Paquin's Ionic Column - Fast-food Moratorium

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Fast-food Moratorium Accomplishes Nothing

Last Tuesday the Los Angeles city council unanimously voted to place a year-long moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a southern section of the city. The argument is that South Los Angeles has high rates of obesity and diabetes because of the present excessive number of fast-food establishments. Furthermore, South Angelenos are allegedly too poor to purchase local healthy food or afford transportation outisde the 32-square-mile fast-foodom to healthier restaurants. Therefore, the only logical conclusion, according to the L.A. city council, is to stop new fast-food outlets from developing in South Los Angeles for at least one year.

Clearly, this decision violates all natural rights; thus, creating an immoral, contradictory, nanny tyranny. However, aside from initiating force against fast-food businesses, the city council has done absolutely nothing to improve South Angelenos eating habits. Therefore, not only is the city council a tyrannical nanny – as all nannies are – but also an ignorant one.

The L.A. city council has ensured that for one year no new fast-food restaurants will be established in South Los Angeles; however, it has done nothing about the fast-food restaurants that are already there. South Los Angeles is allegedly inundated with fast-food. From the several articles on this event, it appears that South Angelenos are up to their arm pits in fries and special sauce. Not only does that sound utterly delicious, but the Ken-Taco-Hut flood is probably also providing an excellent cover for the outlawed bacon-dog venders. The issue here is that South Angelenos became obese and diabetic on the fast-food restaurants that are presently operating in South Los Angeles. They did not become “of size” and “lacking insulin” on future but currently non-existent fast-food restaurants. It is as if the chunky artery-clogged baby’s high-chair is buried in popcorn chicken and taco supremes, and the nanny has said, “I am not letting any more Oreo pizzas or snack wraps over here for one hour so you can get thin and un-clogged, but you can eat everything you’re already buried under.” In one year, South Angelenos will still be obese and diabetic because the restaurants that made them obese and diabetic will still be there.

Of course, nannyistas will argue that the year-long fast-food moratorium will allow healthier restaurants the chance to open in South Los Angeles. Thus, there will be an eclectic variety of healthy flavor-lacking foods and unhealthy flavorful foods. The nannies believe when the obese and diabetic South Angelenos are faced with the choice between tofu and two strokes, high fructose corn syrup, greasy lettuce, greasy cheese, greasy pickles, greasy onions, on a sesame seed grease-filled bun, they will choose the former.

Firstly, they are definitely choosing the latter, and they are supersizing it. Secondly, there was nothing obstructing healthy restaurants from developing in South Los Angeles before the moratorium. They could have opened freely like McDonald’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips. It is not as if there was an enormous line of eateries waiting to set up shop, and all the vegan “restaurants” were last. Therefore, the L.A. city council did not suddenly decide tropical healthy eateries could cut. Healthy restaurants did not develop in South Los Angeles because they have no market; South Angelenos chose frosty-dipped-fries over humus-dipped-vegan-flatbread. Essentially, the nanny said, “All you Happy Meals and your fry-smelling toys have to step aside and let Whole Foods have a chance to feed the morbidly obese infant,” but there were no Whole Foods to come forward. In South Los Angeles fast-food already won and promptly deep-fried all the capitalism points. Unfortunately for the Ayatollah Kohnannies, their plan was half-baked, undercooked, semi-fried, utterly sub par to the Baconator. They provided no incentives for healthy outlets, so they will never heed the nannies call of desperation. Apparently, fast-food establishments accidentally deep-fried the L.A. city council brain in addition to their capitalism points.

Through vicious initiation of force, the L.A. city council has assured one thing in the South Los Angeles dinning scene: for one year, everything will stay the same. When a portly Angeleno fellow is bored with his Big Mac he will not try a salad and thank the L.A. city council, for he will be pining for the new fast-food restaurant and its signature donut wrapped in bacon between two slices of all American cheese, ham, and white bread, grilled to a perfect golden brown in a pool of grease from the previous order. Unfortunately, he will not be able to fulfill his desire, and the L.A. city council will be to blame.