BY THE TIME Copernicus proposed his heliocentric view of the cosmos, the old geocentric model had become tremendously complicated. To account for the observed motion of the planets, the geocentric theory required an ever-expanding number of epicycles: each planet’s motion was explained by the hypothesis that it orbited around an orbit around an orbit . . . around the Earth. This growing complexity suggested that the geocentric model had got something fundamentally wrong.

The development of Labour’s social policy displays the same characteristic. Since coming to power Labour has produced an extraordinary number of micro-initiatives aimed at improving our behaviour. Its latest is the brainchild of Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister. As well as punishing bad children with the familiar antisocial behaviour orders, school expulsions and the like, the Government will also reward good children.

Last week’s Green Paper, Youth Matters, proposed an “opportunity card”. Credit will be put on these cards that can be redeemed at sports centres, drama clubs, cinemas and the like. Teenagers will earn extra credit for voluntary work or, possibly, for good attendance or behaviour in schools. The cards could also be used at shops to claim goods that promote “positive activities”, such as music.

I am not sure that what is done in return for CDs can really count as voluntary work, but let us not quibble. The important question is why Labour should need all its little bribes and threats to get us to behave ourselves. The never-ending stream of petty initiatives suggests that it has got something fundamentally wrong.

Oddly, for a Labour Party in a nation that believes Marx to be history’s greatest philosopher, it has forgotten one of his most important teachings: the way we live is determined by the economic arrangement of society. There is so much antisocial behaviour in Britain because the values that might prevent it have lost their economic value.

Why do parents instil in their children habits of hard work, self-restraint and consideration for others? Perhaps they believe these values to be intrinsically worthwhile. But they also have an economic interest in raising wellbehaved children. If your child grows up to be an unemployable slob, he will be an economic burden on the family.

Or, at least, he would have been in the past. Now, the economic burden is spread across all taxpayers. The same goes for teenage pregnancy. The families of the little twits who create the baby do not have another mouth to feed: taxpayers do.

The welfare policies pursued by successive governments in Britain and all around the Western world have the same effect. They transfer the economic cost of bad habits from the miscreants and their families to taxpayers. By reducing the cost of bad habits, these policies also reduce families’ incentive to resist them. This incentive, along with the cost, has been transferred to taxpayers. But since the cost is spread thinly, no individual taxpayer feels the incentive very strongly. And even if he did, there would be nothing he could do about it. Taxpayers cannot raise other people’s children.

Nor can the Government, as Tony Blair recently observed. Yet it does not stop it trying. Ms Hughes’s idea of rewarding good children is nothing but the Government attempting to raise other people’s children.

It is a feeble attempt, of course: little more than a gesture. Ms Hughes must know that offering children half-price admission to Spider-Man in return for helping old women cross the road will not make up for parental failings. But what can she do? In a free country such as Britain more serious interventions are not possible. Not yet, at least.

Redistributive policies naturally incline governments towards totalitarianism. When families provide the safety net, they also impose the discipline. When the State provides the safety net, families lose their incentive to discipline. Who, then, will do it? The State is the only candidate.

This drive towards state intervention goes beyond the yob problem. Many believe, for example, that the Government should take a greater role in determining what we eat, drink and otherwise ingest. It should ban, tax or subsidise all manner of comestibles. A free man might find the idea of government intervention in our diets shocking. But it is only to be expected when the Government transfers the economic costs of our bad eating habits to the rest of the taxpaying population. The transfer makes us both more reckless in our eating and licenses government intervention; it cannot allow us free rein in our consumption when our bad choices impose a cost on others.

Indeed, by redistributing the cost of our healthcare, the Government licenses intervention in every aspect of our lives. For what might we choose to do that has no effect on our health? So far, the Government’s interventions have been of the small and impotent variety. But the policy trend is clear: an increasing micromanagement of the population in general and of children in particular. And, as its petty interventions fail, so the pressure for more drastic measures will build. On Wednesday Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, proposed a curfew on expelled pupils and a legal obligation for their parents to stay at home with them — in other words, house arrest.

We are on a dangerous path. While the Government persists with a redistributive model that discourages the “Protestant virtues”, it will need ever-more intrusive measures to manage our behaviour. Or else it must give up its goal of sorting out Britain’s social problems. It is an unfortunate dilemma. But one with an obvious solution.

Jamie Whyte is author of A Load of Blair

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