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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

So you think their should be no more soda in the world?

I understand the health costs of sugary drinks, but personally I want to live in a world where I can have one if and when I want to. I don't drink a lot of soda (maybe one a week), but there are certain situations where I find them really enjoyable. I don't want them to disappear.

I think the quality of life will go down if we get rid of all junk food in the world. I know we do a poor job of eating and drinking in moderation, but I don't think the solution is to just have it not be available.

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I do believe that there should be no more soda in the world. At least, we should wipe it out, get everyone through withdrawal, then reintroduce it.

Sugar and caffeine are addictive. We are given these things from a very young age and have very little say in whether we are addicted to them (not to mention, massive amounts of marketing).

The fewer foods I eat, the better I feel. So many people are hooked on this stuff and aren't even aware that it is poisoning them (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, as well as headaches, mood swings, nasal congestion).

I wouldn't want to be a dictator and deprive people who are making a conscious choice, but I would get rid of it in order to give the people who are trapped the opportunity to experience life without it.

This is always such a slippery slope, though. There ARE a lot of people who are already using soda in a healthy manner; they drink one occasionally, and are not addicted. They, too, would be swept up in any outright ban (no matter how temporary).

Where would it stop, then? Almost everything there is has some people that are addicted to it and use it too much; television, video games, social media, etc. Do we implement global bans to protect the people who are unable to control themselves? Or do we need to do something different?

Step 1. Claim parent argument is, instead, some strawman.

Step 2. Argue against strawman.

He was very clever with that wasn't he?

Everyone should be free to consume whatever they want, so long as they know what they want is killing them, and there are no distortions by the purveyors of such products that they are anything other than what they are - namely bad for you.

You want to smoke? Go ahead. You want to get obese and severely shorten both your life and its quality by consuming caloric dense nutrient deficient drinks/foods? Go right on ahead. It's your life to screw up.

But don't you dare stand there and tell me that letting these corporations that profit from the damage people do to themselves be free to run around going "OH NO cigarettes are totally fine! OH NO diet isn't the issue - just exercise more - here have a coke". Kids are literally dying because of this shit, and I frankly won't stand by it.

What I am against is systematic and dirty propaganda operations that directly harm the national interest for trivial sums of profit by lying to the population through their teeth and in turn inflicting untold amounts of misery on millions of our citizens.

I wasn't clever at all; if you think that the sugary drink companies are fine to exist as long as they don't push propaganda about sugary drinks, then there IS a way to win - all they have to do is stop the propaganda.

That isn't what your statement I replied to said... you said there was NO way for them to win.

I wasn't trying to create a strawman. The claim that I was arguing against said "They can't win because they are on the wrong side of history"

So the commenter claims "they can't win". That means that even if they stopped all the PR work defending sugar, they still wouldn't win and they would still be on the wrong side of history.

If they have no way to win, then the only thing they can do is stop existing at all.

If the commenter supports their right to exist as a company making sugary drinks, then there IS a way to win.

Then the problem is you jumped ahead too much. The "can't win" part came from what that guy was responding to. Your parent argument was just "no, people won't give them a break because what they're doing with PR and marketing is morally reprehensible". That's it.

If that was the argument he was trying to make, then he should have said "no, they can't win UNTIL they completely stop with the morally reprehensible PR and marketing"

He never once mentions what they could do to 'win'.

He's responsible for what he says. But you're also responsible for what you understand.

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