Chef's plans are hard to stomach.

According to a recent Reuters story, chef Gordon Ramsay is advocating fining restaurants that serve out-of-season produce. I don't know anything else significant about Ramsay's business plan or political views (I've seen ads for "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" which is/was hosted by him--that's all); so this could be a sarcastic comment, or a proposal suggesting a law where he doesn't really want the law, but does want to push people into eating only in-season fruits and vegetables. However, the report from Reuters seemed to indicate this was a serious proposal, I'm taking it as such, and on that basis, using it as a perfect example of someone wanting to misuse the law for personal benefit.

Ramsay is perfectly entitled to not want imported, out-of-season produce for any reason he may want. I'm sure he has his reasons to choose not to eat such fruits and vegetables: he may feel the energy used to import those products is wasteful and bad for the environment; he may feel that foreign agricultural workers are mistreated; he may feel it undermines traditional culture in some way. He is free to refrain from eating, buying, or serving that food he finds offensive for those reasons. No one should stop him from advocating the same course to others, either.

What is distressing about his desire to impose new laws and fines is that it goes beyond those choices. Everything I mentioned in the previous paragraph is something he is within his rights to do, but others are within their rights to do differently. Ramsay is trying to take away the choice. His reasons may be aesthetic--i.e., he simply finds it distasteful that people are eating foods in ways he doesn't like. Or they could be economic--i.e., his restaurants are losing business to other establishments because he won't serve foods that others will and that the public wants. Or they could be a combination of those reasons, or others I'm not thinking of. However, whichever of those motivations is behind his position is irrelevant. Others should be as free to make their culinary choices as Ramsay is to make his, but if the law he is advocating ever went into effect, the British public would have Ramsay's choices imposed upon them.

The bottom line is this: freedom requires tolerance. Other people will certainly do things that we think are stupid, wasteful, annoying, distasteful, or otherwise wrong. However, if those poor choices don't hurt us or others, then the proper course is to try and dissuade people from making such poor choices, but accept it and move on if they do anyway. Just because you or I don't like something doesn't mean it should be illegal.