Individual Responsibility
Something sorely lacking in our society
David Bahnsen had a great podcast recently in response to the recent litigation against Meta, YouTube, and other tech companies.
Twice a week on Capital Record, Bahnsen walks listeners through a timely topic related to the theme of a free and virtuous society. I share his commitment to both Judeo-Christian virtue and the free market, and his belief that not only are both compatible, but both are crucial for a good society. If you enjoy this newsletter, you’d probably like his podcast, too, if you aren’t already listening to it.
The recent court ruling has been compared to the litigation against the tobacco companies from decades ago, and it raises similar hard questions for those of us who believe in the free market, but also decry the excess of vice in modern America. Like Bahnsen, I’m no fan of social media and I think children should not be given smartphones and should not be allowed on social media sites at an early age.
But, unlike so many in the modern age, Bahnsen is also clear about one thing: individual responsibility. And that’s why I’m writing this post today, and it’s why I loved his podcast so much. In defending the free market, Bahnsen and I are not defending all consumer choices as equally good. We are defending the principle that freedom is critical for a good society, and that freedom necessarily includes the ability to make bad choices. But we also believe that morality requires individuals to take responsibility for their actions, and that a free society correctly places the responsibility for choosing wisely on the individual. It is one thing to say that children should not be given smartphones and allowed on social media. It is quite another to say that therefore it follows that the government should step in to restrict the choices of parents, educators, social media companies, and children themselves.
Bahnsen wrote a book, Crisis of Responsibility, about the financial collapse and Great Recession, and about many other failures of responsibility throughout our society. I read that book. Perhaps its greatest strength is that he doesn’t let anyone off the hook. Many of the crises of the 21st Century so far have resulted from a lack of personal responsibility - on the part of all parties involved, Wall Street and Main Street, elites and little guys, institutions and ordinary citizens.
In the podcast which sparked this post, Bahnsen doesn’t let Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. off the hook. He argues that the people who own them, manage them, and work at them have a responsibility to design their products to be safe.1 But neither does he use that as an excuse for individual behavior, as so many do today. I grow incredibly, incredibly tired of being told that parents are “forced” to give their kids smartphones at age 12. I grow tired of being told that because of infinite scroll, Instagram is so inherently addictive that people my age (around 30) can’t put their phones down and go outside or have a conversation. I grow tired of being told that people’s attention span has been “stolen” or “hijacked.”
People like myself and Bahnsen are sometimes caricatured as exhorting people to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” Well, maybe people should. Because we are not talking about bootstrapping a company from zero to Fortune 500, or farming on the frontier in 1872. We are talking about having a tiny bit of self-discipline and learning to put the phone down and get off social media. I encounter too many people who would rather use the excuse that they have been “addicted” against their will (to products they enjoy using and which they get for free) than take a little bit of responsibility for their own time use. People who say that algorithms have enslaved them because the algorithms recommend things that they like (and to which they respond). But they don’t have to follow those recommendations. They are voluntarily choosing to engage further, to buy more, to watch another video, etc.
Even if this it is true that social media (or Amazon) algorithms are somewhat addictive, it is still the responsibility of the individual to limit his or her appetites. It was even more obviously true that tobacco was addictive (tobacco is one of the most addictive substances human beings regularly consume, and compared to tobacco social media isn’t addictive), and even in the case of tobacco there is a role for personal responsibility, because people know that smoking is bad for them and they choose to start anyway.
There is also a very obvious analogy to food and Bahnsen makes it. Are we soon to have litigation against McDonalds because they sell inexpensive food that tastes good and that people love eating? Are we really as a society willing to blame fast food companies (or candy companies, or soft drink companies) for the obesity epidemic?
There are many who would like to.2 And I certainly would say that part of the story of the explosion of obesity involves those companies. But it isn’t the full story. There is an element of personal responsibility, too. I have strong feelings about this, because every day in my day job I work with people trying to lose weight. I bend over backward not to shame or judge anyone. I try to make everyone feel comfortable and I don’t look down on anyone, especially because I’m very physically fit myself.3 And I fully recognize that there are confounding factors and it isn’t simply a case of people lacking discipline.4
But not everyone who is obese in America is genetically predisposed to obesity.
And even for those who are, personal responsibility is about taking ownership for your situation even when you’ve been dealt an unfair hand in life. Often, it isn’t all your fault and there are mitigating factors outside your control, but in a free society you have to take some action anyway. I get it. Junk food tastes good. Exercise is hard. But life is hard.
What I find in my work is that the people who have the most success are the ones who take responsibility, who put in the work, and who acknowledge their own role in their health. This doesn’t mean they blame themselves or beat themselves up. It means that they identify reasons why they sometimes skip exercising (”I hate going outside in the winter”), as well as the foods which trip them up (”I really like crunchy, salty things, so I have to find a way to limit my chip intake,” etc.), and then look for practical solutions. I can work with that kind of person. The only person I can’t work with is the person who refuses to take any responsibility, who always has an excuse for why he or she can’t exercise and can’t eat healthy, who blames anyone and anything other than him - or herself, and who won’t put in the work. I can’t help that person. I can help the person who puts in a good faith effort, and who sometimes gets hurt or sick or has other very reasonable excuses for backsliding. I can’t help the person who doesn’t put in the good faith effort first.
This is how I feel about social media and smartphones. I’m told that I’m just a special person who is excessively disciplined or something, or that I’m uniquely immune to the temptations, or that I’m wired differently so other people can’t follow my example here and instead need the government to come in and save them, but it isn’t true. It’s true that I’m less tempted by social media than other people. But it isn’t true that I was just born with the discipline other people don’t have, and that therefore they need the government to regulate Big Tech even if I don’t. This is an excuse people use. People always have an excuse for why you don’t have the same problems they do. You’re genetically predisposed to be thin. Or you’re gifted with a lack of interest in YouTube videos. Etc.
But here’s the thing - I spend long periods of every day away from my phone, usually outside. I don’t take my phone with my everywhere I go. I often go for hours without looking at my phone at work. Sometimes it isn’t even on me. I don’t have social media apps on my phone (except for Discord and Substack, if those count), and I don’t have accounts on the vast, vast majority of social media platforms. These are all simple actions that every single person can take. And they have results. The more time you - no matter who you are - spend away from your phone (especially if you’re outside), the less you will feel drawn to it. The more time you spend talking to people, or reading a book, the longer your attention span will be. Every single person is capable of doing this. Conversely, if I never spent more than a few minutes away from my phone, watched as many YouTube videos as I could every day, and spent twenty hours a week on social media, I’d probably be hooked, too. My attention span and sleep would suffer. I’d be depressed. Etc.
And that’s why I feel so strongly that Bahnsen is right. People are correct to worry about the harms of overuse of social media and smartphones. And they’re even right to argue that children aren’t always capable of exercising the self-discipline we expect from adults. But that’s why we don’t let children vote or serve in the military or sign contracts.
Who do we entrust with exercising responsibility for children?
Not the government. Parents (and legal guardians). Followed by teachers, and other adults in children’s lives. I’m not a parent, so if you want to argue I can’t understand how hard it is, fine. Bahnsen is a father. He does.
Besides, most of the people complaining to me are complaining about their own use of these tools, which inevitably involves them telling me how much pleasure they get out of them, and these people are all in their 20s and 30s (or even older), long past the age when society expects people to be capable of exercising the judgement required to be an adult. I’m fine with some laws protecting children from the more dangerous aspects of digital technology, just as I’m fine with laws that prevent children from smoking cigarettes or driving a car before age 16.
But the crisis we face right now will take more than laws protecting children from online gambling and porn or anything else. It will take society re-embracing the concept of personal responsibility, without which a free society cannot function, and without which a virtuous society cannot be virtuous.
Bahnsen is right that these problems are all related. And like him, I don’t believe the answer to a society in which people lack personal responsibility is more government. Because the problem with that is that it becomes an excuse and a crutch, and it only further erodes people’s agency and willingness to exercise responsibility. The growth of government goes hand-in-hand with the decline in personal responsibility, but each is cause and each is effect. They are part of a cycle in which each reinforces the other.
I believe that the only way to reinvigorate a sense of personal responsibility into society is to re-embrace consequences. Actions have consequences. People need to accept the consequences of their actions, and they need to bear those consequences. Freedom does this. It forces consequences on people.
I’m not a paragon here. I’ve failed at many things over the course of my life and I’m as tempted as anyone else to blame other people or outside factors for my failures. But the truth is that I made the choices I made, and some of them were bad choices. Some of them weren’t necessarily bad choices, but they were choices which came with certain results and I have to live with those results. Nobody else made me make the decisions I made. So as tempting as it would be to say that many of the things which happened to me weren’t my fault, I can’t do that.
This post has gone far longer than I anticipated, but it’s an important topic. Personal responsibility is a crucial pillar of the moral case for freedom. It’s a pillar many people don’t like. But I believe it is a crucial pillar of a moral society, too, whether or not we like it.5
Bahnsen uses the excellent example of cars. Car manufacturers have a responsibility to design safe vehicles. But they are not responsible for individuals who misuse their products by driving 100mph while inebriated. You can’t blame Honda or Ford or Toyota for that.
There have actually been such lawsuits, but they failed, because our justice system retains a little bit of common sense.
And I work harder than most people. I’m a runner - I care about running fast. I try to keep my weight down to run fast. I train every day, running 60-80 miles most weeks. I don’t have a perfect diet, but I do put some work into what I eat. My genetic potential as a runner is lower than other people I know, so I have to work harder to be fast. For obvious reasons, most people don’t want to train as hard as I do, so it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that they won’t. It’s not a competition and my job is to help people do what they can with the situation in which they find themselves.
In my experience, it isn’t about people lacking discipline or having bad genetics. It’s usually a matter of priorities. In most cases, people struggle with their weight because they prioritize work and family, and it’s hard to exercise and eat right with a demanding job and kids or aging parents or both. Work and family matter more than fitness, so it’s not a failure on anyone’s part that they put their energy into those areas and not into fitness. My job is to help those people find ways to meet their health goals alongside those other priorities.
And the truth is that it would be far worse and far more immoral to abandon it. We like to think that the alternatives to letting people face the consequences of their actions are “nice,” but since we live in a world in which actions have consequences, the consequences are going to fall on someone. And there are a variety of moral reasons for arguing that in the vast majority of cases those consequences need to fall on the people who made the decisions, not on anyone else (barring some kind of charity or voluntary self-sacrifice on the part of the person accepting the consequences which were meant for someone else), because it isn’t fair to push off consequences upon people who didn’t know they were going to suffer consequences for decisions they had no hand in making. But that is an argument for another time.
GREAT article. Two thoughts:
Cigarettes had a warning label affixed in 1965. Lung cancer studies began in the 1950s. Yet even in the 1990s people were suing tobacco companies. As JGA notes this does not let the cigarette companies off the hook any more than Meta. Both are intentionally lacing harmful products with addictions. But today we know, as noted above, kids have no reason to have phones or be online in their rooms. The language here from JGA, "I think children should not be given smartphones and should not be allowed." And who decides that? The parents. No one has every provided me with a good reason why a parent can't regulate this. I think it is because some people are lazy and it is easy to give little Eva a phone to keep her occupied.
There is an inherent paternalism in government that is a response to the infantilization of much of our society. I see it in the adulation of presidents like Trump and Obama. I see it in the victimology now as prevalent on the right as it was once was on the left. I see in the sense that someone will take care of me from cradle to grave, almost always government. I see it in the inability to embrace adulthood whether in the form of a marriage or starting a family. Our nation was founded by people who rejected paternalism, who wanted to do it their way, who wanted the responsibilities that come with freedom.