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Taxing Obesity - Or Perhaps The Opposite, Saul Levmore

Cleveland State Law Review

The true subject of this Lecture is the question of why we regulate some things and not others, and then how we might predict future regulation. Let me begin with my conclusion, to be developed at greater length in other work. Its academic novelty will be the notion that a fair amount of regulation is best understood as fostering self-control on behalf of the governed. I will suggest that we add this explanation, or category, of government intervention to the more familiar ones of public goods, coordination, interest group capture, and negative externalities where there are high transaction costs. Its …