Why has there been so much fuss about New York City’s
attempt to impose a soda ban,1
 or more precisely, a ban on
large-size “sugary drinks”? After all, people can still get as much
soda as they want. This isn’t Prohibition. It’s just that getting it
would take slightly more effort. So, why is this such a big deal?
Obviously, it’s not about soda. It’s because such a ban suggests
that sometimes we need to be stopped from doing foolish stuff,
and this has become, in contemporary American politics, highly
controversial, no matter how trivial the particular issue. (Large
cups of soda as symbols of human dignity? Really?)
Americans, even those who generally support government
intervention in our daily lives, have a reflexive response to being
told what to do, and it’s not a positive one. It’s this common
desire to be left alone that prompted the Mississippi Legislature
earlier this month to pass a ban on bans—a law that forbids
municipalities to place local restrictions on food or drink.
1. soda ban In 2013, New York City passed a law prohibiting soda containers larger than
16 ounces in volume. The New York State Court of Appeals later overturned the law.
1
impose (im POHZ) v. force
a law, idea, or belief
on someone by using
authority
2
CLOSE READ
ANNOTATE: In paragraph 1,
mark the questions that the
author does not answer.
QUESTION: Why might
the author have begun
the article with several
unanswered questions?
CONCLUDE: What effect
do these questions have
on the reader?
3
Sarah Conly
Three Cheers
for the Nanny State
ANCHOR TEXT | OPINION PIECE
Three Cheers for the Nanny State 277

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NOTES
We have a vision of ourselves as free, rational beings who are
totally capable of making all the decisions we need to in order to
create a good life. Give us complete liberty, and, barring natural
disasters, we’ll end up where we want to be. It’s a nice vision, one
that makes us feel proud of ourselves. But it’s false.
John Stuart Mill2
 wrote in 1859 that the only justifiable
reason for interfering in someone’s freedom of action was to
prevent harm to others. According to Mill’s “harm principle,”
we should almost never stop people from behavior that
affects only themselves, because people know best what they
themselves want.
That “almost,” though, is important. It’s fair to stop us, Mill
argued, when we are acting out of ignorance and doing something
we’ll pretty definitely regret. You can stop someone from crossing
a bridge that is broken, he said, because you can be sure no one
wants to plummet into the river. Mill just didn’t think this would
happen very often.
Mill was wrong about that, though. A lot of times we have a
good idea of where we want to go, but a really terrible idea of how
to get there. It’s well established by now that we often don’t think
very clearly when it comes to choosing the best means to attain
our ends. We make errors. This has been the object of an enormous
amount of study over the past few decades, and what has been
discovered is that we are all prone to identifiable and predictable
miscalculations.
Research by psychologists and behavioral economists,
including the Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman and his
research partner Amos Tversky, identified a number of areas in
which we fairly dependably fail. They call such a tendency a
“cognitive3
 bias,” and there are many of them—a lot of ways in
which our own minds trip us up.
For example, we suffer from an optimism bias, that is we tend
to think that however likely a bad thing is to happen to most
people in our situation, it’s less likely to happen to us—not for
any particular reason, but because we’re irrationally optimistic.
Because of our “present bias,” when we need to take a small, easy
step to bring about some future good, we fail to do it, not because
we’ve decided it’s a bad idea, but because we procrastinate.
We also suffer from a status quo bias, which makes us value
what we’ve already got over the alternatives, just because we’ve
already got it—which might, of course, make us react badly to
2. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher.
3. cognitive (KOG nih tihv) adj. related to thinking.
4
rational (RASH uh nuhl) adj.
able to make decisions
based on reason rather
than emotion; sensible 5
justifiable (juhs tuh FY
uh buhl) adj. able to be
defended as correct;
reasonable and logical
principle (PRIHN suh puhl) n.
moral rule or set of ideas
about right or wrong that
influences individuals to
behave in a certain way
6
7
8
CLOSE READ
ANNOTATE: In paragraphs
8–10, mark the types of
bias, or judgments and
prejudices, the author
describes.
QUESTION: Why does
the author include these
explanations of different
biases?
CONCLUDE: How does
this information affect
the persuasiveness of her
argument?
9
status quo (STAT uhs kwoh) 10
n. existing state
or condition at a
particular time
278 UNIT 3 • WHAT MATTERS

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NOTES
new laws, even when they are really an improvement over what
we’ve got. And there are more.
The crucial point is that in some situations it’s just difficult for
us to take in the relevant information and choose accordingly. It’s
not quite the simple ignorance Mill was talking about, but it turns
out that our minds are more complicated than Mill imagined.
Like the guy about to step through the hole in the bridge, we
need help.
Is it always a mistake when someone does something
imprudent, when, in this case, a person chooses to chug 32 ounces
of soda? No. For some people, that’s the right choice. They don’t
care that much about their health, or they won’t drink too many
big sodas, or they just really love having a lot of soda at once.
But laws have to be sensitive to the needs of the majority. That
doesn’t mean laws should trample the rights of the minority, but
that public benefit is a legitimate concern, even when that may
inconvenience some.
So do these laws mean that some people will be kept from
doing what they really want to do? Probably—and yes, in many
ways it hurts to be part of a society governed by laws, given that
laws aren’t designed for each one of us individually. Some of us
can drive safely at 90 miles per hour, but we’re bound by the same
laws as the people who can’t, because individual speeding laws
aren’t practical. Giving up a little liberty is something we agree
to when we agree to live in a democratic society that is governed
by laws.
The freedom to buy a really large soda, all in one cup, is
something we stand to lose here. For most people, given their
desire for health, that results in a net gain. For some people, yes,
it’s an absolute loss. It’s just not much of a loss.
Of course, what people fear is that this is just the beginning:
today it’s soda, tomorrow it’s the guy standing behind you
making you eat your broccoli, floss your teeth, and watch
PBS NewsHour4
 every day. What this ignores is that successful
paternalistic5
 laws are done on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis:
if it’s too painful, it’s not a good law. Making these analyses is
something the government has the resources to do, just as now it
sets automobile construction standards while considering both the
need for affordability and the desire for safety.
Do we care so much about our health that we want to be forced
to go to aerobics every day and give up all meat, sugar and salt?
4. PBS NewsHour television news program in the United States.
5. paternalistic (puh tuhr nuh LIHS tihk) adj. protective, but controlling; in the manner of a
parent.
11
12
13
14 CLOSE READ
ANNOTATE: In paragraph
14, mark the example the
author uses to support
her claim.
QUESTION: Why might
the author have chosen
this specific example as
support?
CONCLUDE: How does the
inclusion of this example
affect the author’s
argument?
15
16
17
Three Cheers for the Nanny State 279

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No. But in this case, it’s some extra soda. Banning a law on the
grounds that it might lead to worse laws would mean we could
have no laws whatsoever.
In the old days we used to blame people for acting imprudently,
and say that since their bad choices were their own fault, they
deserved to suffer the consequences. Now we see that these errors
aren’t a function of bad character, but of our shared cognitive
inheritance. The proper reaction is not blame, but an impulse to
help one another.
That’s what the government is supposed to do, help us get
where we want to go. It’s not always worth it to intervene, but
sometimes, where the costs are small and the benefit is large, it is.
That’s why we have prescriptions for medicine. And that’s why, as
irritating as it may initially feel, the soda regulation is a good idea.
It’s hard to give up the idea of ourselves as completely rational.
We feel as if we lose some dignity. But that’s the way it is, and
there’s no dignity in clinging to an illusion. ❧
18
19
NOTES
280 UNIT 3 • WHAT MATTERS

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Comprehension Check
Complete the following items after you finish your first read.
1. What new law was proposed in New York City?
2. What is a “cognitive bias”?
3. According to the author, what do people fear they will lose as a result of the
new law?
4. According to the author, what will most people gain from the soda ban?
5. Notebook Write a summary of “Three Cheers for the Nanny State.”
RESEARCH
Research to Clarify Choose at least one unfamiliar detail from the text. Briefly
research that detail. In what way does the information you learned shed light on an
aspect of the text?