The best spend of government money

Something happened during the Super Bowl that didn’t get much attention because everyone was busy arguing about Bad Bunny. MAHA ran an ad encouraging people to eat healthier. That might sound small. It isn’t. It made me genuinely hopeful. Not because one ad magically fixes anything, but because it signals a shift in what we choose to incentivize as a country. An enormous amount of money flows toward the opposite outcome. Sugar-heavy food systems. Chronic illness. Endless treatment. Entire industries profit when people are unhealthy. That doesn’t make anyone evil. It just means the incentives are misaligned. And incentives shape behavior. If we want a healthier country, we have to start paying for health, not just paying for sickness. Culture matters here too. We’ve drifted into a place where we avoid hard truths because they’re uncomfortable. Being unhealthy isn’t something to shame but it also isn’t something to normalize. The obesity numbers in the United States are staggering. We can acknowledge that reality with compassion and still believe people deserve better. Again, this ad isn’t going to solve our problems, but it’s a start. The best marketers in the world understand that change rarely happens in one dramatic moment (with the exception of Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle). It happens through small nudges, delivered consistently, over time. Someone sees the message.
They walk into a grocery store.
They grab apples instead of donuts.
Just once. That doesn’t feel like a big win. But multiply that tiny choice across hundreds of millions of people, and it becomes enormous. Steve Jobs famously obsessed over shaving seconds off the Mac’s startup time. A second saved, multiplied by millions of users, becomes years of human life returned. That level of thinking and small optimizations at massive scale is what creates real impact. That’s what I want to see more of in government and it’s fun to see people like Joe Gebbia actually making it happen. Not bigger spending for the sake of spending. Not symbolic gestures. Not policies designed to make everyone feel good in the short term. I want investment in things that measurably change lives. Things that compound.
Things that properly incentivize healthy behavior. If encouraging healthier eating becomes a serious national priority, that might be one of the highest-leverage places we can spend money. That’s the kind of government I support. And I’m excited to watch it take shape.