Liberal Lunacy 1: Fast Food

Liberals claim that they stand for freedom, apparently their understanding of "freedom" is messed up. For them "freedom" means being able to do something as long as they approve of it. A good example of what I am talking about is the position of some liberals with regard to fast food and soda. They do not like fast food and soda because they claim it makes America fat. I have no idea what makes America fat. Nor do I care, it is not one of those things that I think about, I do not lie in bed at night struggling to fall asleep because I have the great question of why America is fat on my mind. I have more interesting things to think about. So I cannot say whether it is true or not that fast food makes America fat. But let us pretend that it is true for the sake of argument. Let us assume that fast food and soda is one of the factors of why America is fat (or as a liberal would say in a political correct way, "American obesity"). Thus, these liberals want to restrict fast food and soda by putting a tax on them; use the tax money on the public good, in some rarer instances they want to outright ban these foods.

I imagine that when this liberal gives his argument for taxing or banning fast food with soda he will have a huge collection of different statistics. Give one statistic after another with different kind of numbers showing how fat America has become and how it is the corporations to blame for the fast food. Now I do not like to use statistics and I do not like to use big fancy long words. I have no respect for people who use either of the two tactics in their arguments because they hid their actual arguments behind numbers or behind fancy language. I like to give my arguments straight and clear. The best kind of argument is the argument that is straightforward and explains the problems. So I am not going to be using any statistics and I am not going to be using any big fancy words because I do not know any big fancy words.

There are a number of problems with this liberal argument. These include: it is contrary to freedom, it shifts moral responsibility, it creates the delusion of fixing humans through legislature, and it is an economic failure that would harm the poor people. Each of which would be addressed in the subsequent (ohh, look, it turns out that I do know a fancy word) paragraphs.

Let us begin with the first problem, and that is, it is anti-freedom to ban fast food or soda. I cannot understand by what right someone else can tell me what I can put into my own body that can only belong to myself. I and everybody else should have the right and the freedom to put whatever garbage we want into our own body. And the businesses and corporations should have the right to sell whatever junk they want to as long as they accurately describe what they are selling. If McDonald's sells a quadruple decker cheeseburger with bacon that cannot even fit inside my mouth for 99 cents, they have the freedom to sell that as long as they accurately describe what they are selling, and I, knowing that it will kill me in five years after eating it should have the freedom to eat it. My body belongs only to myself so I choose how I want to use and abuse it. The same applies to cigarettes. It is contrary to freedom to tell someone, "you cannot eat that, it is unhealthy" and it is contrary to freedom to tell a business "you cannot sell that, it is unhealthy". The people who decide that can only be the individuals themselves, the only thing businesses must be accountable for is to accurately describe what they are selling.

The second problem is that these liberals like to blame the corporations for making people fat. Do not get me wrong, I am not an apologist for corporations, corporations can do some nasty things, but we cannot always continually blame corporations whenever we do not like something. It is not the corporations to blame. It is someone else we have to blame. Whose fault is it? No, it is not the Jewish bankers. And it is not Bush. Try again. Maybe it is the public who sucks? Maybe we should start blaming the people who eat in these fast food places. Where is the personal responsibility? These liberals love to shift personal responsibility on someone else. In this case it is our fault. If we go into a fast food place, stuff our fat faces, and then wonder why we are fat, then it is our fault. Of course, liberals would claim that there is a "fat virus" or "addiction" or a "disease". Strangely, this virus/addiction does not exist in other parts of the world, and for some unusual reason it did not exist fifty years ago. Stop making excuses, you only have yourselves to blame. If you never find fault with yourself you are never going to improve yourself.

These liberals also believe that they can improve human beings by just passing the right law. Thomas Reed said, "One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." Evils and problems in this world cannot be cured by laws. Laws do not change people any more than an abusive parent is able to change the personality in his children. Parents who hit and abuse their kids to achieve a particular behavior in them will never succeed. Abusive parents only teach children to behave in a particular way whenever the parents are next to kids because the kids just do it to avoid being hit. Legislation and laws are the same problem. It does not change people. It only prevents people from doing what they otherwise would do in the open. The way we change people for the better is by teaching and making them aware. It is a slow and gradual process, but it is the only way. No law can ever change people, it is a dangerous delusion to think otherwise. It did not work with the prohibition period, it does not work with illegal drugs, and it will certainly not work with banning or taxing fast food. The only thing this law manages to achieve it putting more innocent people into jail. This is discussed in more detail here.

Finally, there are the economic problems with such a law. Liberals in general are terrible at economics. They look at economics in a very narrow point of view. They never pay attention to what the consequences and unintended results of their economic policies would be. In their utopian minds what we will happen is that people will eat fast food less, lose weight, and the tax money will be used for the public good. Who can possibly be against that? They think that anyone who is against this policy must obviously be a greedy person working together with the corporations. In reality, anyone with some basic common sense would be against this policy, I am not a greedy person nor do I work for a corporation. I am capable of seeing what will be the economic consequences of something like this. This law is not going to stop people from going to fast food places. People go to fast food places because they like to eat the fast food. If you put a tax on the food then you are making the customers pay more for fast food. Poorer people are the ones who are often at fast food places. This tax will take away more money from poor people by charging them more. Even if you tax the fast food businesses instead of the people the tax will spread down to the people. Because if you tax the businesses themselves it will cost them more to make the food, therefore they would have to increase their prices. Thus, the poor people will have to pay more for fast food, regardless whether you tax the food directly that they eat or you tax the businesses as they make the fast food, it does not matter, it will lead to essentially taxing the poor people. This tax will economically harm the poor people. Now these liberals claim that the collected tax money will be used on the public good. But that again shows their lack of economic understanding. If you collected 50 million dollars of taxes on fast food then it means the money has to come from somewhere. It comes from the poor people, either directly or indirectly in form of increased prices. Therefore, you spend 50 million dollars on the "public good" but at the same time the public is 50 million dollars poorer. So what you idiotically do is take money from your right pocket and put it into your left pocket. Taxing people and then doing something for them with that tax money does not increase their wealth, it just takes it away from them and gives it back to them again. Where is any sense in that?

Besides for these counter arguments there is one more thing that really troubles me about liberals who support a ban or tax on fast food. Namely, they are against fast food and soda but they are in favor of marijuana! How does that many any sense? I am to believe that marijuana is better than fast food or soda? Marijuana kills your brain. Look, I am anti drugs. I never did any drugs, never planned to, I do not get drunk, I never got drunk, I do not smoke. But I am not going to stop other people from doing marijuana or cocaine or heroin or whatever drugs they enjoy, because it is their life after all. As long as they stay out of my life I will stay out of theirs. But do not tell me that fast food and soda are terrible and then come along to tell me how much you support marijuana. Because that just makes no sense. If you want to have the freedom to smoke up your brain on marijuana you should be fair and not stop other people from expanding their stomach by eating fast food.