Negative Consequence #7: Polarization

A different cost of government intervention is polarizing society.  This occurs because interventions assume everyone should behave in a particular way. Imposing one position throughout society, however, forces many to accept policies they find disagreeable or offensive, and this generates anger and frustration.

The single best illustration is abortion policy and Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision prohibited states from adopting laws that ban abortion and placed severe restrictions on regulation of abortion.  This created a level of frustration among abortion opponents that could have been avoided with less intervention, such as leaving abortion policy to the states.

A different example is public schools, which must take stands on issues like affirmative action, prayer, dress and speech codes, curricular content, teaching methods, and more.   Some parents are strongly in favor of, say, school prayer, while others are strongly opposed.  Public schools have no room for compromise on this issue; they must accept the policy dictated by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment.   Vouchers, while not immune from this problem, facilitate compromise if government simply takes no stand on whether vouchers can be used at schools that include prayer.  In this way, parents can exercise choice.

Gay marriage is another case in point.  By being in the marriage business, government is forced to take a stand on what constitutes a marriage and therefore to be either for or against gay marriage.  Under a private contracting approach, government need never mention sexuality one way or another.

Still a further example is funding of science, which forces government to address issues like stem cell research.  Leaving all funding to the private sector would not eliminate opposition. But critics would not see their tax dollars used to support this research, so their basis for criticism and their degree of anger would be far lower.

In some instances, of course, polarized reactions might be something society has to accept; the Supreme Court’s decision on flag-burning is perhaps an example.  But there are far more instances where the benefits of imposing one view are hard to see.   This is one reason to keep most policies at the state rather than the federal level.