Do You Own Your Body?

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“Perhaps you’ve noticed the trend among certain people these days,” wrote Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times the other day, “to decide that certain other people are not living acceptable lives and must be reformed.”

Yes. There certainly is a lot of that going around.

You can see it in the comments from Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus—who says homosexuals are “barbarians” who need to be “educated” and “disciplined.” The Bachmanns own a clinic that tries to make homosexuals go straight—a procedure as likely to succeed as trying to make a straight man gay.

You can see the trend in Arizona, Alabama, and other states that have imposed stiff penalties for employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants—i.e., individuals who moved to the U.S. without a government permission slip.

You can see it across the country in the attempts by Christian parents to have Harry Potter books removed from school libraries, to keep children from reading stories that supposedly promote witchcraft and the occult.

And when you finished reading Genzlinger’s column of page A16 in last Sunday’s Times, you also could see the trend he wrote about just a few pages further in—on the front of the Times’ Sunday Review section. “What will it take,” asked the paper’s Mark Bittman, “to get Americans to change our eating habits?”

This is a subject of great concern to progressives today. Many of them are deeply distressed that—despite incessant lecturing on the subject—too many of their fellow citizens continue to eat what they like, rather than what progressives think they should eat.

Bittman’s answer to this dilemma is to tax “bad food” and subsidize “good food.” He is far from alone. But this answer to the problem of too much food freedom rests on two major factual errors and a moral grotesquerie. The first factual error is the belief that healthful foods cost too much. Nonsense: For the price of a single fast-food combo meal you can buy a week’s worth of fruits and vegetables.

The second error is Bittman’s claim that “efforts to shift the national diet have failed, because education alone is no match for marketing dollars that push the very foods that are the worst for us.” Donald Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University in Northern Virginia, makes quick work of this foolishness—in a response to a different piece—on his blog, Café Hayek.

“Why,” he asks, “doesn’t McDonald’s simply serve raw celery? Celery being much less costly for McDonald’s to buy than ground beef and chicken patties, a raw-celery-only menu at McDonald’s would slash that company’s costs. And with its nefarious facility at using ‘advertising and marketing’ to hypnotize consumers into buying whatever it peddles (even ‘nasty killer foods’!), that fast-food behemoth will keep consumers spending as much on McCelery stalks as consumers now spend on Happy Meals and Egg McMuffins. McDonald’s profits will zoom upward!” (The answer is obvious: Consumers have the last word.)

The moral grotesquerie comes later in the piece, when Bittman offers the rationale for his scheme: Some might “argue that their right to eat whatever they wanted was being breached,” he concedes, “but public health is the role of the government, and our diet is right up there with any other public responsibility you can name, from water treatment to mass transit.” Besides, “health-related obesity costs are projected to reach $344 billion by 2018—with roughly 60 percent of that cost borne by the federal government.” In short, the government should dictate what you eat for the sake of the collective good.

Bittman used to write about recipes, so perhaps he does not know of Kant’s categorial imperative, which instructs us to treat people as ends in themselves—not as mere means to an end. Using government coercion to dictate other people’s food choices in order to save money on government programs is a blinding violation of that moral precept.
Nevertheless, Bittman says it is “fun—inspiring, even” to think about the various ways government could order people about: “We” could convert soda machines to “machines that dispense grapes and carrots.” “We” could sell vegetables, grains, legumes, and fruit “cheap—let’s say for 50 cents a pound—and almost everywhere: drugstores, street corners, convenience stores, bodegas. . . ”

Just one problem: “We” do not own the drug stores or bodegas—so we have no right to dictate what they stock.
The progressive campaign against obesity relies on the assumption that the individual no longer owns his or her body—rather, society as a whole does. This has some profound implications for, say, abortion. And Bittman’s contribution to that campaign should serve as a warning: Anyone who thinks it would be “fun” to use government power to dictate everyone else’s choices—from sex partner to dinner menu—should not be allowed anywhere near it.

From what I understand, beef (and cows for slaughter) are extensively subsidized by the government already with farm subsidies. What's wrong with taxing something that your own subsidization has enabled to be cheap?

It's a bit of a straw man to pin this on progressives. Anytime I have heard a liberal discuss proposed food bans etc, they have almost always come out in opposition. The most prominent liberal pundit on the web today (Cenk Uygur) has always been clear on this issue that he wants to keep the junk food.

I am in favor of a cultural shift toward eating better, though I would prefer that it happen without too much government leaning. Certainly not an absolute law banning unhealthy foods- do not stand between me and a cheeseburger if you value your safety. I would be OK with altered tax incentives that made me pay an extra buck when I want a burger or made healthier foods cheaper. (Despite what your article says, this would make a difference... and it's really quite insane to argue that it wouldn't). We already do this to some extent. When I go to the grocery store, I never pay tax on basic food items like bread, milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables, etc. They do charge tax on processed food like doughnuts. If we increase the magnitude of the tax incentives, then doughnuts will be less appealing to consumers.

From what I understand, beef (and cows for slaughter) are extensively subsidized by the government already with farm subsidies. What's wrong with taxing something that your own subsidization has enabled to be cheap?

In that case, it makes a lot more sense from a paperwork perspective to just stop subsidizing. And the government can (and does) tax food that it has nothing to do with subsidizing. I don't think that is the issue so much as the perceived social engineering when certain products are taxed more heavily than others.

Naahhh I think sin taxes still fit into the narrative of nanny statism and social engineering.

I think it's good enough that groceries have no tax and everything else does.

I just think it will set a bad precedent for becoming a revenue generating stream for the government and put them up to dirty tricks.

While I'd probably agree to eliminating farm subsidies, the problem with doing it from a health perspective is that not all of the end product ends up as poorly processed crap food. Some of it can be marginally healthy. Hence fiscal policy via Pigouvian taxation to the rescue.

This is true, but it's something I can live with as long as it stays within reasonable bounds. If I have to pay a little more for my burgers, so be it. That's a change in policy that would provide a significant public health benefit (though it doesn't help me any- I'm already in the 4th percentile for BMI in American males).

US agriculture doesn't need subsidies. We've already had enough government hand-outs to welfare queens like Michelle Bachmann. They'll survive without the subsidies, and the taxation on the final products can still be used to the same purpose.

I always get a kick when "Rugged Individualists" complain about social engineering, yet fail to realize that basic notions (like telling children not to steal and to respect other people's property) IS social engineering.

This is true, but it's something I can live with as long as it stays within reasonable bounds. If I have to pay a little more for my burgers, so be it. That's a change in policy that would provide a significant public health benefit (though it doesn't help me any- I'm already in the 4th percentile for BMI in American males).

Oh no, there are taxes when you buy at a grocery store. It just depends on what you buy. Things that are considered basic (the aforementioned bread, milk, eggs, fruits, and vegetables, along with a number of other goods) are tax-free, but if you buy processed foods like, say, a box of cookies, they will probably be taxed.

No more so than other taxes, and perhaps less so than traffic tickets as a revenue source. Sales taxes are usually handled at the local and state level, so the electorate must pay due diligence to local political matters to keep things in check. Aside from that, I don't see the problem.