It is a fairly well-established principle that the state can intervene when an individual harms another person: your right to shake your fist ends when it hits me in the face. But what happens when someone’s actions only harm themselves?
For some, this is another opportunity for the government to get involved. They are the “fun police”, constantly using public policy to push, persuade or force you to accept their idea of a healthy and moral lifestyle. In a new limited-run podcast series produced by the Consumer Choice Center, a group that opposes paternalism in various forms, co-hosts Bill Wirtz and Yaël Ossowski cast a skeptical eye on the do-gooders and nannies campaigning against drinking, smoking, gambling and more.
Wirtz, Ossowski and their guests trace the roots of modern neoprohibition movements to the Anti-Saloon League, which laid out the blueprint followed by public rebukes today. Funded by the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford families, the League helped transform the “once marginal moral movement” of alcohol prohibition into a “social force that dominated political life” and culminated in the 18th Amendment (and disaster). The same model is still used today, with wealthy donors like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg supporting efforts to ban products from vape pens to Big Gulps.
Funny police veers between practical examples of statism and deeper discussions about the role of the state. It’s a compelling reason to allow people to live freely, even if that comes with little risk.