If the government can help people make better decisions about their health, wealth, and welfare, should it? Who should decide what is “better?”
Recently the Denver City Council passed an ordinance to ban restaurants from offering sugary drinks on children’s menus. Families can request other drinks but kids’ menus may list only water or milk. Researchers found when Walt Disney World removed sugary drinks from kids’ menus, most kids chose among the default options rather than ask for a drink not on the menu. By making the healthier choice the default, Councilman Chris Hinds believes the new requirement will help reduce obesity.
He described the ordinance as a “nudge” like the Colorado law that requires grocery shoppers to bring their own bags or pay a fee to buy a paper bag. A “nudge” in the right direction is how professors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, authors of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (2008), describe policies that modify citizen or employee behavior without overt coercion. Governments and employers alter the “choice architecture” to direct individuals to save more, eat better, exercise, get vaccinated, and reduce energy and water use.
For example, rather than ask employees whether they want to participate in a savings program, employers enroll them automatically. Employees can opt-out if they want to but most don’t. The electric company sends customers reports comparing their energy use to that of neighbors to prod them to be more energy efficient. Hotels use similar peer pressure messaging to encourage towel reuse. The Affordable Care Act requires chain restaurant menus to display calorie information. Congress hoped diners would weigh calorie options and perhaps weigh less as a result. For similar reasons, several states and now the city of Denver mandate how restaurants design their kids’ menus to reduce higher sugar beverage consumption.
Human societies have always regulated members’ behavior through social norms, laws, education, shame and honor, and other methods. Because individuals (restaurant owners excepted) technically still have a choice, Thaler and Sunstein describe these policies as “Libertarian Paternalism.” It’s for our own good after all; these elites know what’s best. Or do they?
The Denver City Council is right about sugar. Milk contains half as much sugar, in the form of lactose, as juice, lemonade, or soda do in plant-based sugar (fructose and sucrose). However, milk has more calories than the banned alternatives and contains fat. To reduce obesity, the council is nudging kids away from sugar drinks towards a drink with more calories and fat.
Similarly the Colorado legislature, in all its wisdom, is prodding shoppers away from single-use plastic bags toward less environmentally sound replacements. While the banned plastic bags take longer to decompose than paper bags, paper bags require far more energy and water to produce than plastic bags, require more energy to transport (because they are heavier), and produce more toxic chemicals. Multiple-use heavy plastic bags must be used 10 to 20 times to equal the carbon footprint of single use bags and cotton bags must be used over 7,000 times before they become the more environmentally sound choice. Rarely used multiple-use bags that end up in the landfill are much worse than their thinner counterparts.
Government-preferred LED lights are more efficient and long-lasting than banned incandescent lights, but they contribute significantly more light pollution. Light pollution not only blots out the stars, it harms wildlife and interrupts the circadian rhythms of human beings, compromising our immune systems and increasing risk of disease including cancer. Brighter isn’t better.
Milk or lemonade? Paper or plastic? LED or incandescent? There are no right answers, only trade-offs. Yet politicians push their preferences on the populace and insist that a nudge is not a shove. The veneer of choice does not justify the use of “libertarian” to describe what is clearly just regular old paternalism. These elites believe parents, shoppers, and business owners cannot be trusted to weigh costs and benefits for themselves; they must be manipulated by their betters.
But for how long? Populist sentiment and distrust of institutions is growing. Resentment of government overreach during COVID lingers. This for-our-own-goodism is bound to garner backlash.
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.
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