Obese or thin, government wants to nanny you

In the United States the rage is to deplore obesity, and proposals abound for the government to save us from ourselves. In France, however, the government is worried about the cult of thinness and extreme dieting. The French National Assembly has approved legislation that would make it a crime to promote extreme dieting, punishable by up to two years in prison and fines up to $47,000.

The publisher of Elle magazine worries that they may not be able to publish anything, since they deal with fashion and most models are ridiculously thin, and publishing their pictures might be construed as promoting extreme thinness. Maybe fashion shows could be banned. In Paris?

I suspect those worries are a bit extreme -- at least for now -- although Spain has actually banned models with less than a specified body mass and Italy now requires models to present health certificates proving they don't suffer from eating disorders.

What the concerns about obesity and thinness demonstrate is that government will use almost any justification to force us into a model, to protect us from ourselves, to nanny us -- backed up by criminal penalties and fines, of course. When will people begin to demand that we move beyond the flawed model of the nation-state?

French unions testing Sarkozy

French president Sarkozy has said he admires America, especially its admiration for and encouragement of productive work, and has said he'd like to make France more competitive and less protectionist. He's experiencing just how difficult it is likely to be to make even modest reforms in a country in which special privileges have come to be viewed as entitlements, and so much of the economy is more public sector than privte sector. He wanted to reform the special, unusually generous pension provisions transit workers get, so transit workers have gone on strike, and other unions are joining them.

He is not without allies, however. Depending on which news story you read, either 6,000 or 10,000 people marched in Paris yesterday to urge Sarkozy not to back down.

It will be interesting to see whether Sarkozy turns out to be the Reagan of Frence or yet one more leader who ends up having to bow to the power of public-sector unions, assuring that France is not likely to break out of its economic torpor.