Overview
In the excerpts from The Bob Zadek Show, “Bloomberg” refers to two distinct entities: Michael Bloomberg as Mayor of New York City, and Bloomberg the news organization. The name appears across four episodes spanning 2009 to 2021, but the treatment is not uniform. In three episodes, Bloomberg the mayor serves as Bob Zadek’s exemplar of the “nanny state” — a government figure who seeks to regulate personal dietary choices. In one episode, Bloomberg appears only as the publisher of an article cited by a guest. The excerpts do not present a sustained analysis of Bloomberg as an institution, a company, or a political career; they use the name as a shorthand for a particular approach to governance.
Mayor Bloomberg and the Nanny State
The earliest treatment comes from a 2009 episode on drug legalization. Bob Zadek introduces Mayor Bloomberg as “the male nanny” who is “seeking to make trans fats illegal to serve in restaurants” in New York City Legalize drugs. (2009). Zadek frames this as an example of government overreach: the question, he says, is not whether trans fats are bad for you but “whether or not government has to butt into your lives, become intrusive, and not only educate you that something is bad for you, but prohibit you from doing things that are bad for you.” He argues that “the fact that something is bad for you is not grounds to make it illegal” and that people should be allowed to engage in any behavior they wish “so long as that behavior does not materially harm somebody else.” The Bloomberg trans fat ban serves as Zadek’s concrete illustration of the harm principle’s violation — government prohibiting self-regarding conduct.
Nearly a decade later, in a 2018 episode on government nutrition advice, Zadek returns to Bloomberg with a fuller recollection. He recalls that “Mayor Bloomberg was the mayor of New York City and he went out on a tear about salt” “Breakfast is Good For You” and Other Dangerous Government-Sponsored Myths (2018). Zadek’s memory of the salt campaign is vivid: “If you served salt in a restaurant, you went to jail, you had to disclose how much salt.” He notes that “shortly thereafter, we had another condiment, sugar, which was in the crosshairs.” Zadek asks his guest, Terence Kealey, whether Bloomberg was “a superb nutritionist in giving those mandates and imposing that very, very onerous regime upon restaurants in New York City.”
Kealey’s response does not defend Bloomberg. He compares the salt and sugar regulations to the death penalty debate: just as courts make mistakes, regulators make decisions “based on imperfect knowledge.” Kealey states that “salt most certainly most probably is not dangerous” and that “the big myths of salt being dangerous have largely now been exploded.” He concedes that sugar “probably is dangerous” but notes that the data is “very strange” — countries like Australia and Britain have seen sugar consumption drop while obesity and type 2 diabetes continue to decline. Kealey’s conclusion is that “we should leave this to consumers and restaurateurs to make up their own minds” unless there is certainty, as with cyanide. He allows that transparency — requiring menus to list salt, sugar, and carbohydrate content — is acceptable, but regulation in the absence of certainty produces mistakes.
Zadek’s reply shifts the terms of the debate. He argues that transparency itself carries a cost passed to the consumer, and that forcing consumers to pay for something “utterly useless” is “transparency in a bad way.” He draws a parallel to GMO labeling, noting that Western Europe is “fearful of GMOs based upon no science whatever” and that disclosures “are not free and may be harmful in the sense that it imposes a cost that nobody benefits from.”
Bloomberg as News Outlet
The 2019 episode on rent control introduces a different Bloomberg. Guest Charlie Deist cites “an article in Bloomberg by a progressive writer who is writing for a progressive audience” The Rent Control Bomb (2019). The writer, identified as Noah Smith, argues that the housing market is not a straightforward supply-and-demand story. Smith uses the analogy of high-rise apartments as “fish tanks” — if you build more fish tanks, they can absorb incoming tech workers without displacing lower-income residents in peripheral areas. Smith also suggests “paying off displaced renters with social insurance.” Deist wonders whether this could be “a successful political message” and doubts that Kamala Harris would pick it up, but suggests it could be something for a policy entrepreneur if California’s crisis worsens.
In this episode, Bloomberg is not the target of criticism; it is simply the platform for an argument that Deist finds interesting enough to relay. The host, Bob Zadek, does not comment on Bloomberg the outlet. His focus remains on rent control itself, which he calls “counterproductive” and which he says provides an economic benefit “to a large degree to people who don’t even need it because it’s not focused.”
Across episodes
The excerpts show a consistent treatment of Mayor Bloomberg as a symbol of the nanny state across two episodes — 2009 and 2018 — with the later episode adding detail about salt and sugar mandates that the earlier one did not mention. The 2019 rent control episode introduces Bloomberg as a news outlet rather than a political figure, and the 2021 corporate tax episode mentions Bloomberg only in passing as a former employer of guest Richard Rubin Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021). The excerpts do not show a development or change in Zadek’s argument about Bloomberg the mayor; they show the same critique applied to different regulatory targets. The rent control and tax episodes do not engage with Bloomberg as a regulator at all.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when Michael Bloomberg served as mayor, what year the trans fat ban took effect, or the specific text of any New York City regulation. They do not name the bill or amendment underlying any policy, nor do they describe the outcome of any legal challenge to Bloomberg-era mandates. The excerpts also do not cover Bloomberg’s later political career, his presidential campaign, or his business ventures beyond the news outlet’s name. The 2021 episode mentions Bloomberg only as a past employer of Richard Rubin, with no further detail about his tenure there.