
News Link • Government
Government Can Fix neither Food nor Farm
• https://ronpaulinstitute.org, by Joel SalatinRecently RFK, Jr. gave his recipe but in general, it's yet another request for government intervention in these fields (pun intended). Capping drug prices, prohibiting research grants from going to people with conflicts of interest, and reforming crop subsidies to incentivize healthier alternatives all sound nice. Eliminating SNAP (formerly food stamps) from being spent on high fructose corn syrup drinks ($9 billion annually) sounds good too.
Who can disagree with requiring nutrition courses in medical schools and demanding government research grants go toward holistic and alternative health approaches? All of this sounds good in theory, but how? Goodness, we now have official government findings that Cheerios and Fruit Loops are more nutritious than beef. Who is going to make the kinds of U-turns within the bureaucracies that such changes would require?
I remember well when President Obama was elected and Michelle put a garden on the White House lawn. My friends in the organic farming community thought the country would enter ecological farming nirvana…until someone said, "Remember, 10 miles of USDA offices will not change." Therein lies the Achilles' heel of all this nice-sounding rhetoric.
Epoch Times carried a full-page column by pediatric Dr. Joel Warsh last week titled "America's Health Crisis: Expanding on RFK Jr.'s Plan to Make America Healthy Again." As much as his thoughts may sound good, they still suffer from the same old government interventionist mindset. He wants a "National Emergency Declaration of Health." Can you imagine the wrangling, jet fuel, focus groups, and lobbying that would occur with such an initiative?
He suggests we should "recreate the food pyramid" with good food and pastured meat and eggs on the bottom instead of the top. You'd have to move the entire climate change, cow farts narrative to make this happen. Then yet more government mandates: corporations with more than 100 employees "should be required to offer wellness programs that include fitness classes, nutritional counseling, and mental health services." Oh my, we've now exchanged one nanny for another.
He wants health education taught in all public schools, regulations banning junk food ads when children watch TV, and subsidies for organic and transitioning farms. This is just a sampling of his list and much of it would indeed be good…if it were possible. But it's not. Simply put, to get a legislative and bureaucratic push on these kinds of agendas is insanity according to Albert Einstein's definition: "trying to solve a problem with the same thinking that created it." I believe we are where we are in all these areas due to government micro-management; asking for government to get us out is asking for all the agencies, all the politicians, all the lobbyists, all the Happy Meals addicts, all the Chick-fil-A cultists, to do a 180. Ain't gonna happen.