All South L.A.'s Problems Licked: Ban Fast Food!

No new fast-food restaurants ought be allowed in a 32-square-mile area comprising most of South Los Angeles. So decree-eth an L.A. City Council committee, with Councilwoman Jan Perry leading the charge. The ban could last for two years, unless the Council authorizes an extension (and why wouldn't they?).

The LAist blog muses about it beautifully [thanks to reader Meredith W. for the tip]:

Perry's reasons are two-fold: first, the near-monopolistic hold of fast food restaurants over the area's retail eateries. Small business owners and supermarkets have no incentive to invest in an area where Big Macs are prized above Mom's apple pie. Second, Perry cites concerns over "the health issues associated with fast food, such as diabetes and obesity."

As LAist has rightly pointed out in the past, it might be easier to buy a gun in South LA than to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. But as our previous editor also pointed out, why should South LA's citizens be protected from themselves? If fast food restaurants are flourishing in these areas, and providing important jobs to low-income communities, who are we to push our liberal-organic, HFCS-fearing agenda on an area of the city that seems perfectly happy to hug their hamburgers to their mountainous bosoms and call it a day? So what if they don't have a "choice" — they don't have the "education" to tell the difference anyway!

So let the free market economy call the shots on this one, and government intervention be damned. Fast food bans are just a bandaid on a shotgun wound. The stuff that shows up in our fuzzy-wuzzy fancy markets is just as likely to kill us as a stupid burger, anyway. It's a cheap, attention-grabbing ploy to make some city council people feel like they're making a difference, when we all know these problems are deeply rooted in decades of bad policy-making and corporate campaigns of misinformation.

And guess who fought to prevent L.A. citizens from buying affordable fruits and vegetables like those offered by WalMart? The very same Jan Perry [link via Radley].

Comments

[Martin Owens]

A politician complaining about social conditions is like Jesse James decrying the number of bank failures. Most of the "reformists" efforts are taken up repairing the damage inflicted by the previous gang of "reformists".