Nation of Regulation
Yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill banning the use of trans-fats in restaurants and baked goods. California now joins the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Stamford in controlling what sort of fat people can and cannot put into their bodies. Congress is currently considering passing a bill that would give the FDA the authority to regulate the content and marketing of all tobacco products. (For those of you who took Frick*y's legislation class, the bill would be legalizing the 1996 rules that the Supreme Court struck down in the FDA Tobacco case.) However, as has already been much discussed in this blog, in Heller v. D. C. Commissioner, the Supreme Court struck down the D.C. ban on handguns.
Are we just going through one of those upswings in regulatory cycles that seems to happen when the economy starts sliding downhill? It doesn't seem so, since neither the trans-fat nor the tobacco regulation would have much effect on the economy. Is the main difference that the right to own guns is found in the constitution? I would suspect not. Instead, I think the rationale behind the current regulations (although politicians will never admit it, and probably wouldn't even understand it) is the Puritan nature of this country.
Trans-fats and tobacco can kill you - but only if you make the choice to ingest those substances. Guns can kill you as well - but gun regulations are meant to curtail homicides, not suicides. Despite the separation of church and state, this is a religious nation, and it comes through most insidiously not in creationism or biblical sculptures but in an overwhelming belief that people must be protected from harming themselves. Maybe its time for us, as a nation, to take a little more self-responsibility and worry more about protecting ourselves from those who want to harm us and less about protecting ourselves from our own choices.
Are we just going through one of those upswings in regulatory cycles that seems to happen when the economy starts sliding downhill? It doesn't seem so, since neither the trans-fat nor the tobacco regulation would have much effect on the economy. Is the main difference that the right to own guns is found in the constitution? I would suspect not. Instead, I think the rationale behind the current regulations (although politicians will never admit it, and probably wouldn't even understand it) is the Puritan nature of this country.
Trans-fats and tobacco can kill you - but only if you make the choice to ingest those substances. Guns can kill you as well - but gun regulations are meant to curtail homicides, not suicides. Despite the separation of church and state, this is a religious nation, and it comes through most insidiously not in creationism or biblical sculptures but in an overwhelming belief that people must be protected from harming themselves. Maybe its time for us, as a nation, to take a little more self-responsibility and worry more about protecting ourselves from those who want to harm us and less about protecting ourselves from our own choices.
posted by Bekki at 10:26 AM
3 Comments:
I agree there is a religious element in American politics, but I doubt it informs this particular issue.
California now joins the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Stamford in controlling what sort of fat people can and cannot put into their bodies.
Not quite. California now regulates what fats restaurants can sell, essentially adding trans-fats to a list that includes arsenic, kerosene, and shards of glass. People are still welcome to put all of those things in their bodies. They just can't sell meals with those ingredients to other people.
[N]either the trans-fat nor the tobacco regulation would have much effect on the economy.
Right. No effect. Except by way of the millions of people who smoke and eat french fries (also known as the poor). In an article I recently read, a CA restaurant owner explained that the price of fries at her burger joint will likely be bumped up from $1.75 to at least $2.75 to cover the increased ingredient (i.e., fryer goop) costs. There is also trans-fats' undisputed effect (a 2% increase in trans-fat intake correlates to a 25% increase in the likelihood of coronary artery disease) on the healthcare industry, which is 16% of our GDP.
Trans-fats and tobacco can kill you - but only if you make the choice to ingest those substances.
I think this is true but it misses the mechanics of the trans-fat ban. Just like guns and cigarettes, Americans are totally welcome to commit suicide by trans-fat. When they want to inflict those harms on other people, however, they must adhere to regulation.
Instead, I think the rationale behind the current regulations (although politicians will never admit it, and probably wouldn't even understand it) is the Puritan nature of this country.
Setting aside the perplexing nature of a rationale that is simultaneously not understood, I still disagree. I think the rationale behind the legislation can be understood in the very terms set forth above: regulating socially harmful activities, and the economy.
The question raised by the post is a good one, though -- to what extent should the state tell the poor what it is good for them?While I approve of the trans-fat ban (and Heller, for that matter) am I am bothered by the social class issue. Banning trans-fats inflicts cots on restaurant owners, who will pass them right on to consumers. That's not a big deal to many of us, but it does put a squeeze on the poor, who as a group tend to eat a lot more of that crap than the rest of us. I believe that raising the price of french fries too much is a bad thing, because many french fry eaters don't have a lot of extra cash. I also argue that letting restaurants put whatever is cheapest into their food is a bad thing. But I have no clue where to draw the line.
And don't forget that, because of the trillions of dollars of subsidies showered on corporate agribusinesses producing unhealthy food, existing prices are artificially low. The equivalence is far from perfect but, in a way, California and others aren't frustrating the market; they're correcting an artificial distortion in it. Take away the corporate welfare (excuse me, "subsidies") for canola oil, corn syrup, and potatoes, and fries SHOULD be $3 or $4 a serving. Add in the deleterious health costs paid by the rest of society, as Patrick outlines, and we're still pretty much subsidizing our own deaths, trans-fat-ban or not.
Despite the separation of church and state, this is a religious nation, and it comes through most insidiously not in creationism or biblical sculptures but in an overwhelming belief that people must be protected from harming themselves.
Bekki, I disagree. This country's religious fervor "comes through most insidiously" not through food safety regulations, seatbelts, etc., but rather through government-sanctioned homophobia, the political power of the anti-abortion movement, abstinence-only sex ed programs, government subsidies for faith-based organizations, a president who says he speaks to God, religious and political litmus tests for government hiring (see, e.g., today's NYT story about DOJ hiring), etc.
The influence of religion on these areas of is much clearer and infinitely more troubling to me than a ban on the use of trans-fats in restaurants.
Also, the countries typically accused of being nanny states--the charge you seem to be leveling against California here--tend also to be places that aren't very religious. (I'm thinking especially of Scandinavian countries, where between half and three-quarters of the citizens describe themselves as atheists or agnostics.) And the voices who claim the U.S. is a Christian nation are usually the same ones who are constantly calling for less government hand-holding and more personal responsibility--often a code for free-market absolutism.
In other words, the personal responsibility mantra is perfectly compatible with American religious fervor, at least according to the Christian Right.
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