Housing, Individuals and the State by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 1998-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

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DOI: 10.4324/9780203004746-5

Government intervention in housing is pervasive and ubiquitous. One may suggest that this is morally illegitimate or inefficient. However, we cannot merely wish it away and develop a system without it. We must start from where we currently are and develop a situation more akin to that which we feel is morally legitimate or efficient. Indeed there is an inherent problem in any case when a libertarian proposes change. As Narveson (1988) has stated, ‘Revolutionaries aim to seize the reins of power. This makes it a little difficult to mount a “libertarian revolution”, since the object of this would be as nearly as possible the complete absence of power’ (p. 325). If the aim of the libertarian is to free individuals to pursue their own ends, this clearly implies that there are limits to how this may be pursued. In particular, it cannot be ‘imposed’ through taking power, violently or otherwise, on behalf of the freedom of others. The libertarian may only proceed through discussion and persuasion (assuming it is non-aggressive). Thus the achievement of such a society may only be achieved by evolutionary means.

What is apparent, as Narveson (1988) has suggested, is that one can hardly ‘expect elected officials to busy themselves eliminating their positions’ (p. 325). However, this is very much the attitude taken by the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. They sought to get government off the backs of the people by deregulation, privatisation and the market testing of public services. In housing they encouraged private tenures, particularly owner occupation, and reduced the level of direct subsidies to housing providers (King, 1996). Yet this was all achieved by government action. Government has consistently centralised power to itself, apparently in order to disperse opportunity, choice and responsibility (DoE, 1995) to individuals. The result is that intermediate institutions are now closely circumscribed in their activities and all legitimacy is located in central government as the guardian of individuals in the face of unrepresentative and bureaucratic public landlords. The early initiatives of the Labour government elected in 1997 show a continuation of this policy, and indeed even some of the rhetoric.

This issue, of the centralisation of power, is one of the themes of this chapter. However, for the present, it should be apparent that government cannot be trusted to reform itself. Indeed the problem, as I have stated it, is that government is presumed to be competent over issues it is not legitimate for it to control, namely, the ends of individuals. This suggests that only means outside of government are likely to achieve its limitation. Indeed such a libertarian society may only come about, or come closer, if individuals themselves perceive that they have an incentive to create it. This may be difficult to achieve, as the role of government as provider and the ‘duty’ to pay tax are now so ingrained. But this, of course, does not mean that it is redundant to state a particular moral position in all its severity and purity.

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