throwit hardly seems to be talking about a libertarian utopia. Kids are susceptible to advertising. They're also susceptible to what their parents teach them. For many of the first years of their lives, they have absolutely no ability to purchase any of these products for themselves.
Is it really so much to ask that we be allowed to make our own decisions about food? Come on, we're talking about food! Not medicine. Not heavy machinery or automobiles or airplanes or nuclear energy. Food!
You don't have to accept the position of the documentary, that the corporate form is intrinsically a bad thing. But tell me that the marketers behind the "Nag Factor" report don't disgust you.
It is nice to imagine that each family is an island of rationality, well-informed about choices and their eventual effects, never choosing the easy path, immune to marketing and peer pressure. In the real world, things are a little more complex. And the marketers behind reports like "The Nag Factor" make millions by subverting family relations to serve their purposes.
It is good to be skeptical of regulation, but this is so clearly a case where more good can be done than harm.
I'm not saying he's proposing a libertarian utopia. I'm saying that even in a libertarian utopia, regulating interactions between people who are competent to participate freely in the economy and those who are not is reasonably the province of the state.
I'm not talking about limiting anybody's decisions. I'm talking about regulating interactions between businesses and people who are incompetent to make their own decisions.
This is exactly what makes it so dangerous. Just food? Food is something that can be as deadly as drugs, yet is as accepted as air.
>Not medicine.
It's worse than medicine exactly for the sentiment you are expressing. No big deal right? It's so normal it couldn't possibly be abused, right? It's exactly the opposite. We can push poison and it's no big deal because it's "just food".
It's not about forcing people to make decisions. It's about deceiving people into make the wrong decisions for your own profit. That is not innocent business. That is fraud.
Is it really so much to ask that we be allowed to make our own decisions about food? Come on, we're talking about food! Not medicine. Not heavy machinery or automobiles or airplanes or nuclear energy. Food!