Can’t win ‘em all
Sometimes I agree wholeheartedly with something that Reason magazine puts out, sometimes not.
Today is a not day.
Jacob Sullum has a piece today on why mandatory posting of nutritional information in fast food restaurants is unnecessary, and I have a few bones to pick.
1. Sullum posits that consumers don’t want the information posted, mainly based on the idea that the market isn’t clamoring for it. I know that the belief that the market is perfectly rational and directly responsive to consumers is gospel to certain people, but the continued existence of cell phone early termination fees suggest that their exists a limbo are: things that consumers want or don’t want, but not strongly enough to make a fuss about them. Consumers may want the information, they just don’t want it enough to demand en masse that McDonalds provide it.
This is an Occam’s Razor situation. The vast majority of those polled say they want something, but the market has no correspondingly high demand. Does that suggest (a) that people are saying they want something when they really don’t, or (b) that people want it, but it isn’t a deal breaker?
2. I think, however, the main point is this. Perhaps the law would do little, but that must be measured against the what it could do and the fact that it requires a minimal intrusion into the consensual relationship between customer and owner of the establishment. I know the libertarian ideal is that the government never does anything it doesn’t have to, but that boat has sailed. We expect the government to be doing something, so we should be working to create the least intrusive, least paternalisitic mandates.
