HOW MUCH AUTHORITY DOES THE VILLAGE HAVE?

We have motorcycle helmet laws, and seat belt laws, and mask mandates in part under the argument that public resources go to picking up the accidents and treating the sick.  For instance, "Evidence shows the economic benefits of universal motorcycle helmet laws greatly exceed costs. Most benefits come from avoided healthcare and productivity losses."  Recently, health care practitioners and their allies have offered a similar argument, going so far as to suggest that people who don't get their corona shots be last in line for intensive care.  Milton Friedman objected to that sort of reasoning, with a bon mot along the lines of "people do not bear a sticker identifying them as property of the government."

It might be that helmet, seat belt, and mask requirements are the least costly way to reach a more efficient use of medical facilities. It's the more general principle that interests me, that is, whether there are limits to governments treating people as if they were state property.

Consider, first, China's recent culture war on androgyny.  "The government is going after celebrity culture and in particular young men they deem to be too effeminate."  There might be a backward bending labor supply curve at work, although that's not what interests me today.

China's leadership certainly seems to be setting up LGBT folks and "non-masculine" men as social scapegoats. These moves may also be an indication that the younger generation is not on board with the Chinese government's goals, and that leaders are struggling to rein them in. Working-age adults are starting to rebel against the heavy workloads being demanded to maintain a population that is growing older. A cultural movement called "lying flat" has developed, where young adults are rejecting long work schedules and living simpler lives in defiance of the ruling party's pressures.

In that context, these new commandments seem to blames video games, entertainment, and androgyny for making men "soft" when a lot of them are just burned out.

All of that is likely true, but it is irrelevant to mandarins in Pekin who think of The People as property to be pushed about as the mandarinate wants.  "Pointing a finger at China's version of Drag Queen Story Hour is a dodge—a way to redirect attention away from a top-heavy and corrupt regime that is far from the socialist fantasy where the government provides for its citizens."  That is the nature of communism.  "Only Communists could try to force a regimented set of behaviors on men and punish those who don’t conform."  Doesn't that depend, dear reader, on what you define as a "regimented set?"  Motorcycle helmets?  Seat belts?  Biden muzzles?

Despite the talk by self-styled progressives about government as Nurturant Parent, I doubt that there is anyone in the United States, of any political persuasion, who seriously wants to ban androgyny among the young.  (Like hot-rodders and hippies, this too shall pass.)  Likewise, there's little serious interest in mandating video game curfews on adolescents.

"Teenagers are the future of our motherland," said one government spokesperson, according to the state-owned news agency Xinhua. "Protecting the physical and mental health of minors is related to the people's vital interests, and relates to the cultivation of the younger generation in the era of national rejuvenation." (It's no surprise that the Communist Party sees young people not as autonomous individuals but as resources to marshal, to extract from, to serve the interests of the state.)

Whether China's teens will see things that way, or, in the way of young people, figure out a way to evade the rules, remains to be seen.

Likewise, despite other self-styled progressives having notions of the state owning children, there are limits to what government can do.

“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. ‘Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility.’ We haven’t had a very collective notion of ‘These are our children.’ So part of it is, we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.”

In China, they take that responsibility seriously.  Authorized pregnancies might still be a reality.  In the United States, nobody is willing to go there.  Recently, a Wisconsin school board opted out of participating in a federal school lunch program, at least until the public outcry caused them to think differently.  But nobody on the school board suggested that one way to make those better investments might be to have ... pregnancy licenses.  At worst, the lunch program was going to create dependency.  "School board member Karin Rajnicek said families would "become spoiled" if the universal program continued, while Darren Clark, an assistant superintendent in the district, said an "addiction" to the aid could arise in the community."  Defenders of the program took the view that the lunches helped kids, and they're invested in the argument that public assistance doesn't lead to abuse and fraud.

Thus, unlike China, no pregnancy licenses.

Thus, unlike China, no video game curfews.

Can the public authority be rolled back with respect to mask mandates (there's a lot of that going on anyway) or seat belt laws or motorcycle helmets, perhaps under the rubric of "if it's everybody's responsibility, it's nobody's responsibility?"