Sugar industry secretly paid for favorable Harvard research

On top of that, it can be true that industry funds research that is potentially biased to a certain conclusion where the conclusion is actually true.

Because private companies have strong counter-incentives to ignore or obfuscate safety issues with their products? Counter-incentives that have been shown repeatedly to have caused companies to lie, cheat, steal, and corrupt the scientific, political, and social processes in place to prevent unsafe products from being sold to the public?

Actually, no, this doesn't make sense to me. If a manufacturer is in charge of safety-testing its own product, there is an obvious conflict of interest and incentive to interpret the test result as favorable for the product as possible. (Or to tailor the product to the test)

To put it bluntly, you wouldn't put the wolf in charge of safety-testing the chicken pen either.

So especially for safety tests a publicly funded, independent institution would make sense to me. (Of course, keeping that institution independent is another problem)

It can be argued the risks are adequately protected against, but to say they are equal just seems like intransegence. As technologies advance the potential utility and risks raise together. Would you not be more concerned by an adversary weaponising modern GE than traditional breeding?

Second, with inflation, what seems to be a high sum today may not seem so 15 years down the road.

Third, many suspect that after outlawing largest bills we will go to prohibiting largest remaining, etc.

Basically any time I've had to use 200€ or 500€ notes they have basically gone quite directly from bank -> my wallet/envelope -> give some guy (buying an used car for example). The same operation could have been done easily with 50€ or 100€ notes. 500€ notes just makes it easier use/harder to spot usage of large amounts of cash. If you are doing it legally you aren't loosing anything by using 20, 50 or 100€ notes.

Is this paranoia? I don't know, ask the people in Cyprus, Greece and Portugal.

That said, the €500 note thing is a bit of a red herring (I've never seen one in my life BTW). This is just the thin end of the wedge. The greater goal is to make cash as unattractive as possible to nudge (or force) people to use surveilled electronic cash, so as to better enforce negative interest rates, bail-ins and redenomination.

So these people pay everything in cash. While removing the €500 note might not impact them much, I think the €200 and lower notes are very convenient for them.

Jokes aside cash is (IMO) very important. If you have cash in your pocket you are not vulnerable to.. how to say this.. "being fucked over" by your government or, as is the case lately, someone else's government or corporation (my mother had this happen with her paycheck). This obviously ensures the basic freedom that is more and more threatened in the modern "civilized" world.

And, again, it feels good to have cash with you. That cash represents your hard work and that hard work is quantifiable by the quantity (and color) of bills.

On a more personal note, i'd like to get paid in cash 'cuz banks are the biggest pieces of.. they are bad people doing (mostly) bad things legally.

edit: Here's a story; We had a debt with a company. That debt we settled quid pro quo as that company did some damage to our apartment. After a while that company got bought by another company and soon after we got a letter that said that we owe them money (with interest calculated in, ofc). That fell on my mother as her name was on the contract. She, being the "don't make trouble" kind of person, didn't want to sue them (and we didn't have much money to pay lawyers at the time), although she would probably win. The way those kinds of debts are payed in my country is by them sitting on your paycheck (you can pay them in cash, ofc). That goes through the government financial agency. Thing is that the amount payed shouldn't go over 2/3 of the pay you get, for obvious reasons. But said agency took her whole pay.

In other words: To whoever downvoted without explaining why s/he downvoted, you are probably a financially safe person that knows what to do (or your lawyer knows what to do) when stuff like this happens. Or in yet other words: go f yourself.

I paid for my first car in cash because of that. It was idiotic, but physical money beats bureaucratic idiocy.

Stuffing as much in as possible does make sense. In to ATMs. Central banks have crazy trouble bringing new notes into circulation, and it costs as much to fill an ATM with 1000 €5 notes as it does to fill it with as many €20 notes.

Why should a bank fill in ATM with 5s when it can fill it with 20s? Incentives, for sure. IIRC 5s had an average life of 3 months in circulation, though the linked article suggests is is now 6 months. Larger value notes have a longer life (because smaller notes exist).

Banks have a lot of incentive to push higher value notes into ATMs, while central banks have a big desire no not let this happen all of the time.

If you're a larger business and have a good relationship with your bank, you're likely able to gain a discount on fees or the price of cash for your effort to get smaller value money into circulation. For example, if you operate machines that give paper cash in change (depending on country and regulatory environment).

The alternative to flight is fight.. The more you deprive someone of options in one direction the more often they take options in the other direction. But what kind of cold, sick people would like small arms skirmishes so much that they would fund bias towards them in international policy over decades under the guises like a pathological fear of chemicals?

If you're OK with the government keeping track of all but the most trivial financial transaction to protect against tax fraud and organised crime, why would you not be OK with them keeping track of your phone calls and where your car is (ANPR)?

What, really, is the point?

I think regulation is a must only in countries with free healthcare, where sick people are treated with taxpayers' money. If that's not the case, people are free to do what they please with their own health as they're the sole ones footing bill.

Getting a 1% tax approved and then raising it to 10% over a few years is much much easier than passing a 10% tax.

And that's where the issue lies. Most processed foods are extremely rich in sugar and we've gotten used to their taste.