You know, I didn't cry hard when the tobacco companies were sued to within an inch of their very lives. Too many relatives of mine have died from smoking to make me feel much sympathy for them. But sometimes I wonder if that was such a great move, and about my own stance in the matter...
Apparently, TIME magazine and ABC are planning an upcoming summit on obesity, and Radley Balko has been invited to participate. TIME is also devoting an entire issue to the subject:
The rest of the TIME issue devotes what I'm guessing is some 10,000-12,000 words (at least, I didn't count) to obesity. My meager 350 of those words are really the lonely few not advocating some sort of massive government intrusion into our lives, diets, lifestyles, and eating habits...
You know, it's a classic liberal trick. No offense to Radley, but, as he says, they're putting MDs and PhDs up to represent the other side, and, to speak for the idea of personal responsibility, they choose... a blogger.
Which implies, of course, that there's nobody better on this side of the debate. No PhDs, no nutritionists, no MDs, nor other self-appointed health experts.
Of course, TIME, ABC, and their ilk are certainly in the minority here. I don't know anyone, even among my overweight friends, who is in favor of increased government control over our food intake.
Some of the upcoming arguments in favor of food-control are clearly fallacious. Dig this:
To counter criticism, the food industry and pro-business groups use a public relations script focused on personal responsibility. The script has three elements: 1) if people are overweight, it is their own fault; 2) industry responds to consumer demand but does not create it; and 3) insisting that industry change--say, by not marketing to children or requiring restaurants to reveal calories--is an attack on freedom.
I'm dense, but light eventually dawns, even on Marblehead. This a standard trick from the left:
- Politicize an issue. In this case, food. (As if there was a previous right/left split on being healthy.) Nonetheless, claim some particular view for the left, most favorably one which doesn't make sense and requires a lot of government intervention.
- Explain the problem. Imply (but never promise) that if only you got your way, things would be somehow magically better. Avoid specifics, and never, ever explain to people what your ideas will cost them.
- Focus all blame on some large, successful company to whom people are freely giving their money in exchange for a product or service they like. Don't focus any of the blame on the people demanding the product or service. People are automatons, you know. (Except for us liberals.)
- Declare that the now-demonized "industry" has created a "script". Present it as some dark conspiracy. Somehow, claim you know about this secret "script".
- Place all well-known, sane rational arguments against your new position into this "script".
- Accuse people like me, who were totally apolitical on this issue until you came along, of following "industry's lead", of being mindless parrots reading from "industry's script" each time we make one of those rational arguments
Of course, the applications for this strategy are endless. Gun control? Blame the NRA! Politics? I have a special website from the Bush team which I log into to find what arguments to mindlessly parrot tomorrow. Fast food? Didn't you know? I'm a major shareholder in McDonalds! (Not!)
Here's the follow-up to their opening gambit:
Why quarrel with the personal-responsibility argument?
First, it's wrong. The prevalence of obesity increases year after year. Were people less responsible in 2002 than in 2001? Obesity is a global problem. Is irresponsibility an epidemic around the world?
Second, it ignores biology. Humans are hardwired, as a survival strategy, to like foods high in sugar, fat and calories.
Third, the argument is not helpful. Imploring people to eat better and exercise more has been the default approach to obesity for years. That is a failed experiment.
Fourth, personal responsibility is a trap. The argument is startlingly similar to the tobacco industry's efforts to stave off legislative and regulatory interventions. The nation tolerated personal-responsibility arguments from Big Tobacco for decades, with disastrous results.
Governments collude with industry when they shift attention from conditions promoting poor diets to the individuals who consume them. Government should be doing everything it can to create conditions that lead to healthy eating, support parents in raising healthy children and make decisions in the interests of public health rather than private profit...
There's a lot to say in response to this -- it's amazing to see so much deception packed into so few words...
First, it's wrong. The prevalence of obesity increases year after year. Were people less responsible in 2002 than in 2001? Obesity is a global problem. Is irresponsibility an epidemic around the world?
In a word: Yes.
I've always believed, on the whole, human beings tend to be irresponsible. The evidence for this is overwhelming. But we should also remember we're even less responsible when we form a collective, such as a government bureau, and when we have someone telling us we're not responsible. Both of which are being advocated here.
Do you know why we're fat? Quite simply because we've been successful, all over the world, at combatting hunger. Instead of facing Malthusian scenarios of teeming mobs screaming for "Soylent Green", we're seeing the world's BMI balloon. Yet either scenario, for the leftist, presents a demand for revolution, for more (leftist) government control over our every action.
Second, it ignores biology. Humans are hardwired, as a survival strategy, to like foods high in sugar, fat and calories.
Yes, we "like" these things. So what? I'm a male, and also supposedly "hard wired" for complete sexual infidelity. Ask me which I find more attractive: A fudge mint sundae (love it) or a pretty girl. Yet, I'm capable of fidelity, and the "I'm hard wired for this" excuse won't buy me much sympathy should I act otherwise.
Similarly, I may "like" ice cream and other sweets, but I also have a choice.
Remember: When you decide that the problem rests somewhere else, you are also telling yourself the solution lies there as well. In essense, when we blame others for these kinds of problems, we also dis-empower ourselves, and deny ourselves the possibility of self-directed positive change.
Third, the argument is not helpful. Imploring people to eat better and exercise more has been the default approach to obesity for years. That is a failed experiment.
Well, I guess we should give it up then! Certainly, we've also tried to tell people to be faithful to their spouses and not commit crimes and those certainly haven't stopped yet either.
The way I see it, the jury's not in yet. It often takes a generation or so straighten something out. Take drug use, which is currently down. We may be frustrated that it took so long -- in the seventies and eighties it looked like it was still on the way up. The same goes for sexual problems created in the late sixties and early seventies.
And some problems just aren't solvable. For example, there will always be some people who are poorer than their peers. And it may also be the case that there will always be some people, when offered a plentiful supply of food, who will consume too much of it.
It's not clear to me that if we just ban every McDonald's, or force them to only serve tofu and fresh fruits, that we'll suddenly all get thinner. People may switch suppliers. The inactivity factor may be more significant than the choice of food. Do we ban Cheetos? Do we start fining parents of obese children, too? What's going to work?
Though it doesn't sound like a magic bullet, diet and exercise are the only means I know of to health. Unless we plan to start shooting people who do otherwise, people must freely choose to do these things. If so, the only way to get someone to freely choose to do one thing, and not another, is to talk to them. Yet we declare this doesn't work!
Perhaps if only it was a government worker doing the talking?
Fourth, personal responsibility is a trap. The argument is startlingly similar to the tobacco industry's efforts to stave off legislative and regulatory interventions. The nation tolerated personal-responsibility arguments from Big Tobacco for decades, with disastrous results.
In fact, the argument is also startling similar to arguments used to allow any potentially harmful activity -- skiing, motorcycling, sunbathing, drug use, obscene rap lyrics, violent video games, and lewd television -- to continue without government intervention or prohibition.
If one bad person uses an argument, that must disprove the argument entirely. Funny, it seems Stalin argued the government should protect us from all harm -- it doesn't seem that argument got tainted by association, did it? And what of Hitler's demands for a national health care system?
Again, the lack of specificity is telling: How exactly this problem will be "solved" by government intervention? Are we going to be banning ice cream and chocolate bars? California has enacted a "junk food tax" -- is Calfornia less obese than other states? Do we plan on banning the automobile and forcing people to turn off their televisions and computers?
We only get worrysome, vague statements like this:
Government should be doing everything it can to create conditions that lead to healthy eating, support parents in raising healthy children and make decisions in the interests of public health rather than private profit.
Oh dear. That means somebody has to represent the "interests of public health". And I'm sure those interests will neatly correlate with whatever leftists favor today. I'm sure parents will just love the "support" this somebody will give them.
My own take is simple: I'm not nuts about the food offered by most fast-food restaurants, but over time I think the situation will change. In the mean time, I'm doing my part by mostly buying and preparing my own food (it doesn't take that much effort to toss some smoked salmon, carrot strips, or cottage cheese into your lunch), and (generally) encouraging my friends to eat healthier.
Rather than agitating for expanded government powers, I wish the government would be responsible in the areas over which it already has control: public schools. I've heard that experiments have been done where soda and other high-carb snack machines were removed from schools, better lunches were served, and as a result test scores improved.
If the government cannot be responsible enough to offer decent nutrition in it's own schools, I don't know why I should trust it to micromanage my neighborhood's restaturants or my family life!
Food is not like recreational drugs or tobacco, which have no valid uses. Though Haagen Daz is good, it's a lot easier to stop using than heroin, to which tobacco addiction has been compared.
Finally, and again, I don't know what these food-control advocates have in mind. Other than putting "public health" (probably whatever threat leftists dream up today) ahead of "profit" (i.e. any consideration of cost/benefit tradeoffs), they're remarkably unspecific in their plans in this area. The only thing that's clear is that they want your support and cries for deliverance.
Don't give it to them.