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Marley you have used your 2 hours on the internet/ TV / video gaming today, your time is up you must now log off and exercise or face the fines pursuant to Law 11 section 2b
Courtesy Of The Nanny State.
That’s a “nanny state” hat trick, but it’s disappointing that it took until post #42.
The city actually does promote healthy eating; for example there are subway ads about how unhealthy sugary drinks are. But I’d look at it this way: who has more money and power to promote their views on food and drinks: the NYC board of health, or Coke and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper? That might answer why education alone isn’t sufficient.
Would have been post two had this been posted in GD, sorry to disappoint. Look I understand some people cannot control themselves, shit I am one of them. Yet I stopped drinking soda, most added sugary items, even quit smoking all without anyone telling me I couldn’t do those things.
OTOH I may be in the minority but I would agree with a minor tax maybe 2-3% on soda/cigarettes/alcohol/marijuana (where legalized)/most fast food pretty much anything that isn’t healthy. With the money being 100% put into awareness and prevention the problem is the bloated bureaucracy will find a way to use that money for themselves or other pet projects.
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/05/24/states-use-only-fraction-of-tobacco-revenues-to-fight-smoking-study-finds
And with that I am outta CS in this topic would visit again if it starts again in GD.
It would almost be worth putting up with the recurring presence of Michael Bloomberg on the public stage if he were required to appear in a Hare Krishna outfit. Heck, given the known health benefits of laughter such a mandate would have every bit as good a justification as the Big Gulp ban.
For me, this is the price of living in a free society and it’s worth paying.
I’m on the fence, leaning on the no-ban side (and definitely not the half-measure Bloomberg tried). But I’ve given up believing we live in a free society - we don’t. We just like to toss that word around when it is convenient to whatever point we are trying to make.
I see it as a death of a thousand cuts. Give a politician an inch and they’ll take your large soda. I don’t really want the large soda but giving it up means something else down the road.
And it’s so easy to get around – sell a soda that’s just an ounce or two under the ban. Or have a buy-one-get one-free/half-off deal so people can buy two smaller sizes.
I’ll probably get pitted for making this comparison but…
Forcing your ideologies on to people because dang it, they’re just too stupid to know any better is dystopian.
This is the same justification anti abortionists use to fight their cause.
Tracing the evolution of the nanny state would be quite an interesting documentary, Might even win a local station an Edward R Murrow award.
I’d guess the nanny state mentality started in the 60’s with the early tobacco warnings. It soon escalated to a ban on tobacco tv advertising. The nanny state mentality just grows bigger and bigger with the passing of years. There seems to be no stopping it.
Its just a matter of time and soda taxes will be used to artificially drive up cost and reduce consumption. Warning labels will soon follow. Maybe even class action lawsuits. Pretty much the same tactics used against tobacco. The difference of course is all the ripe targets the nanny state can go after. Doughnuts, greasy hamburgers, hot dogs, the list goes on and on.
The UK press is already making comparisons between tobacco and sugar. The war on sugar has already begun.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/10314705/Sugar-is-addictive-and-the-most-dangerous-drug-of-the-times.html
Portion size is not an ideology. And no, it’s nothing like a dystopia. Maybe I’m wrong and you’re also against everything from mandatory food inspections to vaccinations to bans on dangerous chemicals and ingredients to marketing laws to speed limits - in which case I applaud your consistency but I think that’s insane - but if you’re not against those things, this is no more dystopian than any of them. It may or may not be effective or sensible and I don’t mean to imply that there’s no debate about that, but it’s neither frightening nor Stalinesque nor dystopian.
No, it isn’t. Their justification is that abortion is immoral and/or murder. The argument here is that the drink sizes are unhealthy and that a smaller size could contribute to reduced rates of obesity and diabetes without significantly inconveniencing people who for choose to drink larger sodas (since they could still get them in two cups or containers).
It might if the nanny state were a real thing. Since it’s not, try Fox News!
Yes, and other than reducing smoking rates by more than half, which means a lot less lung cancer, what has that even accomplished? God, how horrible it would be if something similar happened to obesity and diabetes.
You’re making false equivalencies. We’re talking about a product that is already legal to sell for public consumption.
I’ll admit that there are some grey areas WRT how much “X” can a company put in their food product but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
Yes that too is ONE of their many justifications against abortion.
They also try to force their beliefs on women because they’re too stupid to know any better.
I’m not sure which of those five or six things is supposed to be the false equivalence, but legal products are still inspected and regulations for legal products are changed all the time. Products get banned and pulled off the market for various reasons, too.
There are far more gray areas than that.
Yes, those are some of the things they actually say.
That’s evidently how some of them feel, but it’s not what they say. And in that case you could say that about banning or regulating anything, so the comparison fails.
It is when someone mandates portion size.
Dystopia refers to something akin to “1984” where the government is ever present in your life. It isn’t something that happens overnight. It happens in degrees. The book described a government that knows your every move and tells you how to live your life. It’s not like we have to imagine a government that reads every email or listens to every phone call. It’s here. It’s not like we have to imagine a government that’s collecting medical data on every person. It’s here.
Really? You actually threw Fox News into your argument? You think only Republicans object to unnecessary government intervention?
This is incoherent.
I know what a dystopia is, but thank you for explaining a term I already understood and had used in context.
And yet posters in this thread are comparing a regulation on drink size to Stalinism. Even though the email collection arrived before the regulation on cup size, which pretty well rubbishes the whole creeping fascism theory. The mind boggles.
I think Republicans are much more likely to use terms like “nanny state.” Do you disagree?
And? Does the term bother you?
I’ll ask you again, do you think it’s just Republicans who object to unnecessary government intervention?
Yes. It’s asinine and a childish substitute for an actual argument.
I never said anything that indicated I feel that way.
Good, people need to make their own decisions, and not be dictated to and nannied by delusional wannabe-despots like Bloomers
See, Magiver? 