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paulddraper

The problem with "policy solutions" is that they don't account for individual preferences.

Do people want walkable cities? Or do they want single-family dwellings and yards?

Do people want to be healthy? Or do they want sugary foods and television programs?

Fortunately, the U.S. has plenty of each, to accommodate multiple preferences.

Life is trade-offs. It's the conceit of policy makers to force their trade-off preferences on people.

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> Fortunately, the U.S. has plenty of each, to accommodate multiple preferences.

As of 2010, close to 24 million Americans lived in a "food desert"[1], i.e. an area without adequate access to healthy eating choices. These areas are disproportionately lower SES areas, and the people in them don't get to have a "preference"; the decision is being made for them.

Edit: Here's a paper explaining the correlation and absence of choice in detail[2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

[2]: https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/66/4/216/1...

My point was the the U.S. has plenty of each place.

So, yeah, that's exactly my point.

Your point is that food deserts are evidence of preference? That doesn’t make a lot of sense: privation is defined by the absence of actual choice.

Urban design catering almost exclusively to single family detached housing commuting exclusively by cars was not driven by individual preferences. It is the result of intentional choices made by urban planners in the 1950s and onward. Effectively, these lifestyles are highly subsidized. Only today are we seeing market forces and individual preferences take over as oppressive car-centric zoning policies are relaxed and urban cores revitalize.

Average rents indicate that Manhattan is once again the most highly desired place to live in the country, and for good reason.

> It is the result of intentional choices made by urban planners in the 1950s and onward.

(A) Emphasis on "onward." There's a massive amount of development since 70 years ago; if it were a fluke there's been ample opportunity for it to change.

(B) Who chooses urban planners?

An alternative approach is to encourage people to make more effective decisions by actually including the negative impacts of their decisions as actual, dollar costs. If we included the higher healthcare costs of obesity into the cost of soda, it might not be as enticing.

This isn't forcing people to make a decision, it's including all of the costs in the dollar value of the product on the shelf.

Indeed. To the extent that healthcare or other costs are carried by society, society must own the sources of those costs.

But the trade-offs are already affected by policy. Do people want oil policies that make driving cheap? Do people want subsidized corn leading to cheap sugary foods? It's worth questioning what led to policies existing in their current form.

Something decisions require all-or-nothing social consensus.

But as much as possible, it's best to reduce decisions to the individual level.

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