"This is New York," she said. "People eat out a lot. We don't have a choice. We need someone to make it a healthier proposition."
When was the last time you saw anybody forcing people to eat at a specific restaurant or specific menu item?. If New Yorkers are not being force fed, then how is it that they do not have a choice?.
People always have the power to change things. That is the greatest thing about a free society. If you do not like the food a restaurant is serving, do not go there. The only option that restaurant have is to change and compete or shut down. Either way the people win. But today people want the GOVERNMENT to make choices for them.
If the state care about the health of the people so much, why don’t they just ban the sale of smoking products?. That would mean a huge cut in tax revenue; so the state is not ready to do that. The only thing lawmakers care about is votes. There is a bunch of idiots in NY who think government ban on Trans Fat will save them from being fat. Guess what, only you can change you. Stop eating bad stuff, exercise, and stop looking at politicians to make your life better!
If the government let the free market do its job, changes will happen. Wendy's International Inc. introduced a zero-trans fat oil in August; KFC said they will stop using oil with trans fats by April; McDonald's has been testing new oils. All results of demand. The NY law will put small mom & pop shops out of business with increased compliance and sudden change in supply logistics. The sudden increased demand in alternate cooking methods will ramp up the price on supply which in turn increase the price of menu items.
SO who exactly is the winners here?.
-The politicians who made a special interest group happy and now expect increased campaign donations.
-Suppliers who now have an imposed demand on non-trans-fatty cooking oil and can charge what ever they want.
-State treasury which will get higher revenue from the increased prices and fines imposed on people who just can’t comply.
Losers:
-NY’ers who doesn’t have much of a choice but to eat the crap they serve. Can’t complain because they bought it on them self by forcing the restaurants to change ingredients, and have to pay higher price because on the increased demand on certain cooking oil.
-Small businesses that do not have millions of dollars to spend in R&D and focus groups to test the new products or cannot order tons of new formulation and pay a premium for their ingredients.
1 comment:
Wow, you really feel strongly about this! :)
Ok so I agree with you - people have the power to make their own choices and the best way for everyone to eat healthy is to choose not to buy a Big Mac.
On the other hand, we don't live in a world where eveyone is a purely autonomous agent. I know that this is a standard philosophical category, but it's something philosophers have long (even economists) recognized is far from the reality. This is one aspect of what we are. We are also product of our environment and that environment includes (among other things) being blitzed by advertizing and living fast paced lives. Fast food (including the mom and pop shops) is often the easier choice to make -- it's the lazy choice and a bad choice, but it IS the easier choice in most cases. That doesn't make it the right choice and that alone doesn't justify government intervention.
However, consider this. The "free market" (which in N America is far more corporatist than capitalist) has not in the vast majority of cases provided people with the kind of healthy optionts they have long needed. By the "Free market" logic, there should be as many chains of health food restaurants all over N America offering healthy alternatives to Micky D's. The only one I know of is that is remotely "healthy" is Subway. It hasn't happened - and the reason may well be corporate or government interventino in the free market - but that fact is that it hasn't. So in the absence of this I don't think that it's such a bad idea.
Free market dogmatists are always quick to point out the doom and gloom scenarios that could result from government interference. The fact is that in so many cases, government intervention has provided for the benefit of the public where the "free market" hasn't. By next year, no one will be able to smoke inside a restaurant in Canada. The market - for whatever reason - didn't provide a solution to the problem. So the people asked the government for a solution and got one. Same deal here. IN fact in this case it's even stimulated KFC to change the oil it's using internationally.
Ok, I'm talking your ear off now, hehe.
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