THEE THEN ME

Health experts are asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require warning labels on sugary drinks and snacks.  Other countries like Mexico, Ecuador and the UK already have such labels and an effort is underway to duplicate them here.

            “Excess calories” looking like a black stop sign adorn Coke bottles in Mexico.  Apparently ingredient labels aren’t enough and more is needed for the plebes to make informed decisions.  Who doesn’t know Coke is full of junk?

            I don’t need a label to keep me from dinking Coke.  If I happen to drink one, I know it’s an indulgence that is detrimental to my health.  So is watching mainstream media news.  When people think the federal government is the conscience for everybody, we’ve sunk to a new low.

            While the folks demanding these front panel, in-your-face labels have every good intention, I’m also reading the latest broadside from George Monbiot in The Guardian titled “The most damaging farm products?  Organic, pasture-fed beef and lamb.”  

            Few things create more damage in a society than impatient legislation.  Paul Harvey used to say that “societal evolution at its most accelerated pace is agonizingly gradual.”  Jumping on the bandwagon that every societal ill merits a legislative or regulatory intervention has caused untold grief.  

            Teddy Roosevelt gave us the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) when the market responded perfectly to Upton Sinclair’s diatribe against the big packers in 1906.  Back then the 7 meat packers controlling 50 percent of the country’s sales was considered monopolistic; today only 4 control 85 percent and we’re told it’s a free market.  We got where we are because Roosevelt intervened with the FSIS.  

            Ditto Prohibition financed by John D. Rockefeller to get that pesky alcohol switch off the dashboard of the Model T.  Ditto mandatory pasteurization when swill dairies and filthy cities and settings created milk toxicity.  

            Today it’s sugar.  Tomorrow it’s pastured beef.  Righteous indignation is a fearful thing in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians.  While I’m no fan of high fructose corn syrup, I’m far more concerned about mission creep that spills demonization over to the next evil du jour, like pasture-fed beef and lamb.

            How many times must I repeat?  You cannot have thriving small business under big government.  Big government creates big business.  That rule is as immutable as gravity.  Don’t fall for the mob wanting warning labels on Coke because it only makes precedent to put warning labels on pasture-fed beef and lamb.  

            What’s your favorite example of government intervention in a societal problem that ended up doing more harm than good?