Exactly. You want better food at school cafeteria? The government has to pay. You want less death by secondary smoke? You need government intervention (which incidentally the USA have accepted now).
Having a government is not such a bad thing. Even Americans used to embrace regulations, until Reagan and the "get the government off my back" idea spread out. Regulations are what help internalise in the price externalities such as these. You could tax unhealthy food, or subsidise healthy food. But somehow this is felt as a wound to people's freedom of doing anything they want, including eating crap if they want.
And freedom is all great: pity for those poor people who are so poor that their only choice is eating crappy food, and who can't afford preventive measures such as cancer screening.
Our diet is in large part a result of government intervention. Farm subsidies make distort the price of corn based products (HFCS for instance). The existence of government run schools prevent choice in school lunches.
However I do agree that government should play a role in regulating second hand smoke, as that is an instance of one individual using coercive force over another (making me inhale your smoke in public). Although even that issue is a slippery slope. Do we ban cars because their exhaust is toxic?
Having a government is not such a bad thing. Even Americans used to embrace regulations, until Reagan and the "get the government off my back" idea spread out. Regulations are what help internalise in the price externalities such as these. You could tax unhealthy food, or subsidise healthy food. But somehow this is felt as a wound to people's freedom of doing anything they want, including eating crap if they want.
And freedom is all great: pity for those poor people who are so poor that their only choice is eating crappy food, and who can't afford preventive measures such as cancer screening.