Fat and the nanny state

I read an article the other day suggesting government force chip manufacturers to put pictures of morbidly obese, bed-ridden slobs on a bag of chips. The writer was making a satirical comment on cigarette packaging, but this is a point we should flesh out a bit.

The nanny state has become an essential feature of the social and economic ideology of our times.

But before we let government take over all of our most basic decisions, even about what to eat,  we really need to ask ourselves:  is it the role of government to force people to do something as long as someone else thinks it's good for them. Is it really OK to force "the good" as defined by someone else, down peoples' throats?

One of the things I often hear from supporters of a government solution to every problem is that the government has an obligation to stop people from getting too fat because in our socialized medical system, the cost of people eating whatever they want falls to the taxpayer. But people engage in risky behaviour all the time and that costs the taxpayer too.

If we accept the idea that government can arbitrarily decide what we can and cannot do, the door opens to unlimited government interference in our most basic personal decisions.