Bloomberg, soda and sex
by Greg Krehbiel on 12 March 2013
You’re probably aware by now that New York’s ban on large sodas has been struck down by a court. It wasn’t just rejected. It was slapped down. It was a “stinging setback” for the nanny state. See Judge halts Bloomberg’s large soda ban one day before it’s set to go into effect
While I was listening to a discussion of the issue on the radio this morning, it seemed as if we’ve crossed some sort of social barrier.
Yes, too much soda is bad for you. And yes, the government does regulate — and should regulate — unhealthy stuff. The government stops stores from selling old meat, stops farmers from selling some things directly to consumers, and sets health standards for restaurants. We don’t think those things are an assault on our freedom.
The problem with the soda ban, I think, is that it just seems silly. But more than that there is a sense that they’re doing this because the government is taking over more and more of our healthcare. There’s a 1984-ish quality to the government deciding what’s good for you and making you do it. Or not do it.
Is Major Bloomberg going to lead us in daily toe touches now?
Then I got to thinking about other things we do that are bad for us that the government refuses to regulate. Like fornication.
Sex outside of marriage is a serious health issue. People who sleep around can get very sick, require costly medical treatments, and sometimes spread lethal diseases. Aside from that, out-of-wedlock childbirth is a bad thing — for the child, and for society.
But if the government started regulating sex as a public health issue, the outcry would be deafening.
The world seems to have turned upside down. Fifty years ago the idea of the government discouraging a hook-up culture was fairly non-controversial. Governments might, for example, not allow unmarried people to rent a room. They might regulate access to birth control. Or even make adultery a crime. (Heaven forbid!)
On the other hand, the idea that the government would regulate how many sweets you had in a day would have seemed preposterous.
Fast forward fifty years and it seems preposterous that the government would regulate people’s sex lives, but it doesn’t seem quite as silly for the government to regulate our diets, and it’s not far-fetched that requiring exercise will be next.
-- 2013-03-12 » Greg Krehbiel
12 March 2013 @ 12:08 pm
The conversation tends to go: “You’re making bad choices so the government should stop you.” “Hey, it’s my life, I’ll do what I want.” “Injuries from not wearing seat belts cost taxpayers blah-blah dollars per year. So it is my business if you wear a seat belt or not.” Here we go.
Are we willing to categorize individual lifestyle choices to determine their potential cost to the taxpayer and fine/ban/tax/regulate accordingly? How many visits to the emergency room a year are there by uninsured roller bladders?” Should there be a roller blading tax? How much is spent rescuing lost hikers and injured skiers? You could do this all day.
Plus I have doubts about the health cost argument from the outset. Who consumes more health care dollars over the course of their lifetime? A morbidly obese smoker who dies by 60 or a person living a much healthier lifestyle who dies at 85? Do healthy octogenarians die inexpensive “natural” deaths in their beds or are they just as likely to have long, expensive battles with disease? And that’s after an additional 25 years of other health costs.
12 March 2013 @ 12:10 pm
And yet it’s not just a flip — the sum total has increased.
True, there are no laws about whether you can rent to an unmarried couple.
Now there’s a law saying you can’t not do it.
PLUS there’s a law saying you can’t charge them for meals if you don’t have a licensed kitchen.
12 March 2013 @ 12:15 pm
“Who consumes more health care dollars over the course of their lifetime? A morbidly obese smoker who dies by 60 or a person living a much healthier lifestyle who dies at 85? ”
Bingo. That always struck me as a very suspect argument. The “person who lives an unhealthy lifestyle costs more” argument depends entirely on the presumption that that same person wouldn’t be struck by one of those debilitating, out of the blue illnesses that cost a lot if he lived clean, AND in the bad lifestyle case, wouldn’t just keel over (as many unhealthy people do), but have all the chronic issues associated with the bad lifestyle. There may be some extremely complex model that could give you the right answer, but it’s not nearly as simple as “unhealthy stuff costs society” more.
12 March 2013 @ 12:28 pm
@Pigweed, right, there are huge problems with the “we will assign costs to your decisions” approach. It’s one thing for insurance companies to do it in isolated areas. It’s another thing entirely for the government to do it. Where would it end?
And there is an argument to be made for the government to hand out cigarettes as a cost-saving measure. Kill them off early so they cost less over their life time. (If the math doesn’t work for cigarettes, it works for something. Maybe it’s motorcycles.)
12 March 2013 @ 1:31 pm
Right, a helmet ban would almost certainly save medical costs. Sure, you’d have a certain percentage of people getting in horrific accidents, surviving, and needing more care than they would have without the helmet, but you’d have more dying in accidents thus sparing the cost of those people being treated for their injuries, AND the lifetime medical costs they would have racked up had they not died in the accident.
That’s where an economic approach leads you!