Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zak | Hacker News Reader

“Can anyone seriously say that Vanuatu doesn’t have the right to exercise its health sovereignty in every way possible to protect its population from an epidemic of that scale?”

I would usually say exactly that. It's up to individuals to make decisions about what they do and do not eat and live with the consequences. Foods that accurately state their nutritional content and contain only ingredients that can be safely eaten in moderation should not be banned under ordinary circumstances because overconsumption is unhealthy. The rate of increase in obesity-related disease, however is astounding and arguably justifies extraordinary measures.

View on HN

I think it has to be filed under, "The constitution is not a suicide pact." No social construct, no system of laws and rights trumps the need to be alive to enjoy them. Given the scale of the problem, they were looking at a situation with an outcome grimmer than most wars. I agree with you, this is extraordinary and requires consummate measures.

I lend a lot of weight to the libertarian non-aggression principle, but I think it's generally a mistake to think about social issues in absolute terms. I really don't like coercion, but the NAP, also shouldn't be a suicide pact.

If you're willing to set the NAP aside for junk food, your bar for setting aside the NAP is likely pretty low. But my own perspective is that of a person who scrutinizes what I put in my body. I've never felt that I needed someone else to make that decision for me.

Under normal circumstances, I'm not. In a public health emergency, I might be.

If someone released smallpox in NYC, it would be reasonable to quarantine the state (at the very least). There would be no argument about the government taking action to prevent the spread of virtually any pathogen, even the more pedestrian like multiple drug resistant TB.

People loose sight of reality when they think pure choice is involved though. Food, smoking, drugs... a lot of things only make sense if you're particularly educated, have friends/family struggling with something, are particularly empathetic, or have experienced them.

It's up to individuals to make decisions about what they do and do not eat and live with the consequences.

True, but when that level of individual freedom has negative repercussions on the community, the government has to step in. Else the society will cease to be.

Imagine if our (USA) govt allowed us to buy gas (fuel, petrol) with lead in it, ignoring the long term impact of lead in the environment.

Individual freedom is not absolute. An one should not be allowed to engage in habits that harms the community in that fashion. Yes, there are things we can't avoid, but when necessary, the govt has the powers to regulate individual habits.

Unfortunately for these countries, membership in the WTO does not serve their interests in this regard.

There's a significant distinction between polluting the environment, which harms other people directly and making unhealthy decisions in one's own life, which has only indirect effects on others.

There's the scale of economics. If only few people buy healthy food, supermarkets have no incentive to offer it at all. Even if they offer healthy food, the price is higher because they can't buy in bulk or else they waste much of it.

> If only few people buy healthy food, supermarkets have no incentive to offer it at all.

Then how come most grocery stores have healthy food?

If it truly was a minority group that wanted to eat healthy food, what right do they have to force the majority to buy what they want to make it more economical? Although the premise is flawed, because the real reason 'healthy food' is expensive is because the foods considered healthy inherently cannot use many methods that increase yield like pesticides. And then some go so far as to claim GMO's are unhealthy/cannot be organic, further driving up the prices of foods that get to wear the healthy food labels. Increasing demand for healthy food would make it more expensive, certainly in the short term.

> Then how come most grocery stores have healthy food?

All over America there are many areas known as "food deserts" because stores do not stock fresh foods and produce. In those areas the only food readily available is shelf-stable, highly processed, very high caloric density junk food.

Now think about being on a Pacific island where leaving your food desert is not just a matter of a long drive or bus ride down the road to a different community.

There's not strong evidence that food deserts lead to an increase in obesity.

A fat slob overflowing the seat next to me on an aeroplane has a direct effect on me and I would be perfectly happy for measures to be taken to mitigate it.

Or we could get rid of anti-discrimination laws and allow airlines to charge based on weight/have assigned seating types. But I imagine that wouldn't go over very well with the people who want to ban junk food.

Most airlines in the US have an official policy allowing them to require passengers who cannot sit in a single seat with the armrests lowered and seatbelt fastened to pay for an additional seat. They usually try to employ alternatives, but on full flights, people do get bumped if they don't fit in one seat.

I'd be fine with both. Where's the conflict?

Huge difference. One allows free association, whereas the other involves using government force to take away freedom.

Those are arbitrary "principles" that only make sense in the context of a given arbitrary political ideology.

I want to live in a country where it's easy to be lean, so that as many people as possible are lean, because there are no downsides to being lean, and infinite upsides.

Paying in relation to what you use seems fair. Sending small packages costs less than big heavy packages. What's a few bucks' difference anyway?

There is no such anti-discrimination law in the USA. Obese people aren't a protected class.

Unfortunately, it has been pursued as though it is, which is a natural progression of the 'slippery slope' argument. For example, there was the relatively high profile Hooters weight discrimination lawsuit which was allowed to proceed and settled for an undisclosed amount, even though there was no legal basis of wrongdoing.

In countries that provide publicly-funded healthcare you are arguably directly effecting other people's lives by the cost of the medical treatments you'll end up needing if you are obese - these treatments will be funded out of the taxpayer's pocket, when that money could be going to better schooling, infrastructure, or some other use.

This is also true with privately-funded health care based on insurance with shared risk pools that don't take behavioral risk factors in to account. It's the very definition of a moral hazard.

But if you accept that argument, where is the line? What personal decisions, if any shouldn't be subject to regulation?

True, but I was arguing that poor personal health choices are not only an indirect negative effect on other people, which is what you said. And I neglected obvious direct negative effects it can have on people close to you, such as children who now have to care for a parent who loses their leg due to diabetes, or who don't get to experience play because of a parent who's so obese and unfit that they can barely walk around without wheezing.

Edit: I can't give you a list of personal decisions that I think should be subject to regulation, because it's not as simple as that, and there's a debate to be had for each one, and that will depend on circumstances and ideology. But I do think that in this case it's reasonable, since the cost of treating diabetes patients is crippling a small, poor country.

By that definition there is literally nothing the government can't, and arguably shouldn't, regulate. That won't end badly I'm sure!

That seems like the logical conclusion. Where's the dividing line between what the government should and shouldn't regulate, if they judge it to be in the best interests of the people (and the government's will being theoretically derived from the collective will of the governed)?

The government's will being theoretically derived from the collective will of the governed should not be used as a blanket appeal to authority. The people probably do not like all of their private communication being spied on by the NSA. That we've not yet elected officials and given them the power to stop such spying doesn't mean it's acceptable.

Moving on, the people should by default be free to make decisions that are not in their best interests. Just because you can't control yourself from eating candy doesn't mean my Right to Candy should be taken away as well.

Taking away liberty must be very, very carefully considered. What is the harm being prevented? What price is being paid to remove it? Seatbelts are a low cost to implement, a low cost to wear, and offer a high return of value in lives and health saved.

Banning imported food at tourist established is a much less obvious win. If I can't indulge in a sugary treat on vacation then when can I? That sounds like something the local agriculture industry is lobbying for more than anything. Who benefits the most from this change? Follow the money and I bet (heh) you'll find the big winners aren't the obese population.

> Taking away liberty must be very, very carefully considered

I agree, and it's possible that this move has been very carefully considered. The obesity levels are catastrophic, and the trend has been clear for years (maybe decades), so it's quite possible that this move has been considered for some time before finally being implemented. There's no reason not to give the benefit of the doubt here.

I'd also add that any move to take away liberty needs to be reviewed at some point. Otherwise the tendency is for more and more regulation. Then typically the only way things get changed is by major lobbying efforts, which can takes years or decades, or when a negative effect on society has become such a problem that it's no longer possible to ignore it. In the meantime, a lot of people have had their lives impacted.

> Banning imported food at tourist established is a much less obvious win

Yeah, though maybe that part is related to the "effort to promote local agriculture" that's also mentioned in the article. It still seems like something that would have little actual impact - it's hard to believe that tourists are coming and only eating junk food, and not any food that's locally grown. No-one goes on holiday and eats only Pringles.

Or maybe it's about perceived fairness - staff at tourist resorts have access to foods that the rest of the population can't buy, so they remove that access to put everyone on the same level.

That could be said about anything.

Likewise, if an individual makes a choice that causes his or her taxable income to decrease, he or she has arguably (by the same argument) directly effected other people's lives by reducing the tax revenue of the country.

Ought governments impose some incentive for individuals to earn as much taxable income as possible?

They already provide such an incentive by enforcing private property laws.

I was referring to a legal punishment for failing to maximize one's taxable income.

So was the parent comment. They could just help themselves to whatever they needed if the law didn't stop them. Poverty is legally enforced on people that don't earn enough.

We could certainly have arguments about the allocation of natural resources and the merits of propertarian vs. antipropertarian societies, and I've done and enjoyed a lot of that, but it's out of the scope of this particular argument. In this context, the fact that government will punish a person for taking what is considered the property of another person is not in the same class as a fine or imprisonment for choosing to reduce one's taxable income.

> Imagine if our (USA) govt allowed us to buy gas (fuel, petrol) with lead in it, ignoring the long term impact of lead in the environment.

Lead has a quantifiable effect that directly infringes on the rights of others -- eating junk food does not. You cannot say that my choice to get fat infringes on anyone's freedoms more than you are infringing on my freedom by preventing me from eating what I choose. It's not a characteristic of a free society. Pure democracy is mob rule. We might as well ban gay marriage, too, because there are more people who don't like it and claim it infringes on their rights than there are people who want to get gay marriages (see how that can be twisted the other way?)

Lead has a quantifiable effect that directly infringes on the rights of others -- eating junk food does not.

Well, if you have to receive public assistance because of your bad eating habits, then that's a "quantifiable effect" on my pocket book.

Under Obamacare, their increased health care costs also costs everyone (in part because Obamacare is the worst of all worlds -- it would be difficult to intentionally design something worse).

I agree with both comments, but those problems have other solutions.

I always wonder how a group of people can come together and made a bad decision.

I mean, if one person makes a bad decision, you can say, OK, we all make mistakes, but a room full of smart? people...

As I understand it: Good ideas come from individuals. Good sorting of ideas comes from a crowd. Trying to get a crowd to make good ideas is apparently not very functional.

As someone who was uninsurable before Obamacare, no, it is not the worst of all worlds.

The worst of all worlds is when an otherwise-healthy 37 year old can't buy insurance because he had his gallbladder out in his early 20s. Which is what we had before obamacare.

I worked in insurance for over five years. "Universal insurance" is the worst possible way to try to make sure all citizens have access to medical care. There are other proven systems that are vastly better.

Wow I just had a thought. Imagine if the WTO had been around when countries started banning the sale of Tetraethyllead.

The TEL industry fought very hard against such action first by attacking the science, then fighting in courts and political arenas. Imagine if they had access to a super-national court explicitly created as a way for large corporations to punish governments for creating laws that are bad for their business?

> True, but when that level of individual freedom has negative repercussions on the community, the government has to step in

Good, then I guess the government should tell everyone to exercise too? I mean, people not exercising has negative repercussions on the community, so the government has to step in. Mandatory exercise for everyone.

I guess the same logic applies to limiting gaming/Internet time too.

Mandatory exercise is certainly consistent with banning unhealthy food, but I wonder why (presumably) very few people who advocate the latter would advocate the former. My guess is that the enforcement mechanisms feel different on the surface, because forced exercise requires physical force (or fines, etc.) on each individual, while banning junk food requires force on manufacturers and/or retailers (I'm not sure the distinction is very clear, since these entities are comprised of individuals). Yet that doesn't feel like a sufficient explanation, since many people advocate the prohibition of certain drugs, which does require the use of force against individuals.

If it's up to individuals, can they not also choose to outsource that job to a governmental agency to establish sensible defaults on their behalf? Note I'm not proposing to prevent anyone who really wants to purchase shitty food from purchasing it, but I do think the costs should reflect the externalities.

Well, that's how I feel about the Drug War :)

But I do wonder what the bloody hell is going on in Vanuatu! Maybe Polynesian populations have metabolic adaptations that don't work with high-sugar diets? It does seem so:[0]

> Pacific people (especially Micronesian and Polynesian) have some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the world that largely developed since the introduction of western culture and diet. Recent studies suggest that much of the risk relates to the excessive intake of sugar (sucrose) and carbohydrates, leading to a type of fat storage syndrome (metabolic syndrome). Here we discuss some of the environmental, genetic and epigenetic reasons why this group might be especially prone to developing obesity and diabetes compared to other ethnic groups. Indirect evidence suggests that the higher endogenous uric acid levels in the Polynesian-Micronesian population may represent a predisposing factor for the development of obesity and diabetes in the context of Western diets and lifestyles. Pacific people may be an ideal group to study the role of “thrifty genes” in the pathogenesis of the current obesity epidemic.

That's arguably a good enough reason to ban junk food imports.

0) http://www.fizz.org.nz/sites/fizz.org.nz/files/2%20Fat%20Sto...

The headline seems a bit sensational given that the actual ban applies to government and tourist establishments. Seems reasonable that any government should be able to setup standards that have only the jurisdiction to apply to their own entities and/or functions. This doesn't prevent individuals from consuming things as they see fit.

" planning to outlaw all imported food at government functions and tourist establishments across the province’s 13 inhabited islands. "

Additionally most of these imported items inherently cost more than local foods in a lot of places anyways so it's not completely out of the norm.

You're conflating two different things: 1) whether a sovereign nation has health under its own jurisdiction, and 2) whether a sovereign nation should ban food, given it has the power.

I think there's a third issue, or at least two pieces to your number 2.

Whether a government should have the mechanism of banning foods that are safe to eat in moderation available to it is a different question than whether it would be good policy given that mechanism.

If the government should be in the habit of regulating nutrition, banning foods with exceptionally poor nutritional qualities is probably good policy, but is that the kind of thing governments should be regulating at all? I would argue that it usually isn't and should only be permitted in exceptional circumstances.

In the same way that vehicles can move thousands of times faster than humans, and metal can be thousands of times stronger than human flesh, is there any good reason to think that marketing manipulation, or market forces, can't be (or become) thousands of times stronger than human willpower?

McDonalds is actively making people less healthy, and profiting from it. Why should they not be banned? Where's the downside to banning them?

The downside is that you can't get cheap tasty meals from McDonalds.

On the one hand, everybody would end up healthier, smarter, more productive, more attractive, richer (less healthcare spending), more psychologically healthy (the gut is the 2nd brain, bad diet means bad emotional health), will live longer, have their friends and family live longer.

On the other hand, people will be unable to satisfy their sugar addiction (sugar is completely unnecessary from a nutritional point of view, and harmful even at low doses).

Nothing comes "free". If there is an alcoholic in the family, that lowers the whole family's nurturance level, degrades the marriage, increases the probability of divorce, and undeniably hurts the kids. Sugar addiction is no different from alcohol addiction. The addict isn't the only one who suffers. Similarly, if your social circle is fat, you're more likely to be, and stay, fat. Getting rid of junk food has no downsides, unlike getting rid of alcohol. Junk food is harmful even in low doses, whereas alcohol isn't in moderation.

These two things could both be true:

1) Banning certain restaurants would have a positive net effect on society.

2) Any government with the authority to ban restaurants would choose which restaurants to ban incorrectly, due to honest mistakes, influence from lobbying, or other reasons, and the end net effect on society would be negative.

Ok.

1. I support ban/taxes on junk food.

2. Government doesn't do it, does something else.

3. I' still not satisfied, and still support ban/taxes on junk food.

I have opinions. So do you. What the government does is irrelevant to what I believe.

I don't get it. Would you rather the government have the authority to ban restaurants, or not? "The government only banning the restaurants that ought to be banned" isn't an option, unless you have good ideas on how to structure government.

The opinion we're discussing is whether governments ought to be able to ban restaurants, so what governments do is absolutely relevant.

Those distinctions are contrived and arbitrary.

I'm saying the government should ban it. You're arguing the government should, but shouldn't be able to. That only makes sense if you adhere to a set of arbitrary political "principles", which I view as nonsense. Government needs to solve problems, not obey imaginary rules.

All rules should be quantitative. Not qualitative.

Qualitative: We are banning "junk food". (What constitutes junk food?)

Quantitative: We are banning any foods where the sugar content exceeds 1% (Where this number can become increasingly stricter) of the food's mass. eg. Coke is 9% sugar[0]; 39 / (355 + 39 + 39 + .045) = 0.09.

[0] http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/coca-cola-12oz-can...

Of course, that's a somewhat better idea, but I was specifically responding to a claim that banning McDonald's would have a positive effect on society.

Your idea is inevitably going to have problems as well. What about selling table sugar itself? What about fruit, which can also be around 10% sugar? What about desserts and confectionery? Are we really wanting the government to ban those completely?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com