Felicity Lawrence. Describing her as a health dominatrix doesn’t really work; some people find that fun. In this article, Why the new McDonald’s menu won’t make us thin, she writes:
The coalition government has chosen to cast public health as a matter of personal responsibility. It takes the classical liberal view that individuals should make their own choices, free from state intrusion. Nudging us to healthier choices is OK, but regulating is not.
On this liberal reading, the fact that your risk of being obese relates closely to your socio-economic status is not a question of social justice but a problem of the feckless poor being too ignorant or spineless to make good choices.
This is a dangerous misrepresentation. It conflates the right of the individual to freedom from interference with the right of business to the same freedom from government constraint. It ignores the fact that business intrudes on our choices constantly with its powerful marketing and sales strategies.
The part where she is projecting is the part I have put in bold type. It is Felicity Lawrence, not the supporters of a belief that individuals should make their own choices, who is conflating the right of the individual to freedom from interference with the right of business to the same freedom from government constraint. She is conflating the two rights so as to get her Guardian audience, generally hostile to business, to give up their residual hippy belief in freedom to do what one likes with one’s own body in return for the quick thrill of an anti-business sugar rush.
Those who believe that individuals should be able to do what they like with their own bodies may also believe that businesses should be free from government constraint. I do. They are both freedoms. They are not the same freedom. I would say that the freedom to do what you like with your own body, and mind, and life, is the fundamental freedom – is, in fact, freedom. The specific freedom of businesses is merely an application of that to certain uses of your time and applied to specific types of groups.
I’m lost. For a moment it looked like she was trying to claim that Sunfish, the individual, had a right to eat a Spicy McHaggis and orange pop, but that Ray Kroc had no right to sell it to me.
Never we mind that the current obesity epidemic owes it’s existence to government nannying: back in the 70s and 80s, cutting fat was a big deal, including threats of regulation and the Surgeon General running his mouth.
Food processors reduced fat, all right. They did so by replacing it with sugar (often in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, with the added dubious benefit of throwing a bone to corn farmers). Low-to-moderate carbohydrate high-fat diets don’t bring on diabetes nearly as much as
high-carb diets.
Thanks, guys. That was real helpful of you.
She also writes, “When does collective good outweigh the right of the individual?”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but she doesn’t acknowledge individual rights in the first place, does she? So, why the rhetorical device of mentioning them here, unless she knows that she’s preaching to the whorehouse?
The 19th and early 20th century southern aristocracy were very concerned about the health and well being of the former slaves as well. They just didn’t have the ability to make informed decisions about their well being and needed the government to set limits for them – for their own good, of course.
Umm, business is people. It’s people aggregating their capital and skills to offer other people products and services; it’s people interacting with other people for their mutual benefit. For that matter, government is just people, too: mostly arrogant a**holes like Felicity Lawrence who presume to lecture others on how to live, and who appropriate the power of the state to enforce their prejudices and presumptions. It’s a shame that public flogging has been abolished; it would be the perfect punishment for such as her.
“It ignores the fact that business intrudes on our choices constantly with its powerful marketing and sales strategies.”
She seems to miss the point that without businesses there’d be no choices at all.
Why do these lefty Harridans always seem to go for the Wehrmacht helmet shaped basin cut ?
Freudian slip ?
You have rights as individuals until you get together and start selling pancakes
Sunfish! There you are! I missed you.
The depth and breadth of this woman’s foolishness is hard to fathom. For a potted example, I give you one of her prior columns from the Grauniad:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2007/jul/26/therearesomethingsthat
For concentrated ignorance of economic realities, this one is hard to beat.
“Why does it cost more? Why don’t they do it the way I want it? Why doesn’t everyone want it the way I want it? Why doesn’t somebody make them do it the way I want it? Wah, wah, wah . . . ”
The very idea that other might have a different opinion, or make different choices than her, does not even make it onto her radar.
She is, in fact, nothing more than a foodie conspiracy theorist – there’s nothing for which she can’t find a negative, and it’s always the fault of the standard list of Leftist foodie bugaboos – big supermarkets, industrial farmers. advertizers, fast-food emporia and the list goes on. And she wants the whole world to be forced to cleave to her personal opinions about food, by government mandate if at all possible.
A self-absorbed Minty Marchmont in real life, but with an added dash of Food Nazi. Ignore her.
llater,
llamas
She throws in the old cliche that the poor are fat because McDonalds advertises its evil food, and people are powerlessto resist. What magical properties does this advertising have, that Hampstead bien pensants can resist it but the ‘poor’ cannot?
It’s an interesting “meme”, this thing about freedom of choice being an illusion created by Big Business marketing. It is invented to avoid the awkwardness of admitting that, yes, they do want to restrict freedom because stupid people can’t be trusted, even for things which aren’t addictive.
I have an ambition to make a video diary of me eating nothing but McDonalds for 6 weeks before and even during the London Marathon and still running a qualifying time (in my case under 3:15). As a sort of anti-Supersize Me. Just to annoy Felicity.
Bravo, Laird! I think Natalie’s wrong here: they are the same thing. The right of people to conduct their business as they see fit is universal, and doesn’t alter according to whether they are acting individually or in concert.
More bothersome to me is the sentence that comes after the one she highlights. Damn right we ignore the “fact” that “business intrudes on our choices constantly”. One might as well say that wives have a lesser right to freedom of speech because they interfere in their husbands’ choices constantly (and are a great deal more effective at it than adverts you can choose to ignore). Honestly, what a load of hooey.
m2p, I don’t have a link to hand, but someone already did that. He set a personal best time in the LA Marathon, as far as I recall.
“being obese relates closely to your socio-economic status”
I see. I guess we’re not a true proletarians unless you’re morbidly obese.
Llamas-
Everything I need to know about her can be summed up in one question that she asked about farmers’ markets in the UK:
“Why can’t we buy bananas there?”
What a remarkably stupid woman. You’re right that I should ignore her, but it’s like a school bus full of special-needs kids and puppies going over Hoosier Pass in slow motion. I just can’t take my eyes off of it.
You let puppies on your school buses?
Off-topic food joke. Was riding in the car last night with A Sergeant, Who Shall Not Be Named, and he said ‘Damn, I’m hungry – I need to take an appetite suppressant.” And I said ‘Appetite suppressant? WTF are you talking about – sarge?’ and he said ‘I think a Big Mac and fries will cover it.’
I laughed so hard that green stuff came out of my nose.
I’m sure that Felicity Whatseherface would frown and say ‘That’s not funny! Don’t you realize that you are just pawns of the transnational hegemonic fast food monopoly? You should be eating locally-grown rutabaga patties with brown rice hulls for flavour – and you’d better ride your bike to go get them!’
And, indeed, a Big Mac and fries was just what the doctor ordered.
llater,
llamas
Quite by coincidence I’d decided on toddling off to the Mickey D’s down the road from my office. I thought, “I’ll just have a shufti at Samizdata before I go, ” and here this was. Right, that means I’m having a double quarter pounder with cheese, and I’m having bacon on it. So there. I shall have a Coke Zero to compensate.
Aah, that hit the spot.
Balls to you, Felicity Lawrence.
This view (that business is evil and corrupt) is very convient for the Guardian crowd.
After all they can tell themselves that everyone runs fake “chartiable trusts” (based in overseas tax havens) with themselves as the main beneficiaries.
As for the idea that the freedom of sellers (of business) is not covered by the general principle of freedom – sadly that goes back a long way.
It is one of the, many, misconceptions of J.S. Mill.
Although I do not believe that Mill committed the modern absurdity of thinking that ad campaigns can lead people to buy stuff they do not like – more than once.
What an ad campaign does is call out “look at me….”
Even the best ad campaign (as with the “You are never alone with a Strand”) do not increase sales if people look, and decide they do not like the product.