Governments Ruin Everything. Including Suicide!

A Liberal, Antireligious Case Against Government-Provided Euthanasia

Euthanasia is a hot topic these days, primarily because the UK is planning on legalizing it. And, as I learned from the post I made on atypical sexology, I get a lot more views when I write on spicy topics. As such, this post will discuss the Public Choice Economics of Suicide.

I will also make it clear that is topic is personal for me. My mother died of terminal cancer. I am intimately aware of the pain, misery and abject suffering she endured (as I was her primary caretaker for several years). If she were to have decided that suicide was in her best interests, I wouldn’t have objected nor attempted to dissuade her in any way. Indeed, I believe in an absolute unconditional individual right to suicide that is based on the same principle as the right to life – you own your life and thus the decision to end it is (and must always remain) your choice. I also believe in a similar right to self-medication, so in other words I’d put the overdose-of-benzodiazepines-Suicide-Pills in the same adults-only Libertarian Vending Machine as I’d put the assault rifles, the cocaine and the sex-change hormones.

There is simply no rational case for the proposition that allowing or helping people to end their unendurable suffering would be bad for the “dignity of human life.” Unendurable suffering is not dignified. Those who believe this suffering is dignified, frankly, are almost certainly all sado-voyeuristic Roman Catholic extremists who experience an erotic connection with the Passion of Yeshua of Nazareth and think their jollies are “religious ecstasy” (for two ironclad examples of people like this, see Anne Catherine Emmerich and Mother Theresa of Kolkata).

Despite this, I have severe reservations about governmentally institutionalized assisted suicide. Why? Because governments act in their own interests, not those of their citizens.

Let us take the UK as an example of this. There are essentially three pillars to the UK’s Civic Religion – the Royal Family, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the National Health Service (or NHS). The latter already has chronic problems, delivers an inferior quality of care compared to many other European nations (who typically have systems where funding follows patients and thus benefit from internal market dynamics that improve quality), and is only going to be further burdened by the UK’s aging population.

Not only is the UK population aging (the birth rate is about 1.75 babies per woman, which is below the replacement level of about 2.1) but the UK cannot use immigration to solve the demographic issue – UK voters have reached the absolute limit of their sociopolitical tolerance for the current status quo policy of essentially-unmanaged immigration without any serious vetting or caps. This is why Reform UK is likely to win a very large number of seats at the next UK Parliamentary elections. Demography Doomsaying is clearly a very salient discussion for the UK, and since the number of immigrants is almost certain to be sharply reduced going forward, the only alternatives the UK has are tax hikes, benefit cuts, massive government efficiency initiatives, technological adaptation, and forced breeding. Thanks to Rachel Reeves (aka “Rachel from Accounts”), massive tax hikes are already being imposed (and might even destroy the small British farm and push so many students out of private school that it further increases the burden on public education). Whilst a forced breeding policy is almost certainly not going to be implemented (thankfully), the UK is at breaking point already, and things will only get harder as the population ages.

But what if there were less sick old people to take care of?

In brief, the perverse incentive facing the government is to deny healthcare to citizens for who aren’t going to be able to subsequently generate enough public revenue to “pay back” the cost of their care. Governments with NHS-style healthcare systems already (and unavoidably) do this to some degree anyway, but a policy of government-provided assisted suicide allows them to passively continue to do this and expand their ability to do this, whilst claiming a humanitarian rather than a fiscal motive.

The sad reality is that we’ve seen exactly the same thing in Canada, where military personnel with PTSD are proactively offered euthanasia (MAID – Medical Assistance in Dying). We’ve seen people with mental illnesses – not necessarily physical ones – be euthanized in continental Europe. I am not suggesting that the British policy will necessarily or inevitably devolve into a mandatory euthanasia program (and neither Canada nor continental Europe have reached that point, thankfully). But we cannot pretend that the government will design the policy in a way that isn’t tainted by its own self-interest.

After all, we’re talking about the UK here. In the UK, bureaucracy is seen as a norm, and (as shown by the NHS and BBC) even part of the national identity. Public Choice Theory makes it clear that bureaucracy is a self-interested, budget-maximizing interest group within the state, that advocates for the continued growth of the state and consistently votes for the parties that will enable that expansion. But the political culture of the UK does not have anywhere near the level of classically liberal sentiment necessary to ferment hatred of bureaucracy (and, of course, bureaucrats in both the education sector and the public broadcasting sector have a perverse incentive to indoctrinate the public to love, or at least tolerate, Big Bureaucratic Brother). Ergo, reforming bureaucracy to make it more efficient without cutting service delivery is also very politically unlikely (except under Nigel Farage or, to a lesser extent, Kemi Badenoch). The cultural norm in the UK sees bureaucracy as an end in itself and the private sector as a means to its perpetuation. Under these cultural conditions, it is beyond unreasonable to expect that government-backed euthanasia is or will forever be purely driven by humanitarian imperatives.

It may fairly be asked, however, “what’s wrong with that?” After all, every society wants its social services to be sustainable. Bureaucracy is not the only self-interested group in our society (indeed, everyone is self-interested to at least some extent). As an ethical egoist, I actually think self-interest is moral (so long as it is rational selfishness rather than parasitic predation on others). But the fundamental issue, for me, is the relationship between the individual and the state. Whether you’re a classical liberal like me, or a social liberal (a supporter of individualism and civil liberties, but a proponent of a mixed economy on the grounds that a mixed economy is necessary to enable individual flourishing), the liberal tradition makes it clear the state should exist as a servant to the individual and a protector of the individual’s rights and interests. In a free society, the state must be subordinate to the citizenry (which is the whole point of democratic accountability). But in the UK’s pro-bureaucracy political culture, the inverse seems to be the case – the individual is seen as existing for the state’s benefit. Publicly provided assisted suicide, since it is almost certainly driven in part by fiscal motives, only continues to entrench this mindset. Even if it remains perfectly voluntary, we can’t pretend that NHS representatives wouldn’t be at least tempted to guilt the chronically ill elderly into taking euthanasia “to protect the NHS.” The fact that this assisted suicide policy was introduced by a Labour government – in other words, a government of the Party of Bureaucracy and the party born from the socialist (and thus opposed to the liberal) tradition – is not an accident. The UK’s entire political culture needs to shift away from the veneration of bureaucracy, and toward the liberal treasuring of the individual and their rights. Publicly provided assisted suicide only cements the principles of state-worship.

As a staunch supporter of the right to die, one may fairly ask me whether I have a better alternative. I believe I do. The UK Parliament should simply decriminalize suicide, decriminalize assisting a suicide, and make medical assistance in dying a private sector matter. In short, the UK should privatize suicide. This could easily be done through making it possible to purchase a lethal dose of sedatives/painkillers from a pharmacist, perhaps upon a doctor’s prescription (to make sure the suicider has not been coerced or manipulated). Doctors who object to suicide would not be compelled into making such prescriptions. Nor would the first principle of the Hippocratic Oath be violated by a doctor making such a prescription, since it would be the patient making the choice to not only get the prescription (or try to do so), buy the medication, and then take it. In addition, pharmacists with sincere moral/ethical or religious objections to assisting with a suicide should be allowed to refuse to fill the prescription. Other methods, such as the legalization of the consensual purchase of “suicide machines,” should also be considered.

And yes, such suicide may not initially be cheap. But free markets and private enterprise have a brilliant record at making things very inexpensive and very accessible very quickly. There’s no reason to believe the same trend we see in consumer electronics (look at how quickly Blu-ray players got cheap!) wouldn’t apply to suicide machines or to high doses of benzodiazepines. How much does a pill of diazepam cost? Not very much. So if your life is no longer worth living, it is very inexpensive to buy and subsequently swallow a whole bottle of them.

I believe in an unconditional, absolute, inalienable individual right to suicide. But government bureaucracies ruin everything and suicide is no exception. We neither want nor need a Ministry of Suicide. We need less bureaucrats, not more, and there is something deeply troubling about trusting the government with Suicide Pills and Suicide Machines. An individual’s decision to end their own life is so personal and so intimately connected with that individual’s sovereignty over their own body that merely bringing the state into the matter strikes me as just as horrible as bringing the state into the bedroom via laws about private sexual conduct or family planning. And surely, those who support widespread social services would agree that social services should serve society, rather than society existing to serve the social services.

Painless, easy suicide should be widely available. Via the free market. Privatize euthanasia.