Problems and solutions  

Baude, in comments below, rephrasing from his post at CS:

[W]hy can't private education campaigns and for-profit weight-loss groups along with more government *in-action* (no corn syrup subsidies, no candy vending machines in subsidized public schools, &c.) solve the problem?

I think basically this is the right idea, but I have my doubts that private efforts are enough -- I'd like to see the government put some money into your education campaigns are try to change public awareness. This kind of approach has been successful in the past, whether it's been changing the public perception on seatbelts, the recycling, or smoking (and I think the PR component in every case could have stood apart from other policy instruments, which we could argue about some other time). Ironically enough, the reason I think the private efforts are not enough is also about revealed preference: the equilibrium we're in right now on obesity appears to be completely dysfunctional, which means that these private efforts just haven't been up to the task. This could be, as Baude mentioned in his post, because some people are not behaving rationally. And I should also bracket this by saying that I think a lot more data is probably needed.

But I also see this as a big free rider problem with the health system, a view Baude doesn't seem to share. I guess this perception on my part is shaped by my experiences working as a claims rep for Social Security: there I watched (and helped) as the unbelievably obese (who also seem to be the unbelievably poor) came in to file disability claim after disability claim. Obviously this is anecdotal, but I'd say something like half the claims I saw there were joint or back problems, and highly correlated with obesity. Some of these people were denied, others were approved, and others still were approved not for the joint or back problems, but simply because they were diagnosed by Social Security's (notoriously stingy!) disability determination services as obese. Again, this is all anecdotal; but if there are so many people under 65 applying for and getting disability payments due to their obesity, then the situation over at Medicare or Medicaid must be truly staggering -- and of course, we know this to be the case, for example from the statistic I mentioned in this old post.

In any event, my point is not that the government needs to step in and force people to lose weight, or buy certain foods, or whatever the case may be. I would oppose measures such as these. But there is a freerider problem here, both in the disability system and (much more importantly) in the health care and insurance systems . Individuals are not taking care of this problem, whether it's because they're irrational, uneducated, duped by fast food, or just principled freeriders; and the problem is too big -- both in its consequences for the individual and the society -- for the weight loss club on the corner or a privately-motivated education campaign. We allow Cialis to flood the airwaves with advertisements promising a different lifestyle, and they can do so because it's profitable for them. Why shouldn't the government be allowed to engage in a similar campaign, in this case against obesity? Surely such a campaign would be cash-positive; and if you'll admit the possibility that people might actually be acting irrationally, or against their own interests, then it's practically a moral imperative.

But apparently suggesting something like this, or even -- in this case -- linking to a piece by Paul Krugman with vague enthusiasm, is enough to get you branded a champion of regulation in today's kneejerk anti-government environment, because the Market is operating, people are Rational, and the public doesn't have any interests that transcend the Individuals it comprises. For me this just doesn't describe the real world.

MORE: Forgot to mention: I'm of course against all American agricultural subsidies, for both efficiency and equity (for foreign farmers) reasons; but I don't understand the mechanics of the claim that decreasing corn syrup subsidies would help with obesity. Wouldn't eliminating these subsidies just mean that the sweetener market would go to foregn sugar farmers, who couild then provide sugar at roughly the same price? I suppose there would be some minor price change that would be equal to the amount the subsidies to corn farmers allow them to undercut the sugar world price, but unless the idea is that the US has grossly mistaken that price point and is actually subsidizing much more than it needs to to keep corn syrup at a lower price, then the change ought to be quite small. Is there something I'm missing?