<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt">I am against this kind of "Nanny State" behavior just on general principles. It doesn't matter to me that it's only the ability to buy soda in quantities above a certain amount in one container that we are talking about. It comes down to whether or not you think the individual has the right to make personal health choice decisions themselves. If they do, then they also have the right to make bad decisions. I'm all for education; I'd be happy if they were discussing ways that the health problems associated with drinking soda in large quantities could be communicated to the public more effectively. The more data that an individual has to go on, the better choices they have the potential to make. I'm not OK with the government trying to make certain choices unavailable through these kinds of
bans. If soda was immediately poisonous, or immediately addictive, then this would be a different story. It's not though. If you've never had any before, and you drink one large capacity cup of soda, you won't experience any measurable effects from the soda.<br><br>Paul<br><br><div><span><br></span></div><div><br></div> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Art Deco <art.deco.studios@gmail.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> vision2020@moscow.com <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Monday, March 25, 2013 3:44 AM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [Vision2020] Three Cheers for the Nanny State<br> </font> </div> <br>
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<div class="yiv1765300348">March 24, 2013</div>
<h1>Three Cheers for the Nanny State</h1>
<h6 class="yiv1765300348">By
<span><span>SARAH CONLY</span></span></h6>
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Brunswick, Me. </div>
<div>
WHY has there been so much fuss about New York City’s attempt to impose a
soda ban, or more precisely, a ban on large-size “sugary drinks”? After
all, people can still get as much soda as they want. This isn’t
Prohibition. It’s just that getting it would take slightly more effort.
So, why is this such a big deal? </div>
<div>
Obviously, it’s not about soda. It’s because such a ban suggests that
sometimes we need to be stopped from doing foolish stuff, and this has
become, in contemporary American politics, highly controversial, no
matter how trivial the particular issue. (Large cups of soda as symbols
of human dignity? Really?) </div>
<div>
Americans, even those who generally support government intervention in
our daily lives, have a reflexive response to being told what to do, and
it’s not a positive one. It’s this common desire to be left alone that
prompted the Mississippi Legislature earlier this month to pass a ban on
bans — a law that forbids municipalities to place local restrictions on
food or drink. </div>
<div>
We have a vision of ourselves as free, rational beings who are totally
capable of making all the decisions we need to in order to create a good
life. Give us complete liberty, and, barring natural disasters, we’ll
end up where we want to be. It’s a nice vision, one that makes us feel
proud of ourselves. But it’s false. </div>
<div>
John Stuart Mill wrote in 1859 that the only justifiable reason for
interfering in someone’s freedom of action was to prevent harm to
others. According to Mill’s “harm principle,” we should almost never
stop people from behavior that affects only themselves, because people
know best what they themselves want. </div>
<div>
That “almost,” though, is important. It’s fair to stop us, Mill argued,
when we are acting out of ignorance and doing something we’ll pretty
definitely regret. You can stop someone from crossing a bridge that is
broken, he said, because you can be sure no one wants to plummet into
the river. Mill just didn’t think this would happen very often. </div>
<div>
Mill was wrong about that, though. A lot of times we have a good idea of
where we want to go, but a really terrible idea of how to get there.
It’s well established by now that we often don’t think very clearly when
it comes to choosing the best means to attain our ends. We make errors.
This has been the object of an enormous amount of study over the past
few decades, and what has been discovered is that we are all prone to
identifiable and predictable miscalculations. </div>
<div>
Research by psychologists and behavioral economists, including the Nobel
Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky,
identified a number of areas in which we fairly dependably fail. They
call such a tendency a “cognitive bias,” and there are many of them — a
lot of ways in which our own minds trip us up. </div>
<div>
For example, we suffer from an optimism bias, that is we tend to think
that however likely a bad thing is to happen to most people in our
situation, it’s less likely to happen to us — not for any particular
reason, but because we’re irrationally optimistic. Because of our
“present bias,” when we need to take a small, easy step to bring about
some future good, we fail to do it, not because we’ve decided it’s a bad
idea, but because we procrastinate. </div>
<div>
We also suffer from a status quo bias, which makes us value what we’ve
already got over the alternatives, just because we’ve already got it —
which might, of course, make us react badly to new laws, even when they
are really an improvement over what we’ve got. And there are more.
</div>
<div>
The crucial point is that in some situations it’s just difficult for us
to take in the relevant information and choose accordingly. It’s not
quite the simple ignorance Mill was talking about, but it turns out that
our minds are more complicated than Mill imagined. Like the guy about
to step through the hole in the bridge, we need help. </div>
<div>
Is it always a mistake when someone does something imprudent, when, in
this case, a person chooses to chug 32 ounces of soda? No. For some
people, that’s the right choice. They don’t care that much about their
health, or they won’t drink too many big sodas, or they just really love
having a lot of soda at once. </div>
<div>
But laws have to be sensitive to the needs of the majority. That doesn’t
mean laws should trample the rights of the minority, but that public
benefit is a legitimate concern, even when that may inconvenience some.
</div>
<div>
So do these laws mean that some people will be kept from doing what they
really want to do? Probably — and yes, in many ways it hurts to be part
of a society governed by laws, given that laws aren’t designed for each
one of us individually. Some of us can drive safely at 90 miles per
hour, but we’re bound by the same laws as the people who can’t, because
individual speeding laws aren’t practical. Giving up a little liberty is
something we agree to when we agree to live in a democratic society
that is governed by laws. </div>
<div>
The freedom to buy a really large soda, all in one cup, is something we
stand to lose here. For most people, given their desire for health, that
results in a net gain. For some people, yes, it’s an absolute loss.
It’s just not much of a loss. </div>
<div>
Of course, what people fear is that this is just the beginning: today
it’s soda, tomorrow it’s the guy standing behind you making you eat your
broccoli, floss your teeth, and watch “PBS NewsHour” every day. What
this ignores is that successful paternalistic laws are done on the basis
of a cost-benefit analysis: if it’s too painful, it’s not a good law.
Making these analyses is something the government has the resources to
do, just as now it sets automobile construction standards while
considering both the need for affordability and the desire for safety.
</div>
<div>
Do we care so much about our health that we want to be forced to go to
aerobics every day and give up all meat, sugar and salt? No. But in this
case, it’s some extra soda. Banning a law on the grounds that it might
lead to worse laws would mean we could have no laws whatsoever. </div>
<div>
In the old days we used to blame people for acting imprudently, and say
that since their bad choices were their own fault, they deserved to
suffer the consequences. Now we see that these errors aren’t a function
of bad character, but of our shared cognitive inheritance. The proper
reaction is not blame, but an impulse to help one another. </div>
<div>
That’s what the government is supposed to do, help us get where we want
to go. It’s not always worth it to intervene, but sometimes, where the
costs are small and the benefit is large, it is. That’s why we have
prescriptions for medicine. And that’s why, as irritating as it may
initially feel, the soda regulation is a good idea. It’s hard to give up
the idea of ourselves as completely rational. We feel as if we lose
some dignity. But that’s the way it is, and there’s no dignity in
clinging to an illusion. </div>
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<div><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.bowdoin.edu/faculty/s/sconly/">Sarah Conly</a>, an assistant professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College, is the <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9781107024847">author</a> of “Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism.” </div>
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