AM, as he is often wont to do, used the columnist's argument as a case for smaller government and less regulation. Given that in Canada we have universal healthcare, the argument often goes that protecting the health of the nation's citizens is a matter of government interest since it will effect the shared cost of caring for an unhealthy populace. AM, and the NP columnist, instead argue that our love of fatty foods and our rejection of government bodies' attempts to legislate same is actually an argument against universal healthcare.
It is an interesting idea, and one that I thought got to the root of why I so often find myself arguing with things AM posts, despite the fact that we both generally agree in our shared enthusiasm for belittling the stupid. What I realized was that I tend to think that the government ought to attempt to help its citizens as much as possible and I realized that my point of view presupposes that people are essentially stupid. That is, to me, in a world where people are stupid enough to attempt to eat KFC Double-Downs for dinner every night, maybe someone should step up and say, hey, idiot, your heart is going to explode.
I'll respond to this in a little more detail, but I think Johnson basically gets my point right. He differs with me on how we, as a society, should respond to human stupidity. Is the right answer more 'bottom up' or more 'top down'?
It's a very relevant question, well captured in Keynes v. Hayek round 2. To quote Hayek: "I don't want to do nothing, there's plenty to do, the question I ponder is who plans for whom. Do I plan for myself, or leave it to you? I want plans by the many, not by the few."
