The philosopher John Stuart Mill’s famous ‘harm principle,’ laid out in his 1859 classic On Liberty, says that:
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
This is a pretty good rule of thumb in life and public policy. An individual should be free to pursue happiness as he or she sees fit as long as it doesn’t harm others, imposing what economists like to call “negative externalities.” On such a basis, the response of the social liberal to the recent decriminalization of bathhouses in Minneapolis might well be “If you don’t like bathhouses, don’t go to one.”
But the day Mayor Jacob Frey signed the ordinances repealing the adult bathhouse ban, MPR News reported:
Dylan Boyer, a member of the steering committee for the Safer Sex Spaces Coalition and the development director of the Aliveness Project, told MPR News the bill signing was a “huge day,” and he feels grateful for the support of the city.
“Now the real work begins taking the necessary steps to build a bathhouse,” Boyer said. “I’m looking forward to working alongside the council and mayor’s office to ensure public health funding and strategies are a foundational pillar of future bathhouses in Minneapolis.” [Emphasis added]
Why would these establishments require “public health funding?”
If there are health issues arising from these bathhouses which are confined to those frequenting them, there is no need for “public” funding. The attendees could simply be required to purchase insurance or the city could impose a “bathhouse tax,” payable by their customers at point of sale. This would be an example of a “Pigouvian tax,” which, as Eric Harris Bernstein of We Make Minnesota explained in different circumstances last year, is “a tax levied on a socially harmful activity in hopes of reducing its prevalence and/or raising revenue to compensate for its deleterious effects.” Either way, if these harms are confined to bathhouse customers — if they are “internalized,” in the economist’s jargon — their is no need for “public” funding to ameliorate them.
In rattling the begging bowl for taxpayer’s cash, Mr. Boyer seems to be conceding that there are health issues arising from bathhouses which are not confined to those frequenting them, they are “externalized.” If he is, we have a “negative externality” or “harm to others,” as Mill put it, and under the “harm principle,” that justifies community intervention.
If you are going to demand that the community funds your activities, you have to accept that, in doing so, you are giving the community a say in those activities, and wouldn’t it be reasonable for that community to decline to pay for them and deal with the supposed “negative externalities” by simply pronouncing these activities illegal? That is why bathhouses were closed back in the 1980s and why bars and restaurants across Minnesota were closed in 2020 and 2021.
The idea that it is none of your business what consenting adults get up to in private falls apart when they demand that you pay for it. The social liberal offers the bargain “Stay out of my wallet and I’ll stay out of your bedroom,” but if the counterparty to the offer insists on entering the social liberal’s wallet, they can’t complain when the social liberal shows up tut-tutting in their bedroom; indeed, they have invited them in.
I have written before that conservatives — even those socially liberal ones — ought to be careful not to identify negative externalities too readily. I humbly offer that advice to “progressives,” too.