Government-grade spyware hits Mexican advocates of soda tax

Why would you imagine that? People circumvent the DRM on Photoshop, Windows, and lots of other complex software all the time. They most certainly don't have the ability--time, money, expertise, and workforce--to recreate those products.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/release/arrest-made-conspiracy-commit-as...

The problem is that the media and judiciary are completely coopted, letting the corporatization of law enforcement continue unchecked. Where is the slap-down in the courts (or court of public opinion) of police serving money instead of their constituency?

tl;dr - it's a symptom of a bigger problem.

Contractors exist to implement the policies of their clients. What agency holds the contract? Who manages the system? Which electeds approved the budget? Which electeds administered the program?

Laying this at the feet of the contractor is not going far enough.

So, as a bonus it keeps the organization's skills up to date.

The ownership remains contentious.

The government can mind it's own business, as I pay it only to avoid government threat to my autonomy. It is illegitimate, propped up by no more than the monarch who claims God props her up.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-sweete...

After all, someone who drinks soda and does a lot of exercise or hard work might not impose any cost on the health system - and someone who eats a lot of bacon or home-baked cakes might get obese without drinking any soda.

As for the tax, it doesn't need to be applied at the point of sale, but can be further back in the chain.

I absolutely reject the notion that tax on soda or other potentially-addictive substances are a punishment of the consumer for poor moral choices. Making sugar expensive is simply an effective strategy to lower consumption by shifting the equilibrium point for consumer purchases.

We have a family friend that's disabled, she's an adult but only able to read around a 4th grade level. She's seen her grandmother die of diabetes, her mom has it too and the friend herself is fat. But notwithstanding the healthy food we give her when she visits or stays with us, and no matter how many times we remind her about how to choose between different kinds of food, if she goes into a store on her own and has money she's more likely than not to buy 2 quart bottles of soda and drink one of them immediately.

It's really hard for some people, especially kids, to resist getting jacked up on sugar. The younger they do so the more likely they are to develop lifelong eating habits that are going to give them painful and expensive medical problems and send them into an early grave. There's no moral component involved at the consumption end for me because many people are just not smart enough to carry around the idea of healthy eating and to choose it over the marketing signals that surround them. The younger they get exposed to an addictive substance, the more difficulty they're likely to have resisting the temptation to consume it.

I am utterly indifferent to the economic situation of shareholders in the crap food industry. They don't have a right to make money out of people; it's usually the suppliers who make the moral argument about consumers needing to make healthy choices and tax being a horrible punishment. That's just an attempt to shift the entire burden of responsibility onto consumers at the same time that the suppliers are spending a fortune on marketing to kids. Frankly most of the drug dealers I've met in my life had more of a moral center than the professional lobbying and marketing people I've known.

The answer is of course no to both... so people are being taxed because others are being infringed, but the taxes don't serve those infringed.

Also, diet soda has its' own issues... and more fat people are drinking diet soda than regular.

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edit: Also, we don't need to tax soda, just stop subsidizing farming...

For the population at large, MOST health care costs are accumulated at 60+, see this graph[0]. In fact ages 1-50, on average, cost almost as much as 65-75. And worse still from retirement people pay a lot less tax.

Why is this relevant? Smokers and the Obese often die after their working (and taxpaying) life but before their expensive retirement. This means that while their last few years might be more expensive, their costs over the course of their life may be half that of someone that lived until 85.

The ironic thing is that obesity/smoking might save social security from insolvency and be a massive saving for Medicare (as the Obese/Smokers won't ever enter Medicare, but will pay tons into it). Single payer would likely include the current Medicare ages, thus it would still remain cheaper to cover an Obese/Smoker who dies at 60 than a completely healthy person that dies at 80.

The reality is that people hate the Obese/Smokers due to biases, not costs. Or because they think it is immoral/a character flaw to allow oneself to die early. There's no actual economic argument to be made that Obesity/Smoking is bad for society, they're net contributors by every major metric (particularly healthcare, retirement contributions, and taxes).

There's been multiple studies drawing the same conclusion[1][2][3]. But most won't look at the data, and ignore the "long tail" of healthy individuals that is so expensive while talking about the "short tail" expense of the obese or smokers.

[0] http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danmunro/files/2014/04/hccost...

[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...

[2] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199710093371506#t=a...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2225433/

We seem to have much the same problems as the US WRT regulation of harmful recreational foods.

2) Those figures are worldwide, not just for Mexico.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised it's not Coke and Pepsi directly behind the spying, but FEMSA and other bottlers. After all, why would Coke risk its huge brand when the bottlers, who have as much as stake, are Mexican, and are thus better to "influence things over there"

In the US most legislation is already written by the lobbyists themselves.