With freedom comes responsibility. A society of free individuals can only function if everyone respects the rights and liberties of everybody else. This means we have to voluntarily limit our own desires and monitor our own behaviour in the hope and expectation that other people will do the same in their relations with us. But there is evidence that these informal norms governing our behaviour have been fraying over recent decades.
One obvious indicator of the growths of anti-social behaviour is the crime rate – up five-fold in forty years. Part of the policy solution to this involves changing the way we police our communities, and ensuring that when offenders are apprehended they are appropriately punished. But law and order is only part of the solution. We also need to find ways of strengthening community norms and reinforcing civility and what the British labour MP Frank Field calls ‘the ethic of respect.’
One problem with strengthening and revitalising communities is that governments have left people with so little to do for themselves.
People do not engage actively with each other unless they have a reason to come together and cooperate in some joint endeavour. The more the State does for us, however, the less reason we have to come together in search of cooperative solutions to shared problems.
State activity also threatens to undermine our willingness to accept challenges and take on risks. Government is increasingly looking out for us, stopping us from doing things that might conceivably harm us. With the best of intentions, politicians have been draining the life spirit which lies at the heart of a free and vibrant society.
Key questions:
- What are the causes and consequences of the decline of civility and social cohesion, and what can be done about it?
- Is government weakening civil society by trying to eradicate risk from our lives and by ‘crowding out’ voluntary activity with state initiatives?
- What kinds of policing and penal policies best reduce crime and disorderly behaviour while remaining consistent with classical liberal principles?
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