Obesity is an external cost that just doesn't get accounted for in a free market. So far, regulation is a blunt tool, but still a lot more effective than other tools we have to deal with this.
For instance, in Indonesia, it's common for Big Tobacco to sell cheap cigarettes near schools [1]. This is insane, but from a purely free market perspective it makes perfect sense. Get your product in peoples hands as early as possible, and now you've got a customer for decades. All the social costs of higher rates of cancer etc will be borne by the taxpayer, so why should big tobacco care.
Costs are only borne by the taxpayer where the taxpayer pays for healthcare, but that's a choice as well. We could just as easily say that the taxpayer won't be responsible for the cost.
We've chosen to have the taxpayer bear the cost, which is very probably good and right, but I think we should be careful using that fact to make decisions about other people's body's.
I think this can be distinguished from other externalities like smoking, where other people have to smell the smoke, or pollution that other people have to smell, or that kills their plants or animals. Some externalities can't be opted out of, but some can, and that fact greatly reduces the case for regulation, in my opinion.
> We could just as easily say that the taxpayer won't be responsible for the cost.
I thought Covid made it obvious that there is no insular, zero-externality health of individuals. Public health is a public commons, and we will be responsible for the cost whether through taxes and preventive action or through other channels in a reactive manner.
Being obese has tons of externalities other than healthcare costs. Higher levels of sickness and absence from work reduces productivity, being out of employment due to disability completely demolishes it. Premature mortality means the national output is reduced because we are losing the societal investment on grown, skilled, experienced adults to death. Some businesses bear higher operating costs; e.g. larger seats or more fuel for aircrafts. Deteriorating mental health is not only a healthcare cost, you and your kids interact with people daily, you make collective decisions (e.g. vote in elections) with them. In short, wellbeing of your fellow humans is never a zero-externality phenomenon and it can't really be distinguished from smoking or pollution because you can't opt out of the consequences of a lower GDP or mentally unwell peers.
These are very interesting points! Though, I don't really think it's the responsibility of individuals to maximize GDP, and people who die younger generally incur lower lifetime medical expenses than people who die older, which plausibly more than offsets things like aircraft fuel. People who eat too much also plausibly subsidize food for the rest of us.
Mental health is a good point, though justifying government intervention on that point also justifies forcing medication on people, does it not? And then the issue of defining where something veers from merely annoying to "mental health problem."
I'm wary of defining externalities so expansively that they justify any intervention.
> I don't really think it's the responsibility of individuals to maximize GDP
Insofar we are in economic competition with other countries, I think being as productive as we can be is also a game of autonomy, survival and values. Ultimately it all drives from individuals carrying their weight (sorry for the pun) which is affected by being in their best shape or disabled.
> I'm wary of defining externalities so expansively that they justify any intervention.
I totally agree. I would say if it comes down to government interventions, there has already been a considerable delay in response. But markets are unable to implement corrective measures proactively, so NGOs and governmental support seems to be the best tools we have for designing a better society. After all, those externalities do exist and keep flowing, whether we take account of them or not.
> though justifying government intervention on that point also justifies forcing medication on people, does it not?
I get your point that these might be on a continuum, but forcing ingestion that defies bodily autonomy is not in the same class of interventions as collecting taxes that try to solve the problem through market based incentives. To add more, to the extent forced institutionalization is implemented, forced medication also does happen.
What makes you think that laws prohibiting alcohol to minors aren't useful? Those laws don't have to completely eliminate alcohol consumption by minors to be successful, they just have to make it less likely to happen. My gut feeling is that alcohol consumption among teenagers would be higher if it wasn't banned, though I don't have any data to back my claim.
I don't get the cynicism either. In the US cigarette usage has gone down tremendously through the decades as laws have gotten more restrictive and advertising more out there. I'm sure I would eat less junk food if it was less accessible.
It's better to raise the cost than attempt access regulations as Mexico is doing. When it comes to food, access regulations are a nightmare to implement and enforce by comparison to taxes (which can be introduced in a fairly smooth, stealthy manner, and then gradually raised to experiment with consumption consequences). Especially when it comes to blatant non-essentials like cigarettes and junk food. You'll get a very nice direct reduction in consumption out of cost increases up to a point. Besides that, there's an excellent argument that junk food should not be actually banned for children (An 11 year old shouldn't be allowed to ever buy a bag of chips? That's some extreme government overreach).
If you're the US, step one is to ban high fructose corn syrup in food as being unsafe for human consumption. Step two, increase the cost of junk food via taxes. The US allowed its obesity epidemic to get out of control by making junk food too inexpensive and allowing high fructose corn syrup to be put into too many products. If Doritos cost $8 per bag instead of $4, people will eat a lot fewer bags; if boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes cost $5 instead of $2, people will buy fewer boxes. Regulating sugar in relation to calories in a packaged consumer food item, may also work quite effectively as a simple slider to test (just begin by gently nudging it downward, see what happens).
My impression is that teenage drinking and smoking was really huge in say, the 80s compared to today.
Frankly, often when I hear somebody like the commenter above I think they may have had some rowdy teenage years in the 80s or thereabouts and is kind of projecting that onto today's youth. "The laws don't work!" Maybe it wouldn't have worked for them. But in the time since...
Although, I don't think it's realistic to expect the laws to get consumption to zero. Maybe it's not even strictly the goal. Reduction, or mild taboo, is not the same as total elimination. People can still buy their kids sugary snacks. I give my kids sugary snacks in small amounts, but might support such a ban, because childhood and adult obesity is a pretty serious problem.
Do you not see that anecdata is also sometimes correlated with real data? That we may be able to look around us and at life experience and observe real trends?
Yes, I personally am talking only about the US in this thread. From what I have personally seen of Europeans younger than I am, for example, it seems like they are much more likely to smoke cigarettes than an American of the same age.
Since the article is about Mexico... I have spent substantial time in Spanish speaking places. But I am unaware of current trends in Mexico, haven't been there in particular since 2006. Probably lots of smokers. Latin America tends to have more smoking than here too. I suppose they did invent the stuff.
