No Fatties, Please

In still another brilliant flash of socialist, collectivist thinking, the Los Angeles City Council has now voted to impose a one-year ban on new fast food restaurants in a certain delimited neighborhood of 32 square miles. (Well yeah, there are a lot of counties that are smaller than that -- but it's a drop in the bucket in L.A.) The news item doesn't spell it out quite this specifically, but chances are the neighborhood in question is (1) poor; (2) black; and/or (3) Hispanic, and thus -- statistically at least -- full of overweight people. Now, I've already dealt with the absurd paradox of America being the first society in history where the rich people are thin and the poor people are fat. Nothing has changed since I first brought this up, needless to say, but even at that they are arguably working at the margins: the childhood obesity rate in the area in question is 30%, whereas for the city overall it's 25%. So we're talking about a 5% improvment here, at the absolute maximum. But nonetheless, august bodies like the L.A. City Council -- you know, one of those outfits that thinks "public transportation" is science fiction -- think they can solve the "problem" by banning fast foods. Now, I'm perfectly willing to admit that fast foods are notoriously laden with the "four basic ghetto food groups" -- sugar, salt, fat, and grease. No problem there. But don't these people care about their health? Hey -- in those areas, any day you can go to bed at night with no more bullet holes in you than you had that morning, that's a good day. The rest is details. OK, but don't those people want to "try new things", food-wise? Yeah, about as much as just about anyone else outside the rarefied demographic of "Gourmet" readers, which is "not". And besides, don't those junk foods supply plenty of quick energy for all the things that inner city people do on a regular basis and on very short notice -- like dodging bullets and running from the cops? The main point is -- let's face it -- these folks like the stuff and, mainly, it's cheap. The geniuses on the City Council forget that it's "fast" and nutritionally dubious because it's cheap. And they also forget -- assuming they even knew -- that a place that isn't cheap (whether it's "fast" or not) isn't going to set up shop in those neighborhoods because no one will go there.

But fear not! A certain councilwoman wants the council to, for its next act, "craft measures to lure healthier, sit-down restaurants to a section of the city that desperately wants more of them." Well, lady, to begin with, if that section of the city "desperately" wanted more "healthy, sit-down" restaurants -- guess what? -- it would be getting them. It's called "capitalism", good business, and "supply and demand". Duh! If places of that sort aren't opening up right and left in the inner city, there has to be a reason, and I suspect I've touched on it already.

OK, we've already shown that plain common sense is in as short supply in the L.A. City Council as yellowcake uranium (yellow cake... mmmm.... ). But the other half of the brainstorm is even better. How are they going to convince non-fast food places to descend into the "ghetto" and open their doors? Again, details are sketchy, but I assume the same strategy -- marvelous in its subtlety and sophistication -- is going to be used in L.A. as is used in Pittsburgh, when someone decides, e.g., that there "ought" to be a "full-service" food market in a notoriously bad neighborhood. The strategy is bribery, pure and simple. The city just pays the retailer to come in and set up shop. If they happen to succeed, the retailer goes home with the money. If they fail, they're fully covered by the city. That is what is called a "sweet" deal. But it happens all the time -- and it's about to happen in L.A. No, a year from now you will most assuredly not see ghetto denizens sitting at sidewalk tables munching on artisanal cheeses and heirloom tomatoes. They'll be high-tailing it out of the "hood" just far enough to load on up on the usual garbage, cursing the City Council all the way. The "healthy alternative" restaurants will soon be boarded up, their owners handsomely compensated by the city for their contribution to "gastronomical diversity", and life will go on. The rich will get richer and the poor will... get fatter. Only in America.