View source for Which nanny – the state or industry? Wowsers, teetotallers and the fun police in public health advocacy

<!-- you can have any number of categories here -->
[[Category:M.Moore]]
[[Category:H. Yeatman]]
[[Category:R. Davey]]
[[Category:Nanny State]]
<!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.-->
{{URL | url = https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350615001080}}
<!-- {{Other URL | url = }} -->
<!-- {{Old URL | url = }} -->
{{End URL}}
{{DES | des = "This paper explores a series of examples which illustrate how public health is being undermined by the ‘Nanny Industry’ and how industry uses fear of government regulation to maintain its own dominance, to maintain its profits and to do so at a significant financial and social cost to the community and to public health." | show=}}
<!-- insert wiki page text here -->
<!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them.  Use these explicit workarounds. -->
<!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}}  -->
{{List|title=Which nanny – the state or industry? Wowsers, teetotallers and the fun police in public health advocacy|links=true}}
{{Quotations|title=Which nanny – the state or industry? Wowsers, teetotallers and the fun police in public health advocacy|quotes=true}}

{{Text |
Abstract
Highlights
•
The paper wrestles with the challenge presented by conservatives who increasingly rely on the nanny state as a method of preventing arguments for governments to intervene to protect public health.

•
The attitude is based on seeing government in terms of ‘interfering’ when they seek to regulate. The nanny state is a call for ‘non-interference’.

•
The highlight of the argument in this paper is that government regulation should be based on issues of dominance rather than interference. If government does not prevent dominance, then industry fills the gap.

•
They will have a nanny. The choice is do they accept nanny alcohol, nanny gambling, nanny tobacco and so on. Or are they better to accept the role of government in as far as it acts as a nanny.


Abstract
There is no option for avoiding the ‘Nanny’. The only option for communities is to make sensible choices about which ‘Nanny’ will dominate their lives and at what time, which ‘Nanny’ will make us healthy and which ‘Nanny’ will undermine our health and our freedoms. Those political ideologues who use ‘nanny statism’ largely do so to further their own agenda and are invariably inconsistent in how they apply their concept of non-interference.

Who's afraid of the ‘Nanny State’ is not the question should be asking. Rather the question ought to be – which Nanny should cause the greatest concern? The prime reason that the ‘Nanny State’ conjures fear is that it is a threat to the freedoms that are a key element of democratic societies. The tenet understood by the concept of the ‘Nanny State’ is that the more regulation that is made by the State, the more freedoms are whittled away and it is the intention of the wowsers, the teetotallers and the fun police to do so.

It is time to rethink the ‘nanny’ concept, from the narrow sense of loss of individual freedoms (and one which favours ‘free enterprise’ and money making interests of big industry) to that which enables individuals and populations freedom from domination. Such a change particularly pertains to our understandings of the role of government.

Pettit's work in framing the notion of freedom in terms of ‘dominance’ rather than ‘interference’ is pertinent. It provides a more realistic way in which to understand why industry uses the ‘Nanny State’ argument. It is to maintain its own dominance (i.e. in matters of public health) rather than allowing governments to interfere with that dominance.

Public health advocacy work is regularly undermined by the ‘Nanny State’ phrase. This paper explores a series of examples which illustrate how public health is being undermined by the ‘Nanny Industry’ and how industry uses fear of government regulation to maintain its own dominance, to maintain its profits and to do so at a significant financial and social cost to the community and to public health.
}}