The Cost of a Permissive Society

In a Jubilee Centre report from last December, author and therapist Guy Brandon demonstrated that the economic ramifications of our permissive society are almost beyond reckoning.

Moral Hazard

Mr Brandon, the author of Just Sex: is it Ever Just Sex?, used quantitative cost-analysis to disprove the notion that “sex between consenting adults is no one else’s business”, a mantra that has been repeated by both Ken Livingstone and Max Mosley.

By using the category of ‘moral hazard’, he showed that British society has created a system that incentivizes promiscuity.

“‘Moral Hazard’, he explains, “occurs when a contract or financial arrangement creates incentives for the parties involved to behave against the interest of others’ – typically because one party is insulated from risk.”

One of the ways British society does this is through a system in which the financial consequences of promiscuity are not carried by the people directly involved but diffused throughout society collectively.

The British Government has also created a moral hazard when it began to allow the welfare safety net to be exploited in ways which incentivise family breakdown. “At present,” Brandon writes, “the tax and benefits system makes it economically more favourable for some parents to live apart – the so-called couple penalty. Ending this must be a priority.”

Why Free Sex is Never Free

The Jubilee Centre article, titled ‘Free sex: Who pays?: Moral hazard and sexual ethics’, suggests that while “the costs of sexual freedom and relationship breakdown to the taxpayer and wider economy are complex and difficult to calculate… £100 billion annually is probably a reasonable starting point: about twice as much as alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity combined.”

The following are some the areas where the costs of sexual licence are felt the strongest in our economy:

• Promiscuity often leads to STI’s, which cost the British taxpayer more than £1 billion per year.
• Promiscuity often leads to HIV. The estimated 83,000 cases of HIV in the UK at the end of 2008 represent a total lifetime cost of £26 billion.
• Promiscuity leads to teenage pregnancy which cost the NHS £63 million per year, and a further £29 million for infertility and other complications arising from chlamydia alone.
• Promiscuity often leads to abortions, and 96% of abortions are carried out on the NHS at a cost of £650 each, or £118 million.
• Promiscuity often contributes to separation from marriage and cohabiting relationships (including promiscuity prior to entering such relationships), which entails huge increases in tax credit payments, lone parent benefits, housing benefits, in addition to the health, crime and educational impact of relationship breakdown. Altogether this totals about £42 billion a year.
• In contributing to relationship breakdown, promiscuity leads to Absenteeism. The loss of working hours following relationship breakdown costs the economy at least £20 billion a year.
• In contributing to relationship breakdown, promiscuity can lead to domestic violence which costs the British taxpayer around £3.4 billion a year, and around £21 billion today in ‘human and emotional costs.’
• The effect of relationship breakdown on children leads to educational underachievement which results in an estimated £40,000 for each child, reducing GDP by £6 billion. Much of this cost can be directly attributable to the promiscuous activity which contributed to the relationship breakdown.

These facts, all of which Brandon meticulously documents, helps to undermine the common narrative that sex is a choice made only by the couple most directly involved with only limited consequences beyond the two of them. This narrative has found expression in phrases such as ‘recreational sex’ and ‘casual sex’, which obscure the reality that the entire society picks up the bill for promiscuity.

Mr. Brandon contrasts our system with that of ancient Israel which put institutional and legal parameters in place to limit moral hazard. His discussion of Old Testament law provides a helpful framework that our own law-makers would do well to glean from.

The Jubilee Centre report is not as strong in laying out a solution to the problem, although Mr Brandon does make some suggestions on how Government policy makers can limit the degree of moral hazard that is operative.

The first step is simply for the British Government to recognize the full scope of the economic problem. Up to now Government has focused considerable attention on discouraging teenage pregnancy and encouraging ‘safe sex.’ However, promiscuity itself has received scant attention, and is even actively discouraged by much Government policy. As Mr. Brandon has said,

“The UK Treasury does not make the link between the vast costs of relationship breakdown and its drivers, David Cameron’s emphasis on the family notwithstanding. Public policy barely acknowledges the existence of the problem, let alone the scale.”

From an economic point of view, it is not enough to merely encourage safe sex and discourage teenage pregnancy. Until promiscuity itself is adequately addressed, the economic problem will only increase.

WRITE: to your MP and share some of Mr. Brandon’s concerns. You may even want to print out a copy of the Jubilee Centre report to mail to your MP. Ask for your comments to be forwarded to the appropriate minister. Make the point that

• Parliament needs to abolish the ‘couple penalty.’
• No-fault divorce on demand must go.
• The entire culture of sex education must be abolished, since this encourages promiscuity and rarely, if ever, teaches the virtues of chastity. (See our article ‘Ferrari Condemns ‘state-sanctioned child abuse.‘)
• Government must take more responsibility to limit the amount of nudity that occurs in the public spaces of the television airwaves. This is because there is evidence that such nudity (especially when it involves sex) contributes to promiscuity at younger ages.