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By Root 681 0

sale (or rental) of a labor service. Individuals own their own bodies and their own labor services and have the absolute right to decide how those labor services should be used.”2 We have the personal liberty and freedom to do with our bodies what we please—both as producer and as consumer of the product. I can rent my body to the owner of a coal mine for thirty years, who will use my work to strip the earth of natural resources, but a woman cannot rent her body to the same coal mine owner for a few hours of private time? Why? Because the government says so, that’s why.

Like it or not, prostitution is a victimless crime. Both parties are agreeing to a financial transaction where money is offered in exchange for a service. Both parties are receiving something they want. There is no “evil” inherent in this barter. A “vice,” perhaps, may be involved, but vices are not harms to another. Vices are harms to you, and you have the right to make poor decisions, and the government has no authority to stop you from making these poor decisions because your body is your body.

While we will never accurately know how many men and women make a living by full-time or part-time prostitution, the consensus is the numbers are substantial. And despite the government’s prohibition of prostitution in the United States, research suggests that its “prohibition” is not working . . . at all. Gee, I wonder why? Moral prohibitions throughout history have never succeeded. Look at alcohol prohibition from 1920 to 1933, for example. See how far that form of prohibition got the government. Albert Einstein once stated, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Clearly, we have an insane government because it thinks prohibiting prostitution will actually accomplish something of substance. Think again, government.

106

The Nanny State Strikes Again: Bigger Government Does Not Equal Smaller Waistlines

New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a health fanatic, so much so that he maintains a monthly weight-loss competition with one of his buddies in order to stay slim.3 He has taken this obsession so far that, with his urging, the New York City Board of Health voted to ban trans fats at restaurants in December 2006. In other words, the government has already decided what you can and cannot eat for dinner at Applebee’s tonight. Violating Natural Law, freedom of choice, and the very nature of the Constitution, the government has usurped control over your body yet again. Shortly after New York City passed its ban, the entire State of California followed suit in January 2008 by prohibiting restaurants and bakeries from using cooking oils that contain trans fats. Violators can be fined up to one thousand dollars. And that’s just trans fats.

So you want to cool off with a Gatorade, Coke, Sprite, or flavored water on public property in San Francisco? That’s too bad; San Francisco’s mayor at the time, Gavin Newsom, skipped the whole darn legislative process in his personal quest to control your diet and instituted an executive order prohibiting vending machines from carrying artificially sweetened drinks on city property.4 But don’t worry; diet sodas will be allowed in some locations in the City by the Bay. Apparently, Mayor Newsom believes it is his duty to force-feed his constituents and San Francisco’s visitors water, soy milk, rice milk, or other similar dairy or non-dairy milk in lieu of what they really want to drink on a hot July day.

And from sugar to salt. In March 2010, New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of salt in making foods at restaurants.5 Seriously? You mean salt—the substance that preserves food, regulates body functions including blood pressure and fluid volume, carries nutrients into cells, and regulates muscle contractions? Ortiz’s bill states, “No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers.”6 Salt in any form is evil and needs to be