Elle Smith is an independent writer. She writes at her own Substack.
A few years ago, the Daily Mail published this infographic.
I expect most parents are good and sick of it by now. Not me! I want it pinned on the wall of every classroom, where ideally it will hardly be seen at all because the children are outside playing. But it won’t be, and they won’t be, because if children spend too long outside they might hurt themselves. Or get rained on, or abducted, or fall behind on their PSHE lessons.
It’s hard to quantify freedom, but the image above is a good starting point. Children are no longer allowed to wander. They are not trusted to run errands, look after siblings, spend time unsupervised, or take reasonable risks.
But why should we care about the freedom of children? They make barely any contribution to GDP. More seriously, I believe in children’s liberty as an end in itself; children are people, and people need to be free in order to flourish. But this freedom is also instrumentally good. Good for the children, good for society, and good in particular for those who want everyone to have a bit more money and a higher standard of living.
A functioning economy requires its constituent individuals to have relatively high risk tolerance. Entrepreneurialism and ambition are both downstream of self-confidence and a can-do approach to problems. These attitudes do not come about only by genetic accident: with a bit of patience and courage, they can be built. The way to achieve this is to allow children to do what they want to anyway, which is have fun, take risks, and make mistakes without being interrupted. A child who touches a hot stove rapidly acquires an instinct not to do so again. She develops judgement, and eventually self-reliance. A child whose parent grabs her hand each time learns only that the stove is not permitted, and that touching it is wrong. Which child will learn to trust herself, and which will learn that she cannot be allowed to make her own decisions? Which child will come to view the world as fundamentally navigable, and which will grow up thinking that the most important thing is to obey authority?
Of course I am not saying that every child allowed to take risks will grow up to be Steve Jobs, but the children who are not might well end up in public health.
A fundamental liberal tenet is that people, businesses, and institutions function best when left to their own devices. To believe this, you have to have a robust amount of faith in human nature. I don’t mean that you have to think everyone is good and kind and would dedicate themselves to saving the elephants if only given the chance, but you do have to think that people basically know what’s best for themselves and will act reasonably to that end. It’s hard (perhaps impossible) to have this faith in others if we don’t first have it in ourselves. A society that teaches children to trust authority over their own instincts will not produce free thinkers. It will, however, be very effective at producing bureaucrats, who will tie themselves in knots to make sure no poor soul is ever allowed to face the consequences of their own decisions. Things would be safer if people weren’t allowed to make their own decisions at all. Perhaps we should leave decision-making to the experts.
This is roughly how large parts of the British state see things now. There is a near-zero tolerance for risk of any kind, so nobody builds anything and nothing happens.
How do we get out of this mire? Change is unlikely to come from the top, and (unlike in the US) there is no comparable coordinated movement for children’s freedom in the UK. It is generally hard to argue for exposing children to more risk, because what you are really saying is that in order for everybody to thrive, some children – our most precious, most loved, and most vulnerable fellow citizens – must face being hurt.
Hard to argue, but, I think, morally imperative. I have pressed rather cynically in this piece for economic outcomes, but children cannot thrive without liberty. There is no such thing as a rich and fulfilling life without the risk, instability, and uncertainty that come with freedom. Ironically, if we don’t make an effort to loosen the reins on the youth, we take a greater risk than all those we avoid — that of raising increasingly anxious generations who have no faith in their ability to solve their own problems. We will also all be poor.
What we’re reading
Track smack. For the Telegraph, Tony Lodge has argued that Labour’s programme of renationalising Britain’s railways is already putting at risk one of the most obvious successes of the post-privatisation period: open-access competition on the East Coast Main Line. Privately-run open-access operators have delivered lower fares, more choice and higher passenger satisfaction when compared with their state-run equivalents. Centralised control cannot repeat the benefits of competition.
Staircase to nowhere. Over at CapX, Tom Willerton-Gartside has made the case that England’s new requirement for all residential buildings over 18 metres to have two staircases is an excessively restrictive regulation that is not only exacerbating the housing shortage but making it even more difficult for young people to buy homes in cities. Rather than scrapping the safety requirement, England should instead be brought in line with international practice, still protecting residents as intended.
Million-pound question. James Lawson has taken to the pages of CityAM to explain why Britain’s shrinking population of millionaires is a symptom of a broader decline in wealth creation. Building on the Adam Smith Institute’s new analysis, he notes that the number of sterling millionaires has reached its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis. The loss of wealthy individuals hits more than the individuals directly hit, crossing tax revenue, investment, and job creation.
A Brum business. Writing for UnHerd, Rakib Eshan has suggested that Birmingham’s social divisions are a warning for the rest of the United Kingdom. He contends that the city’s rapid demographic change, ethnic segregation, and weakening civic identity have created parallel communities with limited interaction. Eshan suggests policymakers have been unwilling to confront the challenges of social cohesion openly; the tensions of Birmingham are likely to appear elsewhere.
Hubbub. Our own Christopher Snowdon has taken to his Substack to argue that an £8 million UK Research and Innovation grant awarded to the Health Hub: Systems Approaches to Commercial Determinants of Health and Equity project has failed to deliver on its promise to investigate how commercial influences affect public health on a local level. Many of the project’s publications constitute ideological campaigning rather than original scientific research, featuring an anti-capitalist bias.