TheAgitator.com
Does Garry Trudeau read Marginal Revolution?
Thursday, August 14th, 2008A few weeks ago Tyler Cowen posted:
Yes I saw the counts today on the breakfast menu in New York City. Being a silly man, who is easily prone to violating the independence of irrelevant alternatives, I immediately searched for the item with the highest calorie count (it involved butter and lobster, for breakfast). I thought “no way will I get that” and ordered a bagel with lox and cream cheese. Yes, I know about anchoring and behavioral economics. Is not one equilibrium that every restaurant puts an especially high calorie item on its menu, so that people feel virtuous in ordering something else?
And that’s how, in yesterday’s Doonesbury strip, McFriendly’s restaurant sells its 2,300 calorie Wee Willy Breakfast.
For more in-depth critiques of mandated calorie counts, here’s Becker and Posner, Jacob Sullum, Carol Hart, and of course that Balko guy.
[Hat tip to Ben S. for the link.]
– Jacob Grier
I really want to exercise my right to not know. I guess next time I’m in NYC I just won’t eat at a chain restaurant. But hey this was for the children anyway.
If you support free-markets, don’t you have to support the availability of information to allow for consumers to make what they consider to be the best possible choices? It is completely inconsistent to allege that markets should be free and then stand in the way of disseminated information that will help the marketplace better reflect the preferences of its consumers.
Sam,
For a good critique of this very claim, see the link in the original post titled, “…that Balko guy”.
Sam, I agree that information is good, but is anyone really deceived into thinking that a double cheeseburger is really a good choice if you are counting calories? When you get fast food, you already know what you are getting.
“If you support free-markets, don’t you have to support the availability of information to allow for consumers to make what they consider to be the best possible choices.”
I think you do, Sam, but you don’t have to support it in the form of onerous, unhelpful, unfairly applied and actual market affecting government regulations.
I think a free market purist would say that the consumer will determine how much infomration he needs by how he spends his money. Seems to me people are pretty satisfied with the amount of information they get from McDonald’s and Wendy’s as it stands.
Why the hell is the fat guy talking to a waiter? I think Trudeau could more effectively satirize McDonalds if he’d, you know, visited one at least once in his life.
#6
That is perhaps the lamest criticism ever. Additionally, it would seem that given the visual motif and name, Friendly’s is the immediate inspiration for the setting.
Excuse me, I guess he’s satirizing a restaurant I’ve never heard of.
Zeb,
While I appreciate you granting me that “information is good,” I agree that people should know better when it comes to double cheeseburgers, although I still don’t understand what is so onerous about it being printed on the menus. One of Radley’s objections was cost – would you feel better if the government paid for the testing?
Meanwhile, information isn’t just good, it is the underpinning of a marketplace. The more information made available, the better the marketplace functions. So if a person goes into Friendlys or Fridays or Chilis and makes a decision based upon the calorie information, what is so wrong with that?
Sometimes, it seems like “free” marketers merely want freedom for the sellers, the consumers be damned.
#8
He appears to be satirizing a PRACTICE, primarily, rather than any particular restaurant. Although it seems obvious what chain restaurant is the immediate inspiration for the setting. You don’t have to have any real familiarity with either McDonalds or Friendly’s to get the point of the strip. Now, it may be that you don’t find the joke to be terribly amusing (I mean come on, it’s a penis joke), or the point to be that insightful, but those are wholly independent criticisms – and if you mean those, say those.