Less is More

[talon]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38019588/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

"There is a risk if we constantly are lecturing people and trying to tell them what to do, we will actually find that we might undermine and be counterproductive in the results that we achieve," Lansley told doctors at the British Medical Association in Brighton, southeast England.

This is true of much more than eating habits. Lecturing people about their behavior, banning them from doing related activities, closing down shops, or raising taxes in order to force the changes often has just the opposite effect. More people will want to engage in the forbidden activity. Prohibition Rooms will pop up.

With cell phones and the internet, contraband items can make an appearance, be sold out, and disappear long before law enforcement can get there, and certainly long before the revenuers even learn about it.

An entire underground culture will spring up over the contraband item.

Education really does work - but not authoritarian lecturing and micromanaging control. Put the information out here in an attractive and compelling form and it will be absorbed. Over time, behaviors will change. It's not a quick thing. It never is. The slow method is much more effective than bans and taxes and closing businesses down and sending police to arrest children for eating some proscribed food.

A less authoritative and judgmental approach is more effective when trying to get people to change their behavior.