Abstract

Is the welfare state neutral to personal morality?1 In today's welfare states one can find numerous life-styles existing side by side. These indicate a wide scope for 'personal moralities'2, but do not prove that the welfare state is 'neutral' to them. Welfare states interfere in more or less onerous ways with the business of (private) life with police checks, administrative controls and a vast arsenal of regulatory, penal and/or fiscal regimes. Some of the regulations may be more or less reasonable attempts to minimise the risk of one person inflicting irreparable damage on others or their property, but a great many are not. It is not too difficult to see the hand of special (economic, ideological, even sectarian) interests in the bulk of the rules and regulations on the books.3 The state's non-neutrality is often an unintended outcome, but not always. Officials introduce new regulations with proud declarations of their intention to enforce particular 'moral choices', to treat one thing as a 'merit good' and another as an evil. They also justify intrusive policies with blatantly paternalistic arguments—remember their promise, or was it threat, to take care of us "from the cradle to the grave"—, with self-congratulatory references to an unspecified 'responsibility of the government'. There is no more direct negation of the role of private morality than the claim that one discharges one's own responsibility by depriving others of the opportunity to exercise theirs. As far as protection against onerous interference is concerned, the presumption of innocence—which is the linchpin of the rule of law—counts for very little. One delinquent person or business entity is often enough to let loose the regulatory juggernaut on everybody in the same group or category. In short, the question, whether the welfare state is neutral to personal morality, is largely rhetorical and academic. Behind the question there is the presupposition that the welfare state should be neutral to personal morality..