«Zero Tolerance or Zero Thought? How Our Obsession with Safety Threatens Individual Liberty»

Speech by Christopher A. Preble

Vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute

Here you can find the slides of the speech:

Slides

«Less and Less Freedom? Objection to an Unhistorical View»

Speech Martin Killias (in German)

Swiss criminologist

According to a widespread opinion, our freedom is increasingly restricted by inflationary regulations, increasingly sophisticated technical devices, and above all, by ever-expanding surveillance measures. This perspective is historically uninformed. It neglects the fact that these very innovations have often given rise to many “freedoms.”

One can imagine the development of human living conditions as a series of ever-new possibilities, which are immediately followed by new regulations and measures to control them. With the invention of paper, the possibility arose to fix important agreements in writing—but also to subsequently falsify such documents or produce complete forgeries. With the emergence of a market economy in the High Middle Ages, the opportunity to deceive others and thereby illegitimately enrich oneself arose—leading to laws against fraud and new measures to counter it. With the onset of transcontinental trade, the risk emerged that entrusted goods—such as “travel money” given to a captain—might be misappropriated, creating a new criminal issue. With the intensification of horse-drawn carriage traffic from 1700 onwards, and especially with the invention of the automobile, there was a significant surge in regulations for road traffic. As cars became faster and risks increased, calls for speed limits and numerous other regulations arose. Every new technical, social, or economic innovation triggers new regulations. Against this background, the demand to limit the “flood of laws” is absurd. If, for example, annual legislation were limited in length, the regulations would inevitably become shorter but also more general, thus requiring further elaboration through subordinate regulations such as ordinances, regulations, and various guidelines like compliance frameworks. Moreover, the ease of handling the law does not depend on the number of regulations but on the simplicity and good organization of the legal collection. I dare say that navigating the legal situation in any area of life today is much easier than it was in the 18th century.

Societies respond to new risks not only with new regulations but also with new situational preventive measures. These include numerous technical measures taken in the interest of safety. For example, equipment, machines, cars, and most everyday products are standardized, which requires safety regulations. Such preventive measures—such as those concerning vehicle condition and maintenance—are far more effective than mere punitive provisions—even those with severe penalties—against driving unsafe cars. Experience also shows that situational measures are only accepted if they can align with a normative consensus. For example, it would be inconceivable to ensure that vehicles cannot exceed a certain speed through technical measures alone, as long as the idea of speed limits is not socially accepted. Situational measures do not replace norms but facilitate their implementation and enforcement by preventing crimes from occurring in the first place and thus making sanctions unnecessary. It seems important to me in this context that preventive measures are not only understood as those that make risky or harmful behavior more difficult but also include positive incentives that steer individuals in the desired direction. A simple example would be the “Robidogs” system, which has quickly and nearly globally eliminated sidewalk pollution from dog feces. A less trivial example would be the creation of an efficient and citizen-friendly administration that provides necessary services promptly and without “bribes,” thus making corruption redundant. The increase in crime across the Western world since World War II and its recent decline is a result of initially increasing criminal opportunities and more security efforts in a variety of areas over the past twenty years. “9/11” was also a turning point in this sense.

So, how is our “freedom” faring? I believe that it is not only threatened when video cameras record our behavior in public spaces but also when our spatial and temporal mobility is restricted by risks in public spaces. For instance, if one cannot park a bicycle anywhere without securing it with an effective lock, this bothers me more than just the camera monitoring the particular section of the sidewalk. Without safety, there is no freedom.

The historically uninformed nature of viewing increasing security investments as a threat to freedom is evident when looking back at not-so-distant times. The people in Gotthelf’s stories and his contemporaries had unimaginably few freedoms. From dawn until dusk, most were engaged in stable and fieldwork, constantly under the control of others. Only a few times a year was this monotony interrupted by church festivals and other events, where young people of both sexes could relatively easily interact. Such occasions often led to extramarital children or “must” marriages, with such marriages being an option only for relatively wealthy individuals. More than fifty percent of those who reached adulthood remained involuntarily single. It is a post-facto projection to suggest that sexual assaults were common at that time, as daily life was highly controlled. What was common (and led to numerous executions under the Ancien Régime) was sex with animals. In short, ordinary people had a rather monotonous, miserable life without opportunities for personal development and freedom. The attractiveness of foreign services—particularly in France, the Netherlands, and especially in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies—must also be viewed against this backdrop, as there was occasionally something to experience, perhaps also in a sexual sense. The Aargau song (in Argöi sy zwöi Liebi) and s’Vreneli abem Guggisbärg vividly depict this theme. Certainly, material incentives (and economic hardship at home) played a role, but that is only part of the story. In this regard, I would dare to assert that there has never been a society that has offered its members as many freedoms and opportunities for personal development as today’s society.