There’s a strain of well-meaning people on both the left and the right who mistakenly think the best way to encourage better choices is to rigidly restrict people’s range of choices.

You can see it in the US federal government’s approach to reducing unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. They deny funding to programs — both at home and abroad — that mention condoms as a preventative tool, on the demonstrably mistaken theory that people who don’t know about condoms will not have sex. You can understand their thinking, even while acknowledging that it is childishly naïve and, in the case of foreign aid, criminally stupid.

You can see a similar logic in a much different context in the City of Toronto’s recent fumbling of the street-food file. Wanting to expand the range of options available from sidewalk vendors beyond hot dogs, and given the power to do so by the province, the city refused to just license a whole slew of new vendors to sell all types of new foods. Fearful that Torontonians would make unhealthy choices when left to their own devices, Councillor John Fillion has attempted to get the city to build 13 of its own carts and lease them to vendors who will provide healthy options. As a result, we still have no options at all more than a year after the law was changed to much fanfare.

The problems with such approaches are both ideological and practical. Restricting choices by having the government regulate marketplaces of ideas and trade is bad in and of itself, desirable in certain circumstances, but to be avoided on principle whenever other options exist. Furthermore, as the cases above demonstrate, it does not work. Limiting undesirable options does not lead people to the desirable ones. With or without condoms, people are going to keep on having sex. Keeping samosa and hamburger carts off the street does nothing to stem the trade in hot dogs. Banning cigarette advertising has suspiciously not stopped addicts from smoking. Banning drinking in public parks in Ontario does nothing to stem the tide of drunkenness. And on it goes.

This regulatory trend reached a whole new high of futile paternalism last week when the Los Angeles city council passed a ban on the opening of new fast food restaurants within a low-income part of that city.

Slate.com columnist William Saletan has called this “Food Apartheid,” and his sensational description may not be far off the mark: poor black folks eat too much fast food, the thinking goes, so we’ll only allow new McFranchises in the wealthy white parts of town where residents can enjoy them responsibly.

The councillors are, of course, reacting to a real and distressing trend to obesity among lower-income residents. And their stated goal — “responding to the need to attract sit-down restaurants, full service grocery stores, and healthy food alternatives” — sure sounds nice.
But apart from accomplishing the political objective of appearing to get tough on fast food, how will this ban meet those goals? Will keeping a KFC from opening in a vacant storefront in a poor neighbourhood somehow make the location attractive to an organic vegetable market or a juice bar? Will people in those neighbourhoods, held to the current saturation level of fast food options, suddenly grow an appreciation for homemade salads? The obvious truth is that when it comes to health food in those neighbourhoods, the lack of supply almost certainly reflects a lack of demand.

If what the Los Angeles council wants to do is promote grocery stores and healthy sit-down restaurants, they could provide subsidies and tax breaks to make the neighbourhoods attractive to such businesses. If they want to get poor people to realize that they’re eating crap, they could spend money on educating people about healthier options. But banning new fast food outlets smacks of the worst sort of nanny-statism, and will prove futile, too.

And lest we appear only to be scolding Californians from afar, we bring it up because we’re afraid it’s the type of thing Fillion and Toronto council might take as inspiration. You cannot encourage more options by restricting the available options. That should be obvious.

Apparently it’s not.