Right now, I’m sitting in a Waffle House outside of Atlanta, GA.
Across the street, there’s a Wendy’s, a Burger King, and a McDonalds.
What a world we live in. I can literally pick from hundreds of dinner options within 10 minutes, without moving more than 500 feet. In fact, I bet I could even call McDonalds, order over the phone, and get them to bring my food across the street to Waffle House without moving an inch.
For how often people talk badly about fast food restaurants, they do a pretty amazing thing.
Think about everything that goes into a fast food restaurant.
Companies have to supply the food. Cattle is raised and butchered, and potatoes are grown and picked, along with everything else that goes into the food. Somebody feeds his family by getting paid to do that.
Then, all the materials must be shipped to the restaurant by truck. Somebody feeds his family by getting paid to do that, too.
Then, the restaurant employees cook the food and operate the restaurant. They feed their families by getting paid to do that.
Finally, a customer pays for the food while sitting in his car, and brings it home to feed his family.
There are so many other nooks and crannies within this supply chain that I skipped. Thousands and thousands of people earn their living by making sure their part of the supply chain operates properly. Accountants, operations managers, CEOs, truck mechanics, the list goes on.
This is an immense and intricate ecosystem of mutually beneficial relationships, all based on the idea that each person is free to choose for herself.
Yes, fast food is incredibly unhealthy. You don’t have to eat it. You have the option to choose what food you eat. But people eat it all the time.
People eat unhealthy food for the convenience and cost.
In the past 100 years, society deeply desired the convenience that McDonalds provides. Hence why companies like this popped up and became so successful. They were filling a clear desire in the market.
It is not criminal to sell people unhealthy food. What’s criminal is not giving them the option to choose for themselves.
If only politicians understood this concept.
I hear people complain about how unhealthy McDonalds is all the time.
If all the fast food restaurants disappeared in an instant, we would no longer hear complaints about the unhealthy food.
Instead, people would start complaining about how annoying it is that they can’t get a quick cheap meal!
This post goes out to McDonalds, and all the other gross fast food companies. They are physical manifestations of what it means to live in a free society.