A Stitch in Haste

The New York Times forgets that oil and economics don't mix:

Most people who pay attention to their diets know that partially hydrogenated oil contains trans fat that clogs the arteries and reduces the "good" cholesterol that helps unclog them. Beginning next year, companies must disclose trans-fat amounts on food labels. But it is already clear that the Food and Drug Administration is going to have to do more to protect the public from heart-threatening fats.
...
The ultimate aim, however, should be to end the widespread use of partially hydrogenated oils. As things now stand, the F.D.A. acknowledges that trans fats are unhealthy at any level, and yet maintains that the partially hydrogenated oils that contain them are basically safe. The agency can't have it both ways. Public health would be greatly improved if the F.D.A. prohibited their use.

Now I may not know much about food science or nutrition generally, but I do know about economics and business. If companies are using partially hydrogenated oils, then they are doing so for a reason. I don't know whether it's cost, or taste, or shelf-life or government subsidies or what, but it's not just a random decision.

So let's assume, in classic Broken Window Fallacy style, that the government did ban these oils. Food would, in some way, be worse than it is today. It would either be more expensive, or less tasty, or more prone to spoilage, or would otherwise become something less desirable than it is today.

The differential might be small for one bag of potato chips or whatever -- a few pennies or a minute loss of utility for the consumer, either from diminished taste or some spoilage or whatever. But, for better or worse, we eat a lot of potato chips. Aggregate all those "few pennies" or "less tasty chips" over the entire food market and the cost, whether monetary or otherwise, becomes substantial.

But of course the Times doesn't see that cost. They only see the (supposed) health benefits from banning these oils.

Every choice any consumer ever makes involves costs and risks, even if it's just the opportunity cost of the next best alternative. It is fundamentally misguided (or malicious) to call for bans on a product for no other reason than because it is "costly." Basic economics guarantees that banning something is always more costly than not banning it -- if you define "costly" properly.

And as for "public health care costs," the far more intellectually honest concern would be over the cost of public health care, rather than the cost of food additives. "Too expensive for the government" is not the same as "too expensive for consumers."

Just as it would be fallacious to discuss the "cost" of a loaf of bread without including the cost of the heat used to bake it, so too is it fallacious to lament the cost of partially hydrogenated oils without considering the true costs of not using those oils.

Nothing more than a new twist to the same old Broken Window Fallacy.

Perhaps someday consumers will decide that the benefit of not using these oils will exceed the cost of not using them, and then the market itself will "ban" them (compare: the decline and fall first of sugar, then saccharine, and now perhaps of aspertame too, as Splenda becomes more popular). Until then, the Times should remember this basic truth: more choices are always preferable to fewer choices. Taking away a consumer's choices can be as detrimental to his welfare as taking away his money.

(Cross-posted at Bastiat's Window.)

It's quite simple really: If you believe...

...that 50 local hack politicians have the authority to ban a food ingredient that is in no way suspected to be adulterated or contaminated, poses no immediate health risk to anyone, poses no direct, physical externalities to innocent bystanders and, to the extent it supposedly creates "financial externalities," does so only minutely, on average, in the distant future and because the state created those financial externalities itself in the first place...

...then you must, by implication, believe that there can be no checks on the power on government. Ever.

Even more so than the bigot amendments. Even more so than the flag desecration amendment. Even more so than Social Security. Even more so than the War on Drugs. Even more so than the Internet gambling ban. Indeed, even so more than that ultra-favorite litmus test of libertarians -- the motorcycle helmet law.

Even more so than all these, Chicago's proposed ban on trans fat in restaurants is a declaration that the power of government is unlimited, that "tyranny of the majority" is an oxymoron and that legislators can declare themselves not only smarter than you, but also so much so that you can and should be declared, literally, a ward of the state.

Is this the kind of faith you have in local politicians? Is this the level of confidence, or lack thereof, that you have in yourself and your ability to run your life as you see fit? Is this the kind of society you want to live in?

If so, then be my guest -- but leave me the hell out of it.

Chicago now has some competition in the race to be the worst nanny-state city in America:

The New York City Board of Health today endorsed a proposal that would prohibit the city's 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.
...
The proposal met immediate resistance among restaurant owners, who said banning trans fats would raise their costs and change the taste of some menu items.
...
"Like lead paint, artificial trans fat in food is invisible and dangerous, and it can be replaced," [Health Commissioner Thomas R. Frieden] said. "No one will miss it when it is gone."

Of course, it's possible that restaurant owners might — just might — know a little bit more about their businesses, and their customers, than New York's central planner bureaucrats.

And the lead paint analogy is wholly inappropriate, because unlike lead paint, there are simply no externalities generated by trans-fat foods other than those artificially created by the government itself through socialized medicine.

Finally, one must ask where this greasy slope will take us. If banning trans fat transactions between competent, consenting adults is a proper function of government based solely on some vague, vacuous claims of "public health," then could the Board of Health, as a matter of law, also ban refined sugar? After all, it contributes to obesity and "can be replaced." What about whole milk? Salted peanuts? All peanuts?

Health police are merely a specialized form of central planner. And all central planners have a desperate and perpetual need to find ever more plans to centralize. Where real issues do not exist, they have to be invented. Do not expect trans-fat to be the last intrusion upon private transactions among private persons in the name of "public" health.

More thoughts from Rolling Doughnut, Push Liberty.

UPDATE: Overlawyered reminds me to point out that the claim that trans fat can be replaced with no loss of flavor or texture is simply false — an example here.

New York City's philosopher-king is defending the Board of Health's potential war on free markets:

The city has as much of a right to ban trans fats from restaurant menus as to impose speed limits, Mayor Bloomberg insists.

Continuing his campaign to stamp out the artery-clogging oils, the mayor said yesterday that City Hall should intervene when lives are at stake.

"Nobody seriously thinks we shouldn't have a speed limit ... [or] gun laws," he noted.

First off, we'll leave that gun law remark for another day.

It's quite simple really, at least for people who, unlike Bloomberg, are not flaming idiots: Speeding, at least reckless speeding, generates unreasonable externalities — both certain (i.e., people have to be especially alert drivers in the presence of others who are speeding) and probabilistic (i.e., the heightened risk of a major accident).

And this is functionally equivalent to eating a doughnut — how?

The only externalities that are generated by unhealthy eating are those that the government itself has created, by implementing socialized medicine. The government creates an externality, and then creates a nanny state to correct the externality?

Madness. Sheer madness.

I will never — never — understand why people take this buffoon seriously.

So I was exploring the links to this New York Post story on how the New York City Council might one-up the Board of Health and make the proposed trans fat ban an outright law rather than a mere administrative rule (because politicians are just so much wiser than bureaucrats), when I found this post by the blog (note the cutesy URL) of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance (whatever that may be), which "has been fighting for the rights of small businesses in New York City for the past twenty years" --

For those in the food industry who don't like the intrusiveness there is going to have to be an awakening of their consciousness on the obesity issue. They will either be part of the solution or they'll get attacked as part of the problem.

In other words: surrender or die.

So much for property rights and the notion that adults should be able to make their own decisions about what they buy, sell or eat.

The post also revisits the outrageous proposal of another hack politician to zone out fast food from lower-income neighborhoods. Because the last thing that poor people need is cheap food.

In any case, the really interesting part is the self-contradictory responses of the local restaurant industry over what are really just two manifestations of the same phenomenon and public policy. Propose a "War on Obesity" ban on (national) fast-food chains, and local restaurateurs are elated. Propose a "War on Obesity" ban on trans fat, and suddenly the locals are reaching for their torches and pitchforks to hunt down the nanny-state monster.

Sometimes you can just choke on the hypocrisy.

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And for dessert, here's the bulk of the blogroll of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance:

Wal-Mart Free NYC Blog
The Box Tank
Big Boxes Blow
Always Low Prices
Global Watch Wal-Mart
Against the Wal
Wake Up Wal-Mart
Global Watch Wal-Mart
JR Monsterfodder (anti-Wal-Mart DailyKos page)
Buy Blue
No Cleveland Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Watch

Sense a pattern?

When will we start waging, not a War on Obesity, but a War on Absurdity?

KFC has announced that it will transition to using "trans fat free" oils in most circumstances:

KFC President Gregg Dedrick said he was confident the switch, which followed two years of secret taste tests, won't prompt complaints about taste.

"There is no compromise," he said at a Manhattan news conference an hour before the hearing. "Nothing is more important to us than the quality of our food and preserving the terrific taste of our product."

The "most circumstances" disclaimer is required because the switch was indeed noticed in KFC's biscuits, which will continue to be made with trans fat.

So the question remains: Why exactly is KFC making the switch in its chicken but not its biscuits?

If the answer is "to meet evolving customer demands," then that would of course be fine if not wonderful. Contrary to capitalism's more vocal (and more stupid) critics, "greedy capitalists" simply cannot put the factory on auto-pilot and "force" its product on anyone (in the absence of a government-imposed monopoly, that is).

But is that what's really going on with KFC — a victory for the free market?

[U]nless the company finds a substitute for the shortening, the biscuits could be outlawed in New York City — just one casualty of the city's proposal to ban trans fats.

So perhaps the company is responding, not to customers, but to hack bureaucrats and the hack politicians who piggy-back off them.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which sued KFC last spring over the trans fat content of its food, announced Monday that it was withdrawing from the lawsuit.

Or perhaps the company is responding, not to customers, but to activist nanny-staters.

So, to review, KFC is changing for one or more of the following reasons:

1. A voluntary desire to adapt to changing customer tastes, preferences and expectations in a free-market environment.

2. Coercion by agents inside the government.

3. Coercion by agents outside the government.

It is really so difficult to see that one of these three is not like the other?

Why are you all expressing so much shock and awe over the decision by New York's unelected bureaucrats to ban trans fat in restaurants? I told you about it back in September, in this post:

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Chicago now has some competition in the race to be the worst nanny-state city in America:

The New York City Board of Health today endorsed a proposal that would prohibit the city's 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.
...
The proposal met immediate resistance among restaurant owners, who said banning trans fats would raise their costs and change the taste of some menu items.
...
"Like lead paint, artificial trans fat in food is invisible and dangerous, and it can be replaced," [Health Commissioner Thomas R. Frieden] said. "No one will miss it when it is gone."

Of course, it's possible that restaurant owners might — just might — know a little bit more about their businesses, and their customers, than New York's central planner bureaucrats.

And the lead paint analogy is wholly inappropriate, because unlike lead paint, there are simply no externalities generated by trans-fat foods other than those artificially created by the government itself through socialized medicine.

Finally, one must ask where this greasy slope will take us. If banning trans fat transactions between competent, consenting adults is a proper function of government based solely on some vague, vacuous claims of "public health," then could the Board of Health, as a matter of law, also ban refined sugar? After all, it contributes to obesity and "can be replaced." What about whole milk? Salted peanuts? All peanuts?

Health police are merely a specialized form of central planner. And all central planners have a desperate and perpetual need to find ever more plans to centralize. Where real issues do not exist, they have to be invented. Do not expect trans-fat to be the last intrusion upon private transactions among private persons in the name of "public" health.

SIDEBAR: The claim that trans fat can be replaced with no loss of flavor or texture is simply false — an example here.

Care to guess what topic could generate such schizophrenia?

There's no telling how many calories the restaurant industry has expended running away from New York's pioneering attempt to improve the city’s health by requiring chain eateries to prominently display calorie information. Fortunately, the city health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, shows no sign of relenting as he pushes the industry and consumers toward acting responsibly.

That's right: The nanny-statist War on Happy Meals, led by the second worst example of Kip's Law in New York City: Gesundheitsfuerher Thomas Frieden. (The worst example is of course Mayor Bloomberg himself.)

Imagine the following hypothetical:

"Hi, welcome to McWenbell's! May I take your order please?"

--"Yes, I'm tempted to try your new McStatin™ value meal, but first you could tell me how many calories and grams of fat it has, along with the cholesterol and sodium content?"

"Sorry no, I can't."

--"Oh. Okay, never mind. Bye."

Now, that scenario is, to the Times, utterly impossible. Educated consumers are a fiction. The enlightened bureaucrats of the Health Commission must veto the market and force fast food chains to offer a service (information) that its (many, many) customers have repeatedly demonstrated that they simply do not want. The market does not work...

...except when it does:

The big chains fighting the city might take a cue from Subway. The sandwich maker is using calorie counts as a marketing tool and a way to build on its reputation as a more healthful fast-food alternative. It has voluntarily posted calories where customers can easily see them, usually on the menu board.

So demand creates its own supply, and when it doesn't — the market is wrong?

Words have meaning, even in economics. "Market failure" is not whenever some pompous bureaucrat is unhappy with what people sell or buy. If a restaurant chain finds that its customers don't care about calories, then that is, by definition, the correct outcome. The fact that Frieden — or Bloomberg, or you or I — happen not to like it is irrelevant. We can cry in our diet cola at the local Subway shop.