That wise old bird GK Chesterton one wrote that “if men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they will be governed by the ten thousand commandments.” I often think of this line nowadays, especially with regard to how approaches to social and economic policy manage the reality of human nature.
If we do not impose internal constraints on our behaviour, then ultimately everyone else will have to bear the costs of that behaviour, and the government will have to limit individual freedoms or attempt to restructure society. A 2011 estimate suggested that family breakdown and the consequences of “sexual liberation” cost the United Kingdom as much as £100bn annually, if the costs of crime, courts, policing, welfare and so on are taken into account. Even if this estimate is much too high, even if it overstates the case by three or four times, we are still looking at tens of billions of pounds. And that was more than a decade ago!
