“Why won’t these people just go away?”
(Who are they? Part VI)

In what I think is the question of the day, Andrew Stuttaford asked “Why won’t these people just go away?” after contemplating the latest proposals from the usual “experts” to tax junk food and regulate commercials to save the children.

Another study by Steven Gortmaker from Harvard University’s school of public health, concludes that the response by governments has been a failure of will which mirrored previous struggles to tackle tobacco consumption. Ministers knew it made sense to crack down on junk foods but did not have the political appetite to take on such a huge industry.

“I think governments get it, but don’t know what to do about it, and don’t think it’s their responsibility. But it is their responsibility,” he said. His study lists eight cost-effective policies. Topped by a tax on unhealthy food and drink, the rest focus on shielding children from TV advertising or ensuring they exercise more.

I learned about this latest horror from Glenn Reynolds, who raises the question of a penalty for idiocy:

So long as there’s no penalty for coming up with this sort of idiocy, people will keep doing it. At the very least they should be mercilessly mocked.

As someone who loves to ridicule such idiocy, I have learned that ridicule does not make idiotic ideas or people go away. Nor does it prevent the policy recommendations being ridiculed from being enacted into government administrative regulations that have the full force of  “law.”   (In quotes because I’m an old fashioned crank who doesn’t think laws that weren’t passed by Congress are constitutionally valid.)

As to imposing a penalty, the problem is that we’re not dealing with just people. Notice that the ideas being promulgated are coming from “experts” in Public Health and Public Policy. They are an important part of the all-powerful, totally unaccountable “they.” They wield influence out of all proportion to their numbers.

Sure, I’d like to come up with some way of imposing a penalty. But how? How about getting universities like Harvard out of the public policy business entirely? It used to be that education and government weren’t quite as entangled as they are now. Woodrow Wilson’s forces set the ball rolling back in the heyday of early Progressivism, and I think the whole idea is undemocratic in the extreme. Public policy and public health professors should not be telling government administrative agencies and all these assorted government bureaucracies  what to do. It is bad enough that we are unconstitutionally tyrannized by unelected bureaucrats, but at least they are appointed to government positions. Why should college professors be allowed to effectively rule from an ivory tower? Why should their opinions and recommendations be acted upon any more than those of the ordinary people who pay taxes and vote? Why should their desire to destructively regulate a large American industry count for more than the desire of that industry or its customers not to be regulated? Why should their petty goals overwhelm and override the needs of the economy or the taxpayers?

Having a Ph.D. from Harvard in Public Health ought not to convey any more power or influence than having a degree in industrial engineering, yet because of the Wilsonian idea of “rule by experts” those with the former are empowered to tell the latter what to do.

It is an outrage. Who will protect us from dangerous and destructive regulations emanating from the whims of unaccountable academicians?

How about a wall of separation between academia and state? If that’s constitutionally impossible, then how about requiring an economic impact report the same way environmental impact reports are required? And how about allowing these unelected policy people and influential academicians to be sued if their policy recommendations cause damage in the same way big pharmaceutical companies can be sued if their products cause damage?

One thing is certain. They will not go away unless they are made to go away.