Law - What is it Good For? Part 3

I have saved the biggest topic in this discussion for last so I will be as brief as possible. It is often assumed that having few laws increases freedom of choice but, in fact, the competive nature of human beings often means that the opposite is the case. For example, a libertarian hobbyhorse is that drugs in sport should be legalised. The argument is that if athletes choose to take risks with their health they are free to do so. The problem is with what happens to the athletes who do not wish to abuse their bodies this way. As their rivals begin to consume more and more steroids, they are forced to either join them or simply to drop out of the sport altogether, which is no choice at all. As the drug-taking increases exponentially, the women's events may as well be abolished because the competitiors will be men within six months.

A similar, although rather more complex, case arises with regard to the capitalist free market. Without the minimum wage, an employer could still choose to pay his employees a reasonable amount of money but he would be at a competitive disadvantage which may eventually drive him out of business. I believe that this is why many good people become corrupt. They do not feel that their actions are morally right but they know that they have little alternative if they want to survive.

A solution commonly proposed to tackle disability discrimination is to educate employers about it. The above analysis shows that this will not be successful if businesses feel that they get an competitive edge from their disciminatory practices, for example, if they believe that customers of a supermarket would be put off by seeing disabled staff. The knowledge obtained by educating them will simply be used to find out how to avoid their responsibilities. Similarly, the proposed laws on corporate manslaughter can be criticised because the likely fines will be much less than the cost of missing a deadline in a construction contract, rendering it a poor deterrent from a commercial point of view. Only if punishments are sufficient to influence cold financial reasoning will employers be truly free to listen to their consciences.

However, I want to end on a slightly more pro-active note. The main problem with concluding that the law must be strengthened is that it sometimes discourages people from looking for other solutions. If it is not worth educating employers then what is worth doing? The missing link are the customers because, unlike businessmen, their antipathy towards disabled supermarket staff is based on ignorance rather than economic considerations. Ironically, although many of them probably do experience an unconscious discomfort in the presence of disabled people, they would be equally horrified to discover that there is active discrimination taking place. Therefore, the key is to educate these people, the general public, whose consumer behaviour can change the calculation which businesses are forced by the market to make. It may also eventually encourage them to vote for new more effective laws.