I warned a few months ago in the Weekly Standard that the fight against obesity would become the new global warming, the excuse for more government, higher taxes, and bioethical “expert” dominance. In a word, bloat. And now, the Institute on Medicine proves me right. From the Reuters story:
America’s obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures - from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax - to fix it, the influential Institute of Medicine said on Tuesday. In an ambitious 478-page report, the IOM refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals. Instead, it embraces policy proposals that have met with stiff resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less “obesogenic.”
Of course they do. It increases the power of “the experts” and technocratic class. The only question is how we became great without them.
Government can’t do everything for us. Nor should it. Free people cannot be treated as children. Passing laws and rules as if we can’t live well without mama government—as in the “Julia” madness, Obama should add to the text that his “free trainer in every household program” made her lose 15 pounds—means they parasitically sucking from many the will to live well without them. What we really need is technocrat-obesity control. And here’s the beauty part: It’s free.
