What really gets me, though, are stupid laws. (Which is the category that most fall under, unfortunately.) Take, for instance, the "unmarried" clause of welfare and certain states' health insurance coverage.
Recently, Illinois passed a law saying that parents' health insurance covers their children until the children are 26 as long as they are unmarried. Without disputing the overall costs on the system, etc. of this, we can look at the societal implications of this one caveat, "unmarried." Let's say example young adult Rachel is 23 and gets pregnant. She and the baby's father may be considering marriage but both are still in graduate school or have jobs without benefits and do not have adequate health insurance to have a baby. Thus, they choose not to get married. The law disincentivizes marriage.
One might argue that Rachel didn't have to get pregnant or have the baby, but these things happen all too often and this is a decision that many unwed mothers will have to make: get married and provide a stable family situation without comprehensive health insurance, or stay unmarried and get government support.
I am conflicted here. As a libertarian, I believe that marriage is not the government's business. There should not be any law encouraging or discouraging the practice, it should just be ignored. At the same time, I think we as a society need to strengthen the family unit... but the government should not be involved. Why should the government care who I choose to marry, other than for inheritance or power of attorney reasons? Marriage is a religious ritual, not a governmental one. As we hand this over to the government, it strives to devalue and destroy the family, making individuals reliant upon the government instead of their communities and families. (Perhaps this is my government-paranoia coming through, but there is a lot of evidence for this.)
I am conflicted here. As a libertarian, I believe that marriage is not the government's business. There should not be any law encouraging or discouraging the practice, it should just be ignored. At the same time, I think we as a society need to strengthen the family unit... but the government should not be involved. Why should the government care who I choose to marry, other than for inheritance or power of attorney reasons? Marriage is a religious ritual, not a governmental one. As we hand this over to the government, it strives to devalue and destroy the family, making individuals reliant upon the government instead of their communities and families. (Perhaps this is my government-paranoia coming through, but there is a lot of evidence for this.)
The reason we have these married/unmarried laws in the first place is politicians inability to see consequences and differentiate between causation and correlation. (A great essay that really gets into this is Frederic Bastiat's What is seen and what is not seen.)
Back in the 1960s when the modern welfare program was constructed, law makers looked at who needed the most help financially, and single-parents families were (and are) an alarming majority of people in poverty. So, instead of addressing the system and incentivizing contraceptives or marriage, the federal government designated welfare money for single parent households. Not surprisingly, single parent household rates skyrocketed. (Why would you choose marriage when you can get money to be unmarried?) Every single case cannot be blamed on welfare, because there are a variety of situations where this occurs. The rising trend can be attributed to it though, since it has more than doubled in the last few decades. The more children you have out of wedlock, the more money you get.
This is the problem with much of the big government laws that are being foisted upon the American public. They disincentivize healthy behaviors. Living in a single parent household isn't bad, in and of itself, but a permissive attitude has been created to make it the norm, rather than the exception. There is no need to create a family unit because the government will help you out. It sounds like an oversimplification, but this is the logical conclusion. (Why would you choose marriage, especially in a society that embraces single-mother families?)
Marriage should not be something the government needs to know about. The more the government becomes involved in it, the more that families fall apart. Think about Social Security for the elderly... a hundred years ago, the elderly would rarely be sent to something like a nursing home... their children or relatives would take care of them, and if they couldn't, charity homes would take them in. Now, everyone relies upon the government to fulfill the family's role.
As a libertarian woman, I am struggling to find a way to strengthen family and community while disentangling government from it at the same time. Does anyone have any insight into this?
Marriage should not be something the government needs to know about. The more the government becomes involved in it, the more that families fall apart. Think about Social Security for the elderly... a hundred years ago, the elderly would rarely be sent to something like a nursing home... their children or relatives would take care of them, and if they couldn't, charity homes would take them in. Now, everyone relies upon the government to fulfill the family's role.
As a libertarian woman, I am struggling to find a way to strengthen family and community while disentangling government from it at the same time. Does anyone have any insight into this?
