what to smoke, drink, eat, read, watch on TV, buy, or who to have sex with or how or anything else. If I want to carry my shopping home in a plastic bag, that’s my decision. Please sod off, government.
I used to be a “mixed economy” kind of a guy. I was young, I was foolish, the photographer said they’d be tasteful pictures… then I realised, finally, that there isn’t a middle way. There is either a society that seeks always the greatest possible freedom, or a society that tumbles into tyranny. Trying to keep a balance is like trying to balance an elephant on a fence. It has to fall one way or the other.
Which is why I’m not going to vote conservative. They have neither the strength nor the will to push the metaphorical elephant back the other way. I can be nudged by Gordon, or nudged by Dave, and the nudging will be dictated by the cloud of noxious wormtongues like Le Grand. Not worth going to the polling station, is it?