When liberal nanny-staters (but I repeat myself) try to create a better world, at least as they see it, they almost always create a worse world for some other nanny-staters. The most recent example comes to us care of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Our overseers have long worried about our diets. They want us to exercise and eat healthier—even though you may have noticed many of them don’t live the healthiest of lives themselves. Of course, living healthier isn’t a bad thing; it’s that the nanny-staters try to mandate we do so.
For some time the nanny-staters have worried about the amount of trans fats in our diets. Trans fats are unsaturated fatty acids created from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil; they can raise people’s cholesterol level, which can lead to heart disease.
The nanny-staters have lobbied the states and the federal government to limit or ban trans fats from certain processed food. Now the FDA has proposed phasing them out. Liberals cheered.
Well, most of them. Scientific American reports that people concerned about the rainforests are worried that the elimination of trans fats will drive food producers to use more palm oil, which in turn will spur more plantations that produce the product. And to create these plantations, they destroy tropical rain forests, which of course nanny-staters are very protective of because they reduce levels of CO2.
So which is it: more heart disease or more CO2? You see their dilemma.
But it’s only one of many examples. Environmentalists—plus a lot of people who make big bucks off it—demand we put ethanol in our gasoline. That mandate drives up the price of corn, which hurts millions of poor people for whom corn is a staple product. Plus, studies indicate that growing and processing the corn for ethanol could create more environmental harm than just using gasoline alone.
And, of course, there’s President Obama’s health insurance mandate to ensure that you have the kind of coverage he thinks you need, which has led to millions of Americans seeing their health insurance canceled, and could leave many of them vulnerable to high medical bills—which was the chief fear of the nanny-staters.
Unfortunately, the only lesson nanny-staters ever seem to learn from all of their policy disasters is … we need even more government intervention.