SPOTLIGHT: You don’t build a free society by removing individual choice.

BIG PICTURE: The push to ban plastic drinking straws is all symbolism and no substance. If every last straw were to vanish, 99% of the plastic polluting the oceans would remain. So would most of the litter that washes up on beaches.

Impoverished Asian and African countries lack proper waste management systems. They therefore use rivers as sewers. That’s the real world. Banning straws in Europe and North America will do nothing to address this real world fact.

But banning things makes people feel good. They pat themselves on the back, imagining they’ve done something admirable. Pardon me if I don’t applaud.

It’s one thing to persuade your neighbour to stop using an item she considers convenient, sanitary, or even necessary to her daily life. Those who rely on persuasion don’t undermine other people’s liberty. The neighbour remains free to choose her own path.

Green activists are in the business of taking away choices. Coercion and force is their idea of progress. Siccing the government on their neighbour is their idea of a normal day’s work.

They’re OK with their neighbour being harassed by the state, entangled with the legal system, fined, arrested, even jailed. For failing to conform. For failing to fall into line.

Even when the matter at hand is purely symbolic.

TOP TAKEAWAY: People who respect you don’t want the government to punish you for choosing differently.

LINKS:

The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

• The city of Santa Barbara, California will jail restaurant workers for six months and fine them $1000 for handing out straws. The city council vote was unanimous. The new bylaw contains no exemptions for medical necessity or disability.
• Washington Post, Plastic straw bans are the latest policy to forget the disability community
• Reason magazine, Oops! San Francisco Bubble Tea Company Throws Support Behind Straw Ban Without Realizing It Also Bans All Feasible Replacement Straws
• Reason, Starbucks Bans Plastic Straws, Winds Up Using More Plastic
• Los Angeles Times, Environmentally minded Californians love to recycle – but it’s no longer doing any good
• PhysOrg.com, Amount of straws, plastic pollution is huge
• Christian Schmidt et al, Export of plastic debris by rivers into the sea (2017)
• Jenna Jambeck et al, Plastic waste imputs from land into the ocean (2015)
• my previous posts: Banning plastic straws, harming real people
• Greens are pivoting, plastic is their new obsession
• From carbon footprint to plastic footprint

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