Jane Galt declares war on fat

Jane takes a hard look at the current public health panic: obesity. Here are a few of her Swiftian suggestions:

Here are things that would work, in my opinion:

Make discrimination against the overweight not only legal, but mandatory

Encourage health and life insurance companies to jack up their premiums. Make seats in public accomodations, from stadiums to subways, physically impossible for the obese to fit in. Force airlines to charge them for an extra seat.

[. . .]

Make unhealthy food extremely expensive

We're not talking about some measly 1%, 5%, or even 50% tax. If you want people to cut down on unhealthy eating, you need to usher in the era of the $5 can of soda, the $10 big mac. I'd guess that an increase in the price of fatty and/or sugary food somewhere on the order of five to tenfold would be the minimum effective tax.

Make being sedentary even more expensive

Slap a 50% tax on automobiles, a 500% tax on power lawnmowers. Limit elevators to buildings of five stories or more, and force them to stop only at every other floor. Give tax credits for "heart healthy buildings": ones with no elevators, and parking at least 1/4 mile away. (Obviously, I assume there would be a — small and slow! — elevator for the disabled.) Slap a 300% surcharge on cable or satellite television, and an additional Britain-style TV tax besides. Jack up the cost of broadband, video games, and MP3 players. Subsidize sports leagues and parks.

Would all this work? I think it probably would. If it becomes even more difficult to be fat, I assume people will do less of it.

While points 2 and 3 require government intervention in the voluntary economic transactions of life, point 1 only requires government to reduce their already vigorous interventions. Health and insurance companies would love to pass on the direct costs of obesity to their customers who are overweight, but for the most part are prevented from doing so by government. Airlines, similarly, would love to be allowed to charge extra for those people who require more space (and more time to get in and out, and more fuel to transport them), but are similarly limited in their ability to do so.

Ain't gonna happen. At least, not until there's a sea change in the way most of the population view obesity (in the same way that it took such a change to finally start reducing the number of smokers in the general population).