LAUREN HALL: Generally speaking when we talk about civil society we're talking about all
the ways that people associate with each other when they're not interacting directly with
the state or the political process, and they're not buying and selling things on the market.
So in the sort of theory of civil society we generally talk about three different types
or sort of subsets of civil society.
There are the primary associations, and some people don't put this in civil society at
all.
And those are sort of friends and family.
So the kin relations that we have, the really close friendships that we have.
And those are the primary associations that again are sort of quasi voluntary and our
families are not always totally voluntary.
But those are the really close intimate relationships.
What matters more for most civil society scholars are the secondary and to a certain extent
tertiary associations.
And the tertiary associations are the kinds of associations that you're a member of but
you don't really interact with people in those associations.
So if you are a member of, or if you donate to NPR, for example, or the various environmental
groups you might send a check once a year, so you're a member in a sort of nominal sense
and you give them financial support but you're not really interacting with anybody.
It's not what we call a thick relationship.
But when people think about civil society broadly very often what they're thinking about
are these secondary associations.
And so the secondary associations are all of the situations in which people organize
and associate with each other that are not based off of kin and that are not based off
of selling or sort of swapping services.
So you can think about these as everything from religious associations so the church
that you go to, the synagogue that you go to, to the roller derby team that you're on
to the group that you meet up with at the library to do puzzles or whatever with on
Sunday afternoons.
So all of those different ways that you associate with people to fulfill some kind of end.
The major argument for limiting the power of government broadly and expanding what we
call civil society, which again we're primarily talking about these secondary associations,
but depending on who you talk to there's arguments about really expanding the role of the family,
for example, also.
But the major argument is, well there's two arguments I'll say.
One is a basic efficiency argument and the efficiency argument simply says the government,
especially in large nation states is simply too big to know what people actually need
and is too big to actually help them in the way that they need to be helped.
So this is related to Smith's argument about sort of universal benevolence.
It would be really nice if we could take care of everyone, even people that we've never
met.
But we just can't.
We don't have the systems in place to do that.
And moreover we're actually more likely to harm them because we don't know what they
really need.
So imagine that there's some sort of hurricane and you show up with a huge truckload of water
and everyone says well, we have wells.
What we really need are generators.
Well now you've wasted a bunch of resources bringing them something that they don't need
and they're no better off.
And so the efficiency argument says we need to try to devolve a lot of services onto the
people who know those people the most and again those secondary associations where people
have face to face knowledge of what everyone needs.
So that's the efficiency piece.
The moral piece though is one that I think is even deeper than the efficiency piece and
that's a question of coercion, which means that even if you don't like the
government's response to your specific problem you will be forced to accept it.
So what a lot of classical liberals and libertarians get concerned about is the moral problem of
government intervention which is that the government is a coercive organization.
And when we talk about the state generally very often what we talk about is it's any
kind of institution that has a monopoly on the use, of course, of force.
A legitimate monopoly, a monopoly on the use of force.
So what that means is government can say I want to help these people and I'm going to
raise your taxes to do it.
And so while we might agree that those people need to be helped, I might not agree about
the way that the government is helping.
And I might also not agree with a variety of things that the government does with my
tax dollars.
So, for example, the government might say I want to use your taxes, I'm going to take
money from you and I'm going to force you to give me that money and I'm going to use
that money to create a single payer health care system.
And I say okay, I'm in favor of single payer healthcare, but the government is also going
to use that money to say go to war with a bunch of people that I think are innocent
in Afghanistan or Iraq.
So all of a sudden I don't have a choice in how my money is being used.
I might appreciate one use that the government is putting it to, but I might have real problems
with other uses.
And I don't have any option or way of exiting that relationship.
So what happens in civil society, at least ideally, is that the secondary associations
give you more freedom to move between associations that do meet your needs in various ways.
They also give you just more freedom to dissent without the coercive piece.
So if I'm a member, for example, of a conservative religious organization I may say there's all
these things that I agree with about this community, but there's a couple of things
that I don't agree with.
So I recognize that in order to be a member, a full member of this community I might have
to have very similar kinds of beliefs about certain things.
But there's areas that I can disagree and so maybe when the tithing, the basket goes
around and there's a specific organization that they're supporting that I don't believe
in or trust I say well, I'll put my money into something else for this week or something
like that.
So there's a freedom of exit with secondary associations and that's true broadly speaking.
So if I'm a member of a very, again to use the religious example, if I'm a member of
a very conservative religious organization and I, for example, don't like their attitudes
toward say women or LGBTQ folks I can say you know what, I'm going to find a different
religious association that I want to be a part of that, in fact, has what I think are
better values in this area.
And so I can move.
So when we talk about freedom of exit that's what we mean is the ability to exit relationships
that are no longer serving our purposes.
The problem with government broadly is that there's no exit.
So I can look at the government and say well, I've got all these problems with say, for
example, wars and the criminal justice system or I'm really upset about something else.
But I can't withdraw my tax dollars and say I want to put them somewhere else.
I'm stuck.
I'm stuck with that government.
And, in fact, because of restrictive immigration policies it's almost impossible nowadays to
move to another country unless you're extraordinarily privileged and have a job in that country
and all sorts of other things.
So for a lot of libertarians the problem of government is both that it tends to solve
problems in inefficient ways, but it also relies on coercion when if you rely on these
civil societies, these secondary associations, you create more wiggle room for people to
find systems that meet their needs.