Last week, I posted on Ricochet a piece asserting that the individual mandate – first proposed in the early 1990s by the social engineers at the Heritage Foundation, enthusiastically embraced at the time by Newt Gingrich, and put into effect in Massachusetts, to Gingrich’s applause, by Mitt Romney – is tyrannical. In defense of that claim, I advanced the following argument:
Government exists first and foremost for the sake of our protection. Without it, our lives and our property would not effectively be our own. Government exists also to promote our well-being. For its support, however, taxation is necessary, and we have tacitly agreed that, to be legitimate, these taxes must be passed by our elected representatives. By our own consent, we give up a certain proportion of our earnings for these purposes.
The money left in our possession, however, is our own – to do with as we please. It is in this that our liberty largely lies. Romneycare and Obamacare, with the individual mandate, changes radically our relationship vis-a-vis the government. The former presupposes that state governments have the right to tell us how we are to spend our own money, and the latter presupposes that the federal government has that right as well. Both measures are tyrannical. They blur the distinction between public and private and extend the authority of the public over the disposition of that which is primordially private. Once this principle is accepted as legitimate, there is no limit to the authority of the government over us, and mandates of this sort will multiply – as do-gooders interested in improving our lives by directing them encroach further and further into the one sphere in which we have been left free hitherto.
Managerial progressives see only the end – preventing free-riders from riding for free. And they ignore the collateral damage done by way of the means selected. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have no understanding of first principles. For both of these social engineers, citizens are subjects to be worked-over by the government for their own good. Both men are inclined to treat us as children subject to the authority of a paternalistic state under the direction of a benevolent and omniscient managerial class. . . .
Raising taxes to reward free riders is, of course, objectionable. We should oppose it on principle. But it does not in and of itself narrow in any significant fashion the sphere of our liberty. It is a question of the proper use of the public purse. The individual mandate sets a new precedent. It extends government control to the private purse.
This provoked a response on another website from Orin Kerr – a nominally libertarian law professor at George Washington University who once clerked for Anthony Kennedy, who is himself a firm advocate of the individual mandate, and who has predicted that Justice Kennedy and the U. S. Supreme Court will find the individual mandate constitutional. In his response to my piece, Kerr asserts that I argued “that conservatives should prefer a government-run health care system paid for by higher taxes over an individual-mandate approach.” In this context,he writes, “I’m curious: Did any conservatives express this view before President Obama embraced the individual mandate? Or at these sorts of arguments something that conservatives didn’t assert until long after the legislation was passed?” Then, he notes, “On April 3, 2010, a week or so after the individual mandate was passed, Rahe appeared to strongly endorse the following statement of Mark Steyn that was part of a broad criticism of the new law:
Whatever is in the [health care] bill is an intermediate stage: . . . the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be “insurers” in any meaningful sense of that term (i.e., evaluators of risk), and once that’s clear we’ll be on the fast track to Obama’s desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.
“That’s the kind of criticism," Kerr continues, "I remember at the time: Obamacare was really bad on its own, the argument ran, and even worse it was likely to lead to a government-run system in the future. As I recall, the thinking was that Obama really wanted a government-run system but didn’t get enough support for it outside the left, so he had to compromise with moderates and that resulted in the mandate.”
The answer to Professor Kerr’s question is that, in abbreviated form in the post which he cites, I advanced the very argument against the individual mandate that I stated more fully last week and that Mark Steyn did the same in the long article in National Review that I cited in that post. Here is what I said:
If the program passed in the House of Representatives on March 21st and signed into law thirty-six hours thereafter is fully implemented and left in place for any considerable length of time, it will complete the project begun by the Progressives when they first took control of the federal government in 1912. We will, as Mark argues, be indistinguishable from the Canadians and the Europeans; our character as a people will change; we will be transformed into subjects and wards of the state, and we will no longer be citizens; our economy will stagnate; and we will have neither the resolve nor the resources with which to defend our country and its way of life. If we acquiesce, we really are doomed.
I first outlined this argument on 1 July 2009 in a post on Powerline entitled The Tyrannical Ambition of Barack Obama. It was my position then, as it is my position now, that Obamacare was objectionable in and of itself and not merely on constitutional grounds. It was also my position then, as it is my position now, that it was intended by its Democratic proponents in Congress as the forerunner for a full governmentalization of healthcare.
To ask Professor Kerr’s question – whether “conservatives should prefer a government-run health care system paid for by higher taxes over an individual-mandate approach” – is, I believe, to pose the wrong question. The right question is whether the government of the United States or the government of any state should take responsibility for the healthcare of individuals residing within its boundaries – except in matters of public health (where the irresponsibility of one individual is a serious threat to the health or life of another). In my opinion, the answer that conservatives should give is that this is something for which the individual citizens of the United States and resident aliens should themselves take responsibility. We live in a republic – a political regime that presupposes a modicum of virtue on the part of its citizens. The supreme modern republican virtue – the one most necessary to the survival of the regime – is self-reliance, and the public provision of private goods inevitably erodes that essential virtue.
There are, of course, those who vigorously reject this argument. In the last century, they have variously called themselves Progressives, Liberals, and New Dealers, and for the most part they have dominated both of our political parties. Thomas E. Dewey, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948, proudly called himself “a New Deal Republican,” and, in the sphere of public policy, Dwight D. Eisenhower followed his lead – as did Richard M. Nixon, the man who brought us the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and affirmative action, and the same can be said for Bush père, Bob Dole, Bush fils, and John McCain. They were all men who could have justly said what Mitt Romney told the people of Massachusetts nine years ago, “I have progressive views.”
To get a sense of where this all began, you might want to examine the Commonwealth Club Speech that Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered in September, 1932. It was tellingly entitled Of Progressive Governance, and in it the future President attacked the free market, blaming it for the Great Depression, and called for a new economic regime. It was his claim that circumstances called
for a re-appraisal of values. A mere builder of more industrial plants, a creator of more railroad systems, and organizer of more corporations, is as likely to be a danger as a help. The day of the great promoter or the financial Titan, to whom we granted anything if only he would build, or develop, is over. Our task now is not discovery or exploitation of natural resources, or necessarily producing more goods. It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, of seeking to reestablish foreign markets for our surplus production, of meeting the problem of under consumption, of adjusting production to consumption, of distributing wealth and products more equitably, of adapting existing economic organizations to the service of the people. The day of enlightened administration has come.
FDR did not stop, however, at a call for “enlightened administration” and a redistribution of “wealth and products.” Citing not only his heroes Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt but also Thomas Jefferson, he took the old Progressive vision, which argued for governance by an elite distinguished by the expertise of its members, and he gave it a new twist intended to make it seem consistent with the American Founding, recasting the argument in terms of rights:
As I see it, the task of government in its relation to business is to assist the development of an economic declaration of rights, an economic constitutional order. This is the common task of statesman and business man. It is the minimum requirement of a more permanently safe order of things.
Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. He may by sloth or crime decline to exercise that right; but it may not be denied him. We have no actual famine or death; our industrial and agricultural mechanism can produce enough and to spare. Our government formal and informal, political and economic, owes to every one an avenue to possess himself of a portion of that plenty sufficient for his needs, through his own work.
Every man has a right to his own property; which means a right to be assured, to the fullest extent attainable, in the safety of his savings. By no other means can men carry the burdens of those parts of life which, in the nature of things afford no chance of labor; childhood, sickness, old age. In all thought of property, this right is paramount; all other property rights must yield to it. If, in accord with this principle, we must restrict the operations of the speculator, the manipulator, even the financier, I believe we must accept the restriction as needful, not to hamper individualism but to protect it.
These two requirements must be satisfied, in the main, by the individuals who claim and hold control of the great industrial and financial combinations which dominate so large a part of our industrial life. They have undertaken to be, not business men, but princes-princes of property. I am not prepared to say that the system which produces them is wrong. I am very clear that they must fearlessly and competently assume the responsibility which goes with the power. So many enlightened business men know this that the statement would be little more that a platitude, were it not for an added implication.
This implication is, briefly, that the responsible heads of finance and industry instead of acting each for himself, must work together to achieve the common end. They must, where necessary, sacrifice this or that private advantage; and in reciprocal self-denial must seek a general advantage. It is here that formal government-political government, if you choose, comes in. Whenever in the pursuit of this objective the lone wolf, the unethical competitor, the reckless promoter, the Ishmael or Insull whose hand is against every man’s, declines to join in achieving and end recognized as being for the public welfare, and threatens to drag the industry back to a state of anarchy, the government may properly be asked to apply restraint. Likewise, should the group ever use its collective power contrary to public welfare, the government must be swift to enter and protect the public interest.
The full ramifications of what he had in mind when he spoke of "a reappraisal of values" FDR did not reveal until the last year of his life – when, in the message the ailing President sent Congress on 11 January 1944 in lieu of delivering a State of the Union Address, he elaborated in complete form what he meant by “an economic declaration of rights” in the process of calling for “the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known”:
We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.
One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920’s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
I quote this document at length – chiefly, because I believe that, if you read it twice and think about it, you will recognize that it is the founding document of the administrative entitlements state and that Roosevelt’s program of positive economic rights has dictated American public discourse and public policy now for almost sixty-eight years. In fact, apart from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, no Republican Presidential nominees have articulated a principled argument against this program. Instead, the Republicans in high office have served the function that the New Dealers intended for them. They embraced the administrative entitlements state, and they intervened from time to time to tweak the system, to expand it on the margins, and to make it work more efficiently. They served as the tax collectors for the welfare state, and they prided themselves on their managerial competence.
It is no wonder that Professor Kerr thinks it appropriate to ask whether “conservatives should prefer a government-run health care system paid for by higher taxes over an individual-mandate approach.” He takes FDR’s second bill of rights for granted. Once one has accepted the legitimacy of the younger Roosevelt’s program, the only question left to be answered in current circumstances is what are the most efficient and effective political arrangements for guaranteeing that everyone is covered by health insurance.
I would suggest, instead, that FDR’s economic bill of rights is inconsistent with limited government and republican liberty – which presuppose a distinction between public and private that cannot be sustained in a world in which employment, remuneration, housing, education, and medical care are matters for public provision. The proper question to ask and wrestle with is not the question that Professor Kerr posed. We should not ask how we can most prudently expand public provision. We should, instead, ask, “How can we gradually and prudently roll back the administrative entitlements state? We face a crisis. That the regime founded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and gradually articulated by his successors – Democrat and Republican alike – is bankrupt is now clear. In what order should we prune the welfare state and how quickly should we move?”
These are the prudential questions we must face. Instead of embracing FDR’s bill of economic rights, we should begin thinking about when to repeal the minimum wage law, when and how to abolish Food Stamps, Medicaid, federal aid to education, and federally-financed student loans, how we should reform Social Security and Medicare, and when and how to eliminate public housing.
In November, 2012 – if all goes as it almost certainly will – Americans will once again have an opportunity to choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee – between a utopian progressive disinclined to concern himself with how programs will be paid for and a managerial progressive who agrees with him about the ends and purposes of government but knows that the books must be balanced. It is conceivable that the latter, who is a political chameleon, will recognize the bankruptcy of the administrative entitlements state, abandon the progressive “views” that he trumpeted in 2002, and take on the administrative entitlements state. But this is unlikely.
Whether the unprecedented political opportunity now within our grasp will recur it is hard to say. There has never been a Democrat as contemptuous of practicality as the current presidential incumbent, and there may never be another. The one thing that is clear is that tweaking the system is not going to make the bankruptcy of the administrative entitlements state disappear. At best, it would kick the can not very far down the road.
In the interim, in the absence of a better presidential candidate, our task should be to box Mitt Romney in, to bend him to our will, to give him every incentive we can devise for jettisoning his progressive “views,” and – when these efforts fall short (as they surely will) – to make sure that he is the last managerial progressive nominated for the Presidency by the Republican Party.
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Comments :
Mar '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
Prof. Rahe: You’ve written a very sweeping post here and there is much to comment on. Overall, I think your narrative is correct. You accurately describe the differences in vision between these regimes and the different ordering of priorities within them that necessitate and produce very different sorts of men.
It is with that in mind that I say: No one in the Republican party has made a serious and sustained argument for what a state, founded on these principles, would actually look like in a 21st century world. Smaller arguments about tinkering around the edges have been made, and calls have been issued for sweeping reforms of specific programs, but a gaping hole exists within in our discourse in the place where a description of what these principles would actually look like when embodied in an institutional structure designed to propagate, defend, and exercise them ought to be. That lack of political imagination is itself a very serious problem.
Oct '10
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
How do you reconcile this statement:
with the disparate treatment of the two greatest and most insidious cases of the state provision of things rightly left to individual citizens:
Why repeal, abolish and eliminate welfare programs aimed at the poor, and merely reform those that have co-opted the middle class? I'm sure that's not your motivation or intention, but what makes reform the answer to your question "In what order should we prune the welfare state and how quickly should we move?”
OSHA = Occupational Safety and Health Administration (not 'Safety Hazard').
Edited on Jan 2 at 7:28amMar '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
Dr. Rahe: "Government exists first and foremost for the sake of our protection. Without it, our lives and our property would not effectively be our own. Government exists also to promote our well-being."
These are the salient points to which all other arguments must be subordinated. However, they must be placed within the context of the following:
1. "Our protection" means public protection, or protection against those threats which are systemic rather than personal, and limits its focus to threats from without. National defense, public health (i.e. the polio vaccine, smallpox eradication, etc.) and the like.
2. "Our well-being" does not include seeing that there's a chicken in every pot at the cost to the taxpaying public. However, promoting our well-being does include pointing out the moral hazard of creating a culture which allows its members to look elsewhere for those things which must first be sought from within or from one's own resources.
Someone wrote last week that requiring equality of distribution creates a truly zero-sum game at the expense of economic expansion, and the only societies which have ever attained true equality of distribution are societies of slaves.
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
Crow's Nest: Prof. Rahe: You’ve written a very sweeping post here and there is much to comment on. Overall, I think your narrative is correct. You accurately describe the differences in vision between these regimes and the different ordering of priorities within them that necessitate and produce very different sorts of men.
It is with that in mind that I say: No one in the Republican party has made a serious and sustained argument for what a state, founded on these principles, would actually look like in a 21st century world. Smaller arguments about tinkering around the edges have been made, and calls have been issued for sweeping reforms of specific programs, but a gaping hole exists within in our discourse in the place where a description of what these principles would actually look like when embodied in an institutional structure designed to propagate, defend, and exercise them ought to be. That lack of political imagination is itself a very serious problem. · Jan 2 at 7:15am
I agree wholeheartedly. The political education this country needs should start with us.
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
genferei:
OSHA = Occupational Safety and Health Administration (not 'Safety Hazard'). · Jan 2 at 7:19am
Edited on Jan 02 at 07:28 am
Thanks. I will correct this. I wrote this piece late last night, and . . . well you can imagine. My bet is that there are typos as well.
Jul '10
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
So that's what a "nominal libertarian" is, a LINO! The false choice is the key to keeping the whole, wheezing, crooked apparatus up and running. Thank you, oh Parties of Washington, for once more pointing the ship of state directly for the rocks and ordering flank speed ahead.
I thought the tradition of sabbatical was supposed to serve to mitigate ivory tower syndrome.
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
genferei: How do you reconcile this statement:
with the disparate treatment of the two greatest and most insidious cases of the state provision of things rightly left to individual citizens:
Why repeal, abolish and eliminate welfare programs aimed at the poor, and merely reform those that have co-opted the middle class? I'm sure that's not your motivation or intention, but what makes reform the answer to your question "In what order should we prune the welfare state and how quickly should we move?”· Jan 2 at 7:19am
Edited on Jan 02 at 07:28 am
My view is that the aim of the reforms should be that these programs wither away.
Jul '10
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
Illiniguy: ...
Someone wrote last week that requiring equality of distribution creates a truly zero-sum game at the expense of economic expansion, and the only societies which have ever attained true equality of distribution are societies of slaves.
Not them neither, there cannot be slaves without slave masters.
Jun '10
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
As a country and a people, we have come a long way from risking our lives to protest an increase in the tax on tea, imposed without representation. Now we allow nameless and faceless bureaucrats in the EPA to force us to use mercury laden poisonous light bulbs in our homes, or a panel of unelected and practically speaking non revokable people to determine what health services we will be allowed to purchase. To turn back the clock on progressivism we must have a citizenry with a stout heart and a firm spine. I am afraid that is no longer the case.
Edited on Jan 2 at 7:41amJul '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
For a late night snack that was a lot of calories, professor. To answer your main question, single payer is preferable to me. There is one less layer of bureaucracy theoretically. Less government controlled private industry is less of a Randian nightmare. Overt socialism makes the disease easier for people to spot and direct blame accordingly. Costs would likely be less and a private minimally regulated industry would thrive around dysfunctional single payer. I must quantify my answer though for I feel like I am at a dance with with the only free ladies looking like Rosie O'Donnell and one just wants to dance but the other insists on champagne first. Can I sit this one out?
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
cdor: As a country and a people, we have come a long way from risking our lives to protest an increase in the tax on tea, imposed without representation. Now we allow nameless and faceless bureaucrats in the EPA to force us to use mercury laden poisonous light bulbs in our homes, or a panel of unelected and practically speaking non revokable people to determine what health services we will be allowed to purchase. To turn back the clock on progressivism we must have a citizenry with a stout heart and a firm spine. I am afraid that is no longer the case. · Jan 2 at 7:40am
Edited on Jan 02 at 07:41 am
Amen.
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
I am not sure that I agree, but you certainly have an argument. My only regret is that you made me think of Rosie O'Donnell.
Oct '10
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
Extraordinary article, Professor. Thank you. FDR's Commonwealth Club speech from 1932 could have been written for Vladimir Putin, were he half so eloquent.
One question: who, in your view, among actual Presidential candidates in 2012, both grasps (or could grasp) and agrees (or would agree) with your argumentation here? Is there anyone among them you think likely to oppose the ethos of the “administrative entitlements state” and also willing to do something to combat it?
Feb '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
A most powerful read requiring a very careful study by the complete electorate. It's too bad the vast majority will remain un-informed about the progressive threat to our future survival.
Jul '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
Charlize Theron, there you go sir. Well I answered because I think society could directly blame the government for the problems rather than the occupy loonies blaming "private" industry. Since I would be one of many being shackled to the desk and demanded to work the human assembly line I have thought about this. I do know that the least grateful patients are ironically the Medicaid folks though. You asked a question that boxes my existence in to a corner and in the immortal words of Patrick Swayze, "No one puts Baby in a corner"
Dec '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
Thanks for your clarifying presentation of this fundamental problem. It would be to everyone's benefit if your analysis could reach as wide a distribution as possible. The difficulty of "boxing Mitt Romney in" is that it few conservative understand what a solution that nurtures self-reliance, independence and virtue would look like.
I will make an attempt to provide an example in my next comment.
Jan '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
Neither! Why the federal government couldn't just act as an insurer is beyond me. If the stated goal by Democrats was to wring profits out of the industry, the government could have just ran as a non-profit, collecting premiums and paying claims. But make no mistake, when premium costs are decoupled from health histories and risks, it's no longer insurance. And if it is determined that society is going to decouple the risk from the cost, you're almost forced to require an individual mandate to prevent free-riding.
Dec '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
To win this argument, conservatives need to provide an attractive alternative that exemplifies their principles.
Current tax law has led to employers controlling their employee’s healthcare. To remedy this injustice healthcare expenses should be tax deductable for the individual. The average spending on employee healthcare is over $8,000 per employee so individuals should be allowed a tax deductable contribution of up to $10,000 to their own private health savings account (HSA). Currently, the HSA contribution limit is too low and health insurance premiums are not tax deductable. Given this option, most employees would insist their employer deposit what they spend per employee in their own HSA. Then, most individuals would choose inexpensive high deductable health insurance and pay the minor healthcare expenses themselves. Most would substantially reduce their healthcare cost and accumulate the savings in their HSA for future emergencies. It will be in the individual’s self-interest to learn to manage their own healthcare with a view to their own needs and priorities. This solution aligns self-interest–getting a tax deduction and keeping the savings–with the virtues of moderation and prudence. It increases the individual's prosperity, self-reliance, independence, freedom and prudence .
Jul '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
LowcountryJoe....precisely. And most wholeheartedly, Neither!
Feb '11
Re: Which Species of Socialized Medicine is Preferable: Single-Payer or the Individual Mandate?
LowCountry Joe..."and if it is determined that society is going to decouple the risk from the cost, you're almost forced to require an individual mandate to prevent free-riding."
It goes even further than that. If the risk is socialized, then there will be a strong incentive for government to restrict high-risk behavior, according to the perception of "risk" popular among the governing classes.