Tension between individual freedom and government regulation seems to be ubiquitous, arising in domains as ostensibly unrelated as abortion and sugary drinks.

Despite this apparent diversity, each particular controversy seems to rest on the answers to two questions: 1) Is the behavior/product in question healthy/ethical/socially beneficial, and 2) Should it be subject to government regulation and/or education? In an ideal society, the answer to the first question would, all things being equal, form the basis for the answer to the second. For example, the overwhelming data showing the harm of sugary drinks would be expected to generate a solid and widespread consensus in favor of government regulation — as it eventually did with tobacco.

However, this is not an ideal society, and all things are rarely equal. Thus, in actual practice, the answer to the first question is often treated as if it were irrelevant to the answer to the second or, at best, subordinated to other considerations. This subordination of public well-being often relates to the influence of political and financial considerations, to concerns about government overreach, and to ambiguity regarding what really is best and for whom. In such cases, unequal political and financial power, understandable hesitation about further empowering civil authorities, and the complexity of determining what constitutes the “public interest” can create a false equivalence between considerations of human and corporate well-being.

This false equivalence has gained undeserved credibility from the recent emergence of widespread skepticism about science — which had been accepted as the primary, if imperfect, arbiter of “truth” and “reality” since the Enlightenment. Without such consensually accepted standards of proof, there are no consensually accepted standards of “truth.” This leaves a vacuum in which there is no single set of standards or common language for evaluating different narratives about how things work and how to fix them. In this situation, all explanations, including those with scant traditional scientific evidence, can be considered equal.

The Louisville City Council should be applauded for cutting through the fog of competing narratives to prioritize the welfare of children over financial and political considerations and for finding the political will to act on the wealth of data showing the damage inflicted by sugary drinks.

Elyse Morgan, emorgan2975@gmail.com

This idea is so brilliant that I can’t believe Boulder didn’t think of it first.

Louisville took a page straight out of Hillary’s “It Takes A Village.” We can’t leave menu decisions up to the restaurants! What do they know? Their maniacal pursuit of profits blinds them! Or worse, letting parents decide. The City Council reigns supreme here. They know best.

And when Boulder implements this, we should take it up a notch. Heck, all Louisville did was copy McDonald’s! McDonald’s, people! We wouldn’t be caught dead in a Mickey D’s. The only people entering our local fast-food restaurants are out-of-towners. Probably Trumpers, too! How McDonald’s took this step without a government mandate is baffling, but that’s best left unsolved.

We need to throw down some fixing on this regulation. We should restrict waiters from even mentioning lesser options. If parents insisted on ordering a sugary drink, we’d require them to sign a waiver. Why didn’t Louisville do this? They don’t care as much as we do. It’s well known that, generally, people are more virtuous the closer they live to Boulder City Hall.

So, if we’re going to “recommend” these choices to parents for their kids, why not make recommendations for the parents themselves? And, I know it sounds crazy, but maybe even adults without kids! Oh, I’m dreaming now. But hear me out. Why not require all bundled meals to come with milk or water? Even adult meals?

Sure, we’d invoke the ire of the lactose intolerant, so let’s just not mention milk. Milk comes from cows and we all know what they produce: Methane! Cows are killing the planet and milk drinkers are to blame! Next time you see a kid drinking a glass of milk, sneer, “Care about the Earth much?”

Why limit encouraging parents to make better decisions for their kids when we can encourage them to make better decisions for themselves? Let’s require all waiters to advise against ordering an alcoholic drink, mentioning the rate of addiction, the lost lives, families, jobs, etc. Of course, then let them order what they want, since we aren’t communists. We’re just liberals. And we know best. About everything. Including your kids.

But this is all piecemeal stuff and why the U.S. legal corpus grows by millions of words yearly. We need to craft something more universal. Let’s require restaurants to get their entire menus reviewed by a board of vegan catastrophists. As Jake Peralta of the 99 would say, “Let’s go full douche, Boulder!”

Bill Wright, bill@wwwright.com