Monday, October 30, 2006

Supply and Demand and the Nanny State

No thank you please

NY under Bloomberg - a billionaire businessman who wants to control what you do to your own body - go figure, is pretty funny sometimes. Before, the City Council wanted to limit the number of fastfood restaurants where youth obesity rates were above average (luckily that didnt go anywhere I was worried about the local Brooklyn pizza joints but people in Brooklyn for the most part arent fat).

Now its trying to outlaw transfats (eg the bad kind of oil, unlike flaxseed oil which I use which is the good kind of oil), its pretty funny, the NY Post (always down and dirty) had a picture of Deniro eating a hotdog on the street, I guess the buns are made from the wrong kind of oil. But now, restauranters say they couldnt comply even if they wanted to as cant get the 'right' kind of oil. Seems like the market just isnt cooperating with lawmakers. (Drug laws anyone?).

Next on the menu is the menu: Now the City is calling for requiring restaurants to show how many calories their offerings are. "They" should really focus on PUBLIC goods (roads, schools, trash, tunnels, water sewage, mass transpo) and leave our PRIVATE selves to ourselves.

The original patriots (and original economists Smith and Ricardo too) had this idea that if you let the government encroach on you a little bit it'll keep going and going. Thats why they wigged on the Corn Tax and the Stamp Tax and the Tea Tax etc. We are a little too far down the road to Serfdom to stop the initial assault but maybe we can at least laugh at part of where the road takes us.