You gonna eat that?

Posted by Marc Hodak on July 29, 2008 under Unintended consequences | Read the First Comment

The nannies in L.A.’s city council are voting a moratorium on fast food restaurants in South L.A. Here’s their logic: People in South L.A. are fat. Fast food makes you fat. South L.A. is rife with fast food outlets. If we limit the number of fast food outlets there, people there will not get so fat. OK?

This is the same city council that outlawed plastic bags for environmental reasons.

The California Restaurant Association has come up with this response:

Fast food “is the only industry that wants to be in South LA,” said association spokesman Andrew Casana. “Sit-down restaurants don’t want to go in. If they did, they’d be there. This moratorium isn’t going to help them relocate.”

Wow, that’s pretty self-serving. Don’t these people get ENFIC?

Seriously, the council would, if they could, require “healthy, sit-down restaurants” to locate into that area. SInce they don’t quite have that power, not for lack of trying, they will instead use tax dollars to lure such restaurants there. When they aren’t trying to throttle development, of course.

In the mean time, economic logic suggests that:

(a) property values will go down since you’ve taken away one possible, and apparently popular, use for property in that area
(b) taxes will go up to fund this attempt at social engineering
(c) Incumbent restaurants will make more money due to the artificial constraint on competition
(d) Incumbent restaurants may need that extra revenue to defend themselves from a city council that is clearly out to get them…
(e) …making some lobbyists, and likely council members, wealthier
(f) You still won’t have healthy eating opportunities, because, as every nanny should know, punishing behaviors you don’t want never guarantees behaviors you do want.

Which, altogether, means that these people will be simply paying a little more to get fat.