Mayor Bloomberg’s Paternalistic Policies a Slippery Slope, Experts Say

Yesterday, we wrote about how New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has gotten all up in the business of his fellow New Yorkers, all but passing a ban on sodas over 16 ounces in Gotham.

Yes, crime and lack of affordable housing, take a back seat- New York City is a city that does things, Bloomberg says, and regardless of whether you are a consenting adult with a right to drink whatever the hell you want, it has no problem with telling you what to eat back at your $2,300 a month ninth-floor walkup half-closet.

Bloomberg is a Republican, the same party that cries at protests in the streets whenever regulating insurance companies is discussed, but apparently conservatives aren’t bothered by individual personal freedoms when it comes to purchasing beverages. But the trend toward eroding your choices, however small, for “your own good” is a nasty one, say experts, and the sort of paternalistic behavior exhibited by billionaire Bloomberg is indicative of an alarming trend of micromanagement that only has unpleasant implications for society.

Glen Whitman is an economist at California State University-Northridge, and an opponent of legislation that interferes with the rights of tax-paying Americans to make legal decisions about their own lives. Whitman commented to the AP about Bloomie’s nosy rules, and says:

“The idea of the state stepping in and treating adults essentially as children and trying to protect them for their own good, as opposed to the good of others, that’s been with us for as long as we’ve been around, as long as we’ve had governments.”

The news organization continues:

“…such moves represent a ‘constant creep until all of a sudden its extremely obvious,’ said Mattie Duppler of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative anti-tax lobbying group that regularly spotlights examples of what it considers overreaching “Nanny State” public policy.”

The piece also cites smoking bans extending to electronic cigarettes, nicotine dispensing devices that pose no threat or even esthetic interference to those in public exposed to them.