Transparency is Not a Tool to Manipulate People

At Slate's DoubleX Health blog, Sarah Elizabeth Richards reports on research published in the magazine suggesting that informing consumers about the calorie count of menu items in restaurant may not lead to healthier choices.

"The conclusion doesn't bode well for the growing public health trend of requiring chain restaurants to inform consumers about how many calories are in their food," she writes, missing what I would consider to be the point of providing calorie information--and a host of other transparency measures--entirely.

Transparency is not a tool to be used whenever authorities believe it can manipulate people into making the "right" choices; it's a principle that governments in particular (and corporations, when possible) should adhere to because informed consent is an important right.

As I've said before--in this blog and elsewhere--people have a right to information that helps them make informed decisions, regardless of whether they use that information to make the decisions Richards (or healthcare advocates, or government regulators) think they should make.

And if corporations need a cynical reason to adopt greater transparency, the fact that people are provided with the facts also provides those corporations with a ready-made defense if people do continue to make the "wrong" decisions. The tobacco industry's crime, for example, was not selling cigarettes but misleading people about the consequences of smoking.