However, it really isn’t anyone’s business if I’m fat. You could argue health insurance is a shared risk pool, but under that logic, we’d be giving the government the right to dictate every aspect of your life and I am not willing up to give that freedom. Because why stop there — why not have the government mandate hours of sleep or require morning group exercises or require that you get married (since studies have shown that married people have lower heart disease risks.) It could get absurd, but the moment you let the government control even something small, it just keeps growing until we are quite literally Nazi germany where only “ideal” people are allowed to breed or receive permission to open businesses or get desirable jobs.

I’d rather a fat, free society where you can smoke if you want or drink whisky every night than a “healthy” society where the government literally monitors your every breath.

We talk about digital privacy with almost religious conviction, yet when it comes to things like public health, many are willing to let the government sit down with you at the dinner table.

“Get the government out of the bedroom..” I agree. I also want them out of every other room of my house as well. Government’s role is to provide shared infrastructure that is impractical for private individuals to provide for themselves. Government’s role is to have a legal system where contracts can be enforced. It’s role is also to provide for a common defense: protecting property, protecting us from crime. In short, a government’s job is to protect liberty. It isn’t government’s job to tell people what to consume. We saw Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and now Venenzuela, why the hell would we ever want a government so ubiquitous and powerful that it could descend into such totalitarianism?

I have no problem with government providing for the destitute or providing public goods, but I have a huge problem with the government attempting to regulate the freedom of the individual under the guise that it’s “good” for society. Because “good for society” in Nazi Germany evolved into killing millions of people. It’s all incremental, the march towards a complete Orwellian nightmare. Russians never imagined that Bolshevism would lead to the horrors of the KGB and NKVD. Purges were never expected. Cubans never expected that supporting the revolution would mean millions of them would end up in prison or executed for thought crimes.

As far as “good for the economy” — the US economy got so powerful because of freedom; start messing with that and you could disrupt the very foundation upon which the largest economy in the world was built.

Sure, let’s fat shame — but let’s leave the government far out of it.