By Emily Barnhill
At first glance this article about New York City’s ban on large sugary soft drinks seems completely irrelevant to a class based on the ideas behind leadership. However when I stumbled across this while idly scrolling through the Huffington Post and read through it leadership actually does come to my mind. This whole situation brings to mind the limits to which leadership should or should not go to. On one hand a policy like this could be quite beneficial to people who otherwise would out of habit order a Coke the size of a small dog. On the other hand however, it can be viewed as Mayor Bloomberg, the leader of NYC, as overstepping the bounds of his leadership position and interfering with people’s personal life choices. Which is something that goes against the dominant ideology of complete personal freedom that is dominant in the United States.
I believe that this is a case of leadership gone awry. Yes, the policy is well intentioned but as the author of the article I linked said: it is not entirely practical because the sugary “juice drinks” and diet sodas (which could be argued are just as bad or worse for you) are left out of the equation of the obesity epidemic entirely. That fact in mind, his leadership role and abilities would be better suited to a large educational campaign or even go so far as a higher tax on those drinks (the same concept behind the high costs of tobacco and alcohol) so that there will be lowered incentive to buy them. Leaders in the type of position he is in should be helping to guide people’s personal decisions rather than dictating what they can and cannot purchase and consume.
This also bring to mind the degree to which people need to be leader’s within their own smaller spheres of their family, friends, and even their own lives. Everyone needs to have a sense of personal leadership before anything gets better, having someone entirely removed from your life such as Mayor Bloomberg for the citizens of New York City. Which leadership do you think has more impact in this sort of situation: that which is on a more personal level or the high level leadership that has more “official” power?
Leave a Reply