So, while out at the grocery store last night, I see on the shelf... Dr. Pepper made with pure cane sugar. Apparently it's their 125th anniversary and they're doing it as a gimmick.

This is not the first time I've had the true Elixir of Life. They've always made a small amount of the stuff, though they didn't market or ship much of it. But every so often, Dad would find himself out near the plant in Sweetwater and he'd bring home a 12-pack of the stuff. The idea of having a whole 12-pack to myself is purely luxurious...

But I got to thinking... everybody knows that the cane sugar version tastes better than the corn syrup version. But it's the corn syrup version we got, because of high sugar import taxes, which were designed to protect the corn market. Even though agriculture is a tiny percentage of the nation's product, and the effect of the tax on the corn market is pretty minimal, and practically everyone I've ever met has drunk a ton of cola in their life... we still get the corn syrup version.

All because Iowa has their caucus first, and the momentum that gives a presidential candidate is worth a good amount (or, at least, is reckoned as worth a good amount...)

And that's why I'm in favor of small government.

It's not just things like health care, immigration, and military spending. The more the government does, the more opportunity it has to choose one interest over another - and usually the narrow interest is going to win out over the public interest. If you don't understand why that's important, go find a can of the real Dr. Pepper, drink it, and think for a second. Every cola you have ever had, your whole life long, could have tasted that good, should have tasted that good. They didn't, because someone in the government thought that buying someone's vote was worth stealing that happiness from you, long before you or I was born (well, maybe not some of us, heh.)

And that's just the Dr. Pepper. There's plenty of issues of broad national concern to worry about, but how many little, everyday ways is your life not as good as it can be? Ways that aren't mysterious, ways that we know well, but for some reason or other aren't followed, because someone got a law passed. How many of the little laws, the inconsequential little regulations, the unanticipated ancillary effects, are keeping our lives from being Dr.-Pepper-with-cane-sugar good?

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 01:53 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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