Wellbeing of society is a very important topic to discuss in our society. Without a healthy society, the future of humanity can become bleak. This leads to discussion governments’ role in keeping their citizens healthy and whether the government should play an active role, or instead leaving it to its population to decide it themselves.
Some of the population opt for more freedom of choice in regards to healthy lifestyles. They tend to mention that different kinds of people have different physical needs, and governments cannot exactly enforce the same rules for everyone in regards to their diets and daily activities. Playing active role in sustaining healthy lifestyles among its population can also be quite costly, not to mention that the expenditure may or may not be put at the targeted demographics or programs, making the intervention less efficient, and could risk funding for other sectors, including healthcare.
Others instead insist on active government intervention in order to keep their citizens well. Their reasoning is that us human nature tends to interpret the freedom of healthy lifestyles as something that enables them to delve into any kinds of activity and eating diets, even if its against the goal of the provision of the right in the first place. In addition, government intervention does not always mean that the government need to spend a lot of its budget for this objective, instead, it could just play on the psychological part of mankind, which although does not always fully reach the objective, it can close the gap, example of doing this is by promoting healthy lifestyles and pointing out its benefit for those who participate in it. In addition, government could also apply taxes towards products deemed unhealthy, which would raise the price, disincentivizing consumers to buy such product, moving towards healthier alternatives.
I personally agree that governments should have played some crucial roles in guard-railing their population, whether by encouraging healthy lifestyles, providing assistance for those who need it, and giving economic incentives for both consumers and producers to move towards healthier society by taxing unhealthy products rationally (enough to deviate some people from the product, whilst keeping it low enough that producers will not go bankrupt) and subsidizing productions of products that are compatible with the programs. But, the people shall also be given enough freedom that they can still decide what are the best for them, with governments’ only assisting in the decision without any hard enforcements.