The Tyranny of Small Things

SEE HERE Red State describes it as "the tyranny of small things" and it denotes the habit of politicians to poke their fingers into all sorts of matters that are outside the bounds of their proper concern and interfere. In this case it is common salt, which is I might add a necessary nutrient in peoples' diets although we tend to eat far more than we need. But that's a personal choice. One can go on quite far since this sort of thing has been going on for decades. I'd say seat belt laws, helmet laws, various laws about what fat can be used to fry things, the imposition of ethanol into gasoline (an expensive, corrosive, and ultimately inefficient and poorly motivated additive) and while we're going at it the removal of lead from gasoline which wasn't a problem and made the gasoline work better. (Lead is a soft and easily worked metal, but like most heavy metals tends to be toxic, although the toxicity is often exaggerated.)

Those who see danger in everything strive to remove all hazards from the world. But that is impossible since these things naturally exist regardless of human activity, so there are limits to the results we can achieve even if we think it is a goal worth achieving. Part of the problem is that our instruments have gone beyond our common sense. When you can measure parts per billion of a toxic element you create the perception in the minds of those who don't really understand numbers very well, that everything is poisonous and dangerous. That just isn't the case and is another one of those manufactured crisis opportunities that politicians seem to love.