Mayor Tom Menino of Boston has decided to ban all non-diet soda, juice with added sugar, sweetened ice tea, refrigerated coffee, and energy drinks on city-owned property.
“I want to create a civic environment that makes the healthier choice the easier choice in people’s lives,” he said.
But with the exception of choices that violate other people’s rights, government should not take a position on which choices are better than others and should not try to make some choices easier than others. It would be one thing for Menino to require that healthy drinks be available alongside soda, but by banning soda and other sweet drinks on city property, he is placing an undue burden on people who want to drink them.
The chief of the Boston Public Health Commission justified the ban by saying that ”Medical costs for an obese patient are about 42 percent higher a year than for a patient with healthy weight.”
But this shouldn’t be a reason to pressure people into being thin. We should have a system in which people pay for their own medical expenses, because when medical costs are paid for collectively by society, society has an incentive to control people’s behavior so that medical costs are as low as possible. In such a system, it is difficult to maintain individual liberty, as the soda ban shows.
If you live in or near Boston, you’ve probably heard of the whole dispute between Mayor Menino and the Boston firefighters’ union over how large of a raise the firefighters should get in exchange for submitting to random drug and alcohol testing. An independent arbitrator decided to give the firefighters a 19% raise (to make up for several years without a raise), which Menino opposes, and the firefighters’ union has volunteered to delay the raise for a year.
I have a better idea: What if the firefighters didn’t have to submit to drug and alcohol testing and didn’t get a raise?
My rationale behind this is that first of all, getting rid of drug and alcohol testing is a pro-liberty thing to do, at least according to my rather unorthodox brand of libertarianism. The only thing that an employer should care about is how well employees do their job. People’s use of drugs and/or alcohol outside of work, although it might be statistically correlated with how well they do their jobs, is not itself a part of the job, and as such, employers have no right to know about or judge it. Furthermore, urine testing, the most common although not only method of drug testing, is degrading and offensive. I actually think it should be banned as a condition of employment – a radical idea, I know. Boston would be a better place if firefighters did not have to go through this.
Second of all, it would save the taxpayers money!
The firefighters ought to be happy about this idea because they wouldn’t have to undergo drug testing. If they didn’t have to do that, then they wouldn’t mind not getting a raise, right? And Menino ought to be happy about this because the city would save money.
Photo by Brett Gustafson C.C. Attribution 2.5
I saw this article in the Boston Globe magazine today about Boston’s modern architecture – such as City Hall, the JFK Federal Building, and the sprawling State Service Center. I love these buildings and have never understood why so many people, including Mayor Thomas Menino, think they are ugly. It seems many people agree with me. I like brutalist buildings because they stand out and give visual interest to the city – it would be boring for Boston to be filled with just old-fashioned brick buildings. City Hall Plaza is one of my favorite places in the world. It is dramatic and breathtaking in a way that no park or traditional brick building can match.
Here are some of my favorite pictures that I have taken of Boston’s modern buildings:
JFK Fedreal Building
Boston City Hall
Christian Science Plaza tower
State Service Center
