Super-Size That Junk Argument, Please

Not too long ago I was just thinking how McDonald's successful and highly transparent sales strategy, i.e. marketing to kids, ought to be outlawed. And I say this only in the context, or from the perspective of a socialist nanny state - not because I agree with such an action.

If they (our elected fascists) are going to ban animated cigarette ads, then it's not much of a stretch to imagine them banning inorganic Happy Meals and the like. After all, McDonalds sells complete crap, and attacking them can easily be marketed by dissembling power-hungry statists as yet another attack on Big Business and Corporate America. And not long thereafter, lo and behold, I heard recently that someone, somewhere in California had banned Happy Meals - or the toys or something.

In my ignorant rants of yesteryear I used to intellectually defend Big Business but now I'm a whole lot wiser. Large monopolistic companies like McDonalds aren't a proxy for *the free market*; in fact, they are more accurately described as creations of Big Government. Mom-and-Pop restaurants can't compete with McDonalds, hence it grew, because of government regulation NOT because McDonald's is able to buy and turn around food much cheaper. Again, McDonald's buying power is a consequence rather than the origin of its size.

The same goes for Wall Street. Morons, like the self-unconscious plutocrats at Forbes, think that defending Goldman Sachs and the banks against agitating statists is a just front on the battlefield of freedom. But it's most certainly not. Wall Street in nothing more than a giant skimming entity. Income taxes are so prohibitive that folks just blindly dump money into their 401k's each month. So, again, Wall Street is also a creation of Big Government and free market apologists would be on stronger ground if they simply attacked the income tax which is the real culprit.

I'm working on an analogy...

Some enlightened Morons go and start a forest fire. Then they turn around and start cursing the spreading flames for the damage they are causing!!!

Then their political adversaries come by and assert that the raging blaze is completely natural....and to let it burn freely.

Does that tale sound familiar?

I'm no marketing guru or child psychologist but I think if Happy Meals were ever banned....the shares of McDonald's would, if not collapse, they'd suffer a healthy haircut. I think that particular *restaurant* is dying anyway. All I ever see there are grandparents and their grandkids and construction workers ordering off the Dollar Menu. Most young parents that I know steer clear of that junk.