Movie popcorn overpriced? Sue ’em; spoiled children want their way

By David McElroy · March 6, 2012

I hate paying the high prices that movie theatres charge for snacks and drinks, but it never crossed my mind to sue anyone about it. One spoiled brat in Michigan is so upset about being deprived of his right to inexpensive popcorn and Coke, though, that he’s filed a class action lawsuit demanding lower prices.

I would simply laugh at his idiocy and childishness, but we live in a culture that caters to these sorts of irrational whims. This lawsuit will probably be dismissed, but I can see the idea behind it succeeding in the future. How long will it be before some congressman introduces legislation to create the National Theatre Snack Food Board, with the power to regulate prices?

If you think that sounds absurd, you’re right. But remember that we live in a country where Congress has passed laws regulating the acceptable volume level of television commercials. Seriously. There’s a law about it. I’m not making this up.

Many people have come to believe that life should be set up to please them. They believe that other people have a responsibilitiy to cater to them. And when reality doesn’t deliver what they want, they expect governments to give it to them.

If gasoline prices are higher than they want to pay, they rail against the evil oil companies (and commodities speculators, if they’re sophisticated enough to have even heard of them). They don’t understand the law of supply and demand — and they don’t really care about reality when they insist on plenty of what they want and prices in line with what they want to pay.

Fortunately, even politicians mostly understand that price controls don’t work, so they’re hesitant to impose them, even though they’ll join in the populist fist-shaking to appease the angry masses. After the experiments of the ’70s wage-and-price controls, some of them realize that if you artificially keep a price down, you’re going to have shortages and lines at gas stations with people angry that there’s no supply.

The guy in Michigan who’s suing for his apparent right to inexpensive popcorn doesn’t understand all of this. He and many of his fellow moviegoers don’t understand economics. They don’t understand the free market. And they don’t understand choices.

If you don’t want to buy expensive popcorn and soft drinks, then don’t buy them. There’s not a “cover charge” at the door demanding that you buy. You can either accept the total price you pay as the cost of attending a movie or you can simply not buy snacks. Of course, you also have the “nuclear option.” Just opt out of going to the theatre. Save your money. If enough others do the same, it might force a change in the economics of running theatres. Maybe.

Either way, it’s your choice. Nobody’s making you go to the theatre and nobody’s forcing you to buy the snacks. You don’t have a constitutional right to reasonably priced Junior Mints. Get over yourself.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts