LibUK Articles

Why Pub Licensing is a Bitter draught of Tyranny.

 Law & Order
Posted by Administrator (admin) on Dec 04 2007 at 7:25 AM
LibUK Articles >> Law & Order

In a Libertarian society, the state should have little impact on people’s lives. We are so far from this ideal that the sheer oppressive mass of the state is so all-pervasive as to be invisible. The problem is that in many areas, the state employs directly or indirectly over half the population. These people are not the front line service personnel – the nurses and teachers, but people whose prime function is to monitor, regulate and control, and to administer forms by which society is controlled. 

Let’s take licensing as a case in point. The state gets in the way every Saturday night. There are people whose job it is to check that the smoking ban is enforced, to administer applications for entertainment and extended licenses by landlords. Thus the pub in which you drink cannot have three musicians in the back room, unless they have prior permission from the local council – involving forms of epic length. Bob Dylan would not be able to store his cigarette in the head of his guitar while he played. Surely these are issues of policy for individual landlords not the council and police? 

The chance for pubs to extend their hours beyond the ridiculous 11pm did not, as widely predicted, bring with it drunken chaos and disorder – that existed already as drinkers spilled out at the same time into club queues, kebab shops and taxi ranks. Liberalisation reduced crime. Lesson learned. Let’s try and go further. Remove the entertainment restrictions. Instead of putting the burden of proof onto the publican, let the state give reasons why he should shut his house at any given hour, or be prevented from letting one of the locals play his guitar of an evening. The principle should be that, unless there is disorder associated with a given premises, the business hours and entertainment should be a matter for the landlord and his clientele. 

This involves sweeping away a huge, century old regime which has been unquestioned. Do we really need dozens of administrators in every town hall checking the landlord’s form-filling? How much council tax could that save each household? And if persuaded that such regulation is not needed – perhaps other areas of life could be de-regulated too? 

Because this doesn’t just affect drinkers and execrable pub crooners. There are dozens of little restrictions in every aspect of life which the police are incentivised to enforce rather than dealing with actual crimes like theft and robbery, which require more effort for the same sanction-detection tick in the box towards their tractor production target from whitehall. The fact that there are no police on the beat is because they are too busy filling in forms having arrested someone for inappropriate smoking, or something. It’s not just the police: the professions are in thrall to the compliance culture, which in many cases prevents them from offering honest opinions. As a result no-one trusts anyone anymore. 

There are, in every area of life examples where one needs the state’s permission to do something which should come naturally and be unregulated. Every time you fill in a form, you are contributing to the death of liberty and breaking society just a little bit more. The pub kicking you out, mid piss-up at 1am is part of the same problem that sees your home at risk of burglary and the Police’s utter indifference to it. 

What is needed is a fundamental change in the way society operates. It is much bigger than legislation – is about destroying the legislation, and more importantly the regulatory apparatus which goes with it. It is not a simple matter of tax-cuts, important though they are, but the political courage which would be needed to cut civil service numbers by half. A fundamental change is needed which would see news organisations asking “why is this government’s problem” or “is this action necessary?” rather than accepting calls for “something to be done” at face value. 

The sheer number of people who have a stake in the state’s interference in every aspect of our lives – the social workers, council officials, tax auditors, compliance professionals and the legal profession for whom this regulatory hyperactivity has become their raison d'etre, will vote for the status quo. If  you include the mass, long-term unemployed, the state’s dependents are well over half the population. I may have started out with drinking hours, but is part of a much, much bigger problem 

As Alexander Tytler (probably) pointed out: 

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

The petty tyranny of the council official and the bullying police officer is as an inevitable result of the sheer size of the state and the dependence of the people upon it. Who pays the piper calls the tune. Democratic elections are not going to bring an end to this, indeed they will serve to deepen this dependence, which is why a Libertarian party is a total waste of time. The only hope is to co-opt the elective dictatorship that British politics brings and spring Libertarianism on an electorate - unannounced. I think the Conservative party is the conduit most likely to be conducive to such radical change. Others disagree and have chosen the Lib-Dems or UKIP.

You must first win an election. Then do what you got to do. Small freedoms at first - let 'em have a drink when they want. Then who knows... we may have free speech next by repealing thought-crime legisation. Then (and this is really radical) well let shopkeepers use whatever weights and measures they and their customers want. Before you know it, the Police, with no petty regulations to enforce will be forced to go looking for criminals, and with safer streets, people might start speaking to one another again. When people realise they don't need the state to regulate everthing, they'll be freer and happier.

So they will go to the pub and sing. Which is where we started.

This sleight of hand how communists got their power in many states. If it worked for them, why not people whose agenda is actually freedom. Anti-democratic it may be, but who cares? Democracy is not the end. Freedom and liberty and the rule of law are. Democracy is just a reasonably successful means of guaranteeing these which is, unfortunately failing in that task right now.

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