The Government Hates Boobs

You’re going to be surprised by this, but there’s actually a decent amount of overlap between government bureaucrats and breasts. We cover that and more on the latest episode of Mostly Weekly. Frankly I’m a little astonished that I didn’t tackle the issue sooner, given the tremendous amount of thought I’ve independently put into either category. It’s a big Venn diagram.

On an irritating but not terribly destructive level of government intervention is the FCC and censorship. The FCC has various regulations which protect American consumers from somehow being exposed to the adverse effects of a female bosom. It’s debatable how useful this agency is, given the invention of a thing called “The Internet,” but there’s still a ripple effect anyway because many cable television companies not bound by FCC regulations voluntarily comply with it. (You might say: “Heaton, isn’t it a good thing that we spare children the ghastly sight of the human form? It’s horrifying.” What’s interesting about American censorship is that we’re 100% fine with guys shooting each other. Kids see literally hundreds of murders on TV before they’re ten years old. But not nipples. That would screw them up.)

However the really troubling element of government breast oversight is not the red tape obscuring them, but intervention in the breast milk market. One to five percent of mothers in the United States don’t produce breast milk. There’s also a percentage of babies who are allergic to formula. If you can’t produce breast milk, and your kiddo can’t drink formula, you’re in a bad spot. Particularly given that breast milk suppliers, if they operate at all, do so in a “gray market” where the legality of selling the vital fluid is questionable.

Those legal markets which operate on the Internet, not surprisingly, have a lot more milk available than donation-based banks. Because women are paid for their milk they have an added incentive to become providers beyond donating. And because competition is involved, the prices are much lower than at the donation banks themselves.