Slashdot Mirror
The Fresca Rebellion
theodp writes "They can ban the Marlboros, tax the Cokes, and zone the Whoppers, says Slate's William Saletan on the subject of today's morality cops. But it's time to put the brakes on the paternalistic overreaching of the food police, Saletan argues, when they come after his editor's beloved Fresca ('there are concerns that diet beverages may increase calorie consumption by justifying consumption of other caloric foods'), which will have to be pried from his cold, dead hands. '40 states have enacted special taxes on soda or junk food. And the soda taxers are becoming ever bolder. Their latest manifesto is an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, co-authored by the health commissioner of New York City, the surgeon general of Arkansas, and several others. It declares soda fair game for government intervention (PDF) on the grounds that "market failures" in this area are causing "less-than-optimal production and consumption."' Where do we draw the line?"
Diet sodas make your body expect energy. That energy does not arrive. Therefore your body makes you feel hungry to provide for the already ramped up production.
Sugarfree gum and diet soda is therefore something that will never find their way into my hands.
I've heard tons of stories from cyclists in the US detailing how people in vehicles purposely drive as close as possible to them, cut them off, throw things at them etc.
Let me guess, they were cycling at 17mph two-abreast on a 45mph road at sundown without proper reflective gear or flashing lights? American cyclists are predominantly stupid and ignore traffic laws to their own detriment. They are far safer on sidewalks than on the roads.
Hooray! Liberal utopia. Take care of me, I can't handle myself.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
You can change jobs and divorce your wife.
What do you do about a power hungry out of control government bent on controlling as many aspects of your life as possible?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Tagged "socialism"? WTF?
How did this happen? Exactly when was slashdot taken over by clueless dumbfucks?
Honestly redneck fuckers that think this defines socialism (or rather want you to believe that) have no place here. There is no way they comprehend the technical and programming stories and are just here to pull their usual transparent troll tactics.
Honestly capitalist racist exploit thy neighbour types have taken over here. Watch the moderation/censorship patterns.
If slashdot wishes to regain a position representaive of the open source software community, they are going to have to take responsibility for content and do not leave the censorship to the users themselves, that is just a troll invitation outright.
Here Mr redneck troll, we built this lovely bridge for you where you can hide under it and torture the many pencil nnecked geeks that frequently cross it. There is nothing more fun that pissing off and censoring those smart-ass knowitalls... heck most of them probably never even fired a shotgun or wrestled a pig! Yeehaw! Go get em boys! They got purty mouths too!
Where was that recent discussion of open source pr ... slashdot is part of the problem. These asshole trolls that have nothing to do with us have taken over.
We need real moderators that are representative of the community, not subversive assholes.
Since the fruit of your labor, to a very large extent, is due to the wider society, yes you do. Besides, it's a democracy. Your will is not absolute, and providing the Constitution is not defied, you have to accept the will of the majority. Don't like it, move to a Libertarian paradise like Somalia.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I personally do not feel that Americans pay enough of the cost associated with their choices. Insurance is not the answer, because you can still have a group of people making stupid choices, the consequences of which are paid for other policy holders. If I tell you that, "hey smoking this junk can give you cancer," and you ignore me, and you get cancer, should you then expect me to pay for ANY of it?
Making people "responsible for the costs of their actions" is not always the best way to fix a problem. Sometimes society has to protect itself by outlawing otherwise profitable behaviors such as fraud or armed robbery.
Perhaps it would be better to simply ban or regulate things like high fructose corn syrup, phosphoric acid and other garbage that soda makers find cheaper than real food. It can be argued that these ingredients are responsible for the obesity epidemic. Fat people get cancer more frequently than "normal" people and we now see even children with acquired diabetes. Real foods like sugar are not that much more expensive but without laws to protect food makers, economics forces them to all use crap. If you think food bans violate your liberty, remember that lead oxides were once as a cheap sweetener before people really understood heavy metal poisoning.
Finally, "sin taxes" make the state a partner in crime. Tobacco taxes, for example, have not come close to eliminating smoking or paying for the medical costs. I doubt it is possible to strip the hundreds of thousands of dollars cancer treatment alone costs from the average slob who smoke even if you assume the smoker survives forty years of their addiction. Prevention programs, the tobacco companies know, often backfire by normalizing smoking in a way that direct advertising has a hard time conveying. It would be a lot easier and cheaper to just ban the sale of tobacco. Taxing sodas is much the same. In the 20 year war between Iran and Iraq a causeway was literally built out of the bodies of dead soldiers. Do we want to pave our streets with the blood of smokers and soda drinkers, or do we want to outlaw profit from the sale of addictive, factory made poisons?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Of course friends influence you. But if your friends decide to rob a liquor store, your individual choice is whether or not to participate. Unfortunately, sometimes people will make the wrong choice. It doesn't mean we don't hold them responsible for their choice.
Of course we are influenced by physical cues too. Murder rates go up in the summer. Doesn't mean we say that "the summer made me do it".
Now, overeating is neither robbery nor homicide. And I'm not saying we should go around vilifying people for it (lord knows that most years of my life I've been overweight and sometimes downright fat). But it really is a matter of individual choices, and we should educate people on how they can help themselves, and hold them responsible for the cost of their actions.
If your health insurance premium was a function of whether you're trying to take care of yourself or not, then we'd be holding people responsible without having to make it into a moral crusade. Whereas if you are subsidizing my behavior through health insurance or whatever, then you do have a legitimate interest in my eating habits. That's not the society I want. We should all be free to do what we wish and to bear the responsibility for those choices.
As a smoker who detests soda pop, could give a shit about fresca, pays more insurance to support lardasses, and will likely get denied for my smoking history somewhere along the lines. I say fuck you. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKK YYYYYYOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!11111!!!!!
Fuck you all. Every single one of you relativistic morality police shitbags are getting exactly what you fucking deserve. After being pushed into a smoking box, I could really give a fuck how far this goes. In fact, it's not fair for smokers until it goes a hell of a lot further. Shit, dog owner's should pay more for car insurance, people who hunt should pay more for life insurance because they are more likely to get shot.
YUP, like I said before. Fuck you all, every single one of you - taxing cigarettes - ban smoking - cheeto eating - twelve hour a day teevee watching - six pack of soda a day drinking - shit bag - fast food eating - self righteous shit for brain mutherfuckers.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism