Families, charities, mentors, volunteers and other people-sized institutions provide the kind of personalised, holistic care that society’s most vulnerable people need.
“We have swapped the ecology of the woodland for the monoculture of the polytunnel. Organic social institutions like the family have many of the qualities of mature woodland. They are rich and intimately-interconnected habitats where a diverse variety of life is supported and nourished.
You can grow woodland plants in polytunnels and other artificial environments but you can’t replicate the life-sustaining complexity of the woodland. You can’t reproduce the way plants and animals nurture each other. In the same way, government can undertake some functions undertaken by a family or a community. The state, or market, can replace the breadwinning role of a father but it can’t tuck a child into bed at night…
The state and the market are one dimensional – providing material care. They don’t provide the personal touch. Someone down on their luck doesn’t just need money dispensed from behind a plastic screen. He also needs encouragement, friendship and hope. He needs to know that someone is in his corner. He needs help to walk tall again.”
- John Hayes MP
Henry Ford famously said that motorists could buy any colour of Model T car they wanted – as long as it was black. Industry has evolved since those ‘Fordist’ days. Even a complex product like a car comes in a huge variety of colours, shapes and specifications. But if car manufacturers, clothing firms, restaurants and travel agencies provide tailored products to unique customers, the state is still living in the world of the Ford Motor Company’s founder.
The Fordist state
The state’s Fordist services include Britain’s free-at-the-point-of-use health and education services. Little diversity of supply in these services produces little choice for patients and parents. And without competition between schools and hospitals, service providers can become complacent.
Another Fordist characteristic of the British state is the way it interacts with charities. A control freakery over taxpayers’ money has meant that stakeholders have not been empowered to challenge the gray diversity that characterises the state-funded voluntary sector.
The decline of 3D institutions
The cost of providing state services has mushroomed over recent decades. With the growth in government spending has come big increases in taxation. Most married couples – the ultimate source of 3D care for children and elderly relatives – are being forced to work longer and longer hours to pay taxes to receive services that they – and their peers – could better provide for themselves. As they spend more hours in the office and fewer hours with their children, or in building community, there is a decline in social capital. This decline in social capital then produces calls for more government intervention. A vicious cycle results.
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