I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use.
This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets.
BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If I were younger I might consider moving there for permanent work.
Which is the case in many countries including mine. When they enacted the law I was still a youngster driving his motorcycle, constantly speeding and doing those things people do in their 20s. I hated that law, then a few accidents and fractures later I realized that the "stupid" law probably saved my parents from the horror of outliving me. I'm also for 100% freedom of choice but it must not impact others and must be accompanied by 100% information about the consequences. Back to the topic, if I drink shitty sugary drinks for years becoming fat and one day I get a fatal stroke, that's an error that can't be undone, so I'm all for limitation of freedom in this and similar cases.
My dad (who also was a motorcyclist) when giving me the bike told me that the helmet and gloves were the keys to start the engine:
"no helmet, no gloves, you cannot start the bike." <- and that last character was definitely a full stop or period.
A lot of friends didn't have the same imprimatur, and since it was not compulsory, rode happily their bikes without protections, and - even if I always wore the helmet according to the recommendation - I thought several times how futile it was, expecially for short rides/in the city until unfortunately a friend, just turned 19, died in a "stupid" accident, at no more than 30 km/h (he forgot the side stand down and pivoted on it, hitting a curb wiith his head).
One of my motorcycle instructors told me “motorbikes are insanely dangerous. They are essentially crotch rockets. Not wearing helmets is a deathwish and I’m pretty sure i’ll outlive you if you ignore the safety. Think about helmets and guards as those extra Mario lives. Your helmet will crack but your brain will be fine.”
Sane advice, i’ve cracked multiple helmets. Brain is doing fine.
Just bought a new bike to commute to new job (starting on a 125 and working my way up since not been on a bike for 20 odd years) and while a helmet was thrown in it'll be the first upgrade after proper jacket/pants.
I still don't get why it's even a debate, I've cracked two bicycle helmets from accidents that weren't my faults in impacts that without them would have been vastly worse.
Maybe this is a petty, pointless distinction, but I think they're quite different. Singapore banned the ads, not the actual consumption. Not wearing a helmet chiefly harms yourself, and it's hard to argue that it's immoral. Encouraging others not to wear a helmet, though... that seems pretty objectionable, just like ads for tobacco etc.
(Of course there are plenty of caveats needed to avoid a slippery slope, like drawing a distinction between advertisements and opinion pieces saying "helmets are bad".)
I think it's a very important distinction, and well made by you.
Ultimately if the state chooses to provide such services, then it must accept the costs that come along with it.
As healthcare becomes increasingly socialized, personal unhealthy choices become an attack on society at large.
Why wouldn't we ban sugary drinks altogether? Motorcycle riding even with a helmet? Maybe get rid of pasta. It's not clear to me where we should stop, if medical costs to society are a valid justification for reducing personal freedom...
So I don’t see any risk at all of sugary drinks going the way of schedule 1 drugs (which, themselves, are also experiencing international wave of decriminalization). Is it impossible? No; but that’s no reason to fear de-advertising as a step towards a ban.
Bhutan, and the Holy See, not that the latter counts for much besides PR.
“Smoking areas are permitted in non-public areas of hotels (i.e., smoking floors or smoking rooms) at the discretion of the patron.”
The Holy See banned selling tobacco, but not smoking it. Considering the countries size it had minimal impact. The odd situation was prior to this it had much lower prices so people where buying them inside the Vatican for others. Which created something of a moral hazard.
That's the point. Change happens either through a revolution or a "slippery slope". You can call it a fallacy all you want, but think about how successful political change happens. Almost every instance starts small and keeps pushing the boundaries until the political change has happened. This is how you change people's values, so calling it a fallacy as though that's supposed to invalidate it isn't enough.
>And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned.
It has just been made exceedingly expensive, just like alcohol. To the degree that the vast majority of the cost is in taxes.
Furthermore, this is a long process. Just because they haven't been banned yet doesn't mean that it's not going to happen in the future.
>And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned.
Bhutan and Turkmenistan have banned the sale of tobacco. The aims of some countries, such as Finland, is to become tobacco free.
Countries are also doing things such as banning flavorings of tobacco. So would your argument then be that it's not a slippery slope, because they aren't actually going to ban sugary drinks, they'll just ban sugary drinks with flavorings?
... so you made a conclusion that political change happened because of small changes? That conclusion is incorrect. The change happened because of underlying need for that change. In case of smoking, because smokers are much more likely to die from cancer.
In case of sugary drinks, the need to change is not as strong. That is why restricting advertising is sufficient. Well, may be they will tax sugary products, but banning sugary products will NOT happen.
In any case, whether we need to do the next step or not -- we will decide based on analysis of previous step. That decision is much more likely to be correct if we do small steps, instead of allowing ourselves only do big changes.
But that's not true. We're talking about most cases of political change. A lot of it doesn't happen because it needs to happen, a lot of political change happens because it's beneficial (profitable?) for someone for it to happen. Do you really think that companies selling juice are unhappy with "sugary drinks" being demonized? Of course they aren't, because those sugary drinks are their competition. If society cared about the health impact of sugary drinks then juices would be right there next to soda on the chopping block, because they have the same sugar in the same amounts in the juice as the soda does. Yet essentially all of the bans on sugary drinks conveniently don't affect juice at all. The only thing juice has over soda is that it might contain vitamins. That's it. In every other aspect, even minimally processed juice (just fresh pressed fruit into juice), is as bad as soda.
When somebody tells me that this whole thing is for our benefit and that we make decisions based on analysis, then I don't believe them, because the decisions that have been made clearly aren't based on fair analysis. The decisions that have been made are clearly benefiting some people over others and crusaders carry out their will. Then decades later they will complain about how they were lied to.
>Well, may be they will tax sugary products, but banning sugary products will NOT happen.
MAYBE? This is already reality in a lot of places. That ship has already sailed years ago.
Of course they're not going to straight up ban sugary drinks, because that is literally impossible. What they can do and what they actually do, is target certain types of "undesirable" goods/vices to pick winners and losers in business.
That’s not really accurate: “No soda or juice to be offered with kids meals in California under new law authored by Central Coast senator”
Restaurants will still be able to serve soda or juice with kids meals on request, but those sweetened drinks can no longer be advertised, or listed, as part of any combo meal intended for children.
even though the apple juice contains no added sugar, it would be banned as a standard choice starting in 2019.
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2018/10/06/stc-l-nikidsmea...
Law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Cigarette commercials have been banned in the USA since 1969[1], but smoking is still allowed. So I cannot agree with your concerns. The advertising ban and taxation of unhealthy products that impose externalities on society have proved far more effective than outright bans.
> If this doesn't alarm you yet, then will you be alarmed once they start banning ads for meat?
No. I'd even welcome that. The same applies to sugar, alcohol, marijuana and salt: Don't ban them, tax them and maybe restrict advertising for them.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080305012949/http://tobaccodoc...
I'm just wondering, are you in favor of such schemes that would target things you like and enjoy too? Say, computer use. Extended computer use is harmful to people's health, so we should levy a tax on it.
Don’t forget we’re currently taxing income at obscene levels, in absolute terms. It means we disincentivise people from working, which is absolutely wild, considering. If you could start with a clean slate and tax anything, what would you choose? Sin taxes or income taxes?
Government revenue is fungible, and the more income from other sources, the less is needed from income. Until we have income tax (at least lowest bracket) down to 0%, I say tax the hell out of everything actually unwanted.
(Signed: a meat eater who would gladly pay meat tax)
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, or a good thing, it's just different. There are a number of ideas they've successfully implemented there that would never fly in other countries - ethnic housing quotas, for instance. It undoubtedly works in reducing residential segregation, but I don't know if it's worth the cost in not letting people live where they want.
It's a useful distinction because they've really banned some other things, and they're much more serious about those.
There are a whole bunch of materials in the natural world that we just assume are safe because they've been around 'forever'. If you're going to use science as your standard for bans, there are billions of dollars of tests to do.
There's some dark math to be done on the benefit of a human life vs the cost of saving it. Maybe ten guys drinking infinite soda are keeping 100 at work in soda companies, providing for their families.
I think we should pay for the consequences of our own choices, and agree the government is terrible at deciding what's unhealthy.
What follows is usually not bans but taxes. As an example, Sweden uses a rather significant tobacco tax helps to offset the increased healthcare costs. Same for alcohol and now they are considering the same strategy for sugary drinks and sweets.
Once culture has change and almost no one buys it anymore, and the cost makes the product completely uninterested for new customers, then politicians can start to discuss bans of the product itself.
There are signs that demand for sugary drinks are on the decline naturally e.g. demand for sparking water has increased as people look for alternatives to drinking a coke. And there was a recent article on how juice consumption has dropped to new lows...
For this specific case, or in general? Because there are certainly externalities that are larger than the internalized cost of a good.
Does it really seem like someone violating your choices because you aren't being fed certain advertisements? I haven't heard of anyone complaining that they never see ads for cigarettes anymore.
The only real question to me is which will be banned 'for the good of society' first: sugar, or meat? Meat has the extra argument going around of having an impact on the climate, and some studies say it can be bad for health. Sugar of course is bad for health in large quantities.
> cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large
It sounds to me the slippery slope has already started? Hate taxes on cigarettes are a thing everywhere, some places have a sugar tax already. It's not banned, but it is controlled already.
At this moment, there are more countries that subsidize them than countries that ban them or tax them extra.
So my tax money first goes to allow people eat more meat and sugar, and then to pay their medical expenses caused by excessive meat and sugar consumption.
Those impact society as well, and my medicinal expenses are higher when they get hurt.
> The cost burden from diabetes, including medical expenses and productivity loss, is expected to rise from beyond $940 million in 2014 to $1.8 billion in 2050. The prevalence of diabetes among Singapore residents (Singapore citizens and permanent residents) has increased over the decade. [...] Table 2 shows that even after accounting for Singapore's ageing population, the prevalence of diabetes in Singapore (10.5 percent) is higher than the world's average (8.8 percent). Rising obesity is also a significant contributor to the rise in diabetes prevalence. [1]
> Diabetes is a serious health concern in Singapore. One in three Singaporeans is at risk of developing diabetes in their lifetime. [...] The Ministry of Health (MOH) launched a War on Diabetes (WoD) in 2016, in response to the significant health and societal burden posed by diabetes, and established the national Diabetes Prevention and Care Taskforce (“Taskforce”) to spearhead a whole-of-nation initiative to tackle diabetes. [2]
References:
[1] https://www.healthhub.sg/a-z/diseases-and-conditions/626/dia...
[2] https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/B...
This is not comparable. We're not talking about banning sugary drink, but banning brainwashing people (including kids) to make them consume them.
Expected payoff = Probability * Impact.
Extreme activities have a low probability of resulting in anything bad (especially with the gear and protocol we have today), but the impact can be high when it happens -- though if we take the summation across the population the overall impact is low because only a small sliver of society will participate.
Sugar consumption has medium probability of leading to poorer health outcomes, and impact is also medium, but I suspect the overall payoff (or harm in this case) is much higher when summed across the population.
So yes, from a purely rational perspective, we should try to stop people from doing things that harm the system as a whole.
If they want to do things that harm themselves at a localized level (with no 2nd or 3rd order effects -- though this is rare), then on balance policies should allow them to.
The bleedin' obvious answer is where the benefits outweight the cost. Benefit obviously extends further than 'can kill with x% probability'.
This is a useless post, try answering the question, or giving a framework within which it can be answered, instead of asking it.
So from this you talk about banning them, right? Except you ban everything because everything has a risk, which is something no-one would accept. Alternative is you try and answer the question instead of asking it.
A utilitarian viewpoint.
A 'You-can-{smoke/drink/parachute/motorrace}-if-you-have-enough-money-to-cover-your-own-hospital-costs' approach.
An attempt to quantify where the line should be drawn, which is what I was getting at.
Or not ban them at all, as some people will propose, which certainly has some merit.
Hand over that decision to the government (which seems to be happening anyway) and wash your hands of it as an individual - the conformist approach.
And doubtless others.
Don't ask obvious questions, questions are easy, and this one is trivial to ask. Try to answer them instead.
Do you mean an example of being very far on the safety side, sacrificing freedom?
They should be heavily regulated, with minimum information, maximum frequency, truth requirements, format restrictions, elimination of confusing language, and anything else that becomes a problem. I'm all for allowing ads and their platforms, but there is no way they can be free.
This seems a bit extreme, but neither would I describe it as a utopia. Life is great if you're rich, and noticeably better than most of neighbors if you're not, but there's an awful lot of pressure on all levels of the pyramid except maybe the very top.
The problem with this has nothing to do with the freedoms of sugary drink companies, but rather with thinking that controlling EVERYBODY will solve the problem. You can ban all the ads, fat people will still find their soda fix somehow. Protecting children is one thing, but banning them across everything is really more of an exercise of authority, rather than a useful policy.
1) there is no memetic equivalent of “sugar => calories => fat and ugly”, indeed rather the opposite because of its association with the Atkins diet.
2) farming is a job everyone seems to support even though it’s a small part of the economy, and meat is a cash crop (or am I misremembering?)
> The state knows best.
All true except that. We’ve all got our own examples, when I was at school the (UK) government’s poster-child for “drugs are bad” was a girl who actually overdosed on H2O, yet all the people who I should’ve been able to trust to be honest were blaming MDMA.
It was a jab at authoritarianism. I think that people should be able to consume what they want. I'm okay with warnings and public health campaigns to a degree, but heavy sin taxes go too far. If these sin taxes were there to actually offset the cost to society, then I might consider them, but they almost never do that. At first, maybe, but eventually every sin tax just turns into additional funding for the government.
Cheap sugary food, like cigarettes, get most of their buyers from addicts getting dopamine hits from the ads. This is specially bad because of the unhealthiness of this food, and was definitely the right choice.
The entire grift of the last few decades has been “externalize costs of our mess on the next generation for massive profit.” That’s unheard of. Until the last ~100 years the previous generations messes removed themselves in decades. Ours is such that it may wipe out the species
I am very OK with the masses having direct control over how the global trade system we collectively build is allowed to impact the one planet humans can survive on.
All that production and disposal of aluminum & plastic to carry sugar water one can make at home with simple syrup and flavoring.
At some point we have to force ourselves to look beyond the emotional masturbation we’ve all been subjected to by TV & parents if society is going to move along.
That’s exactly how’s it’s moved along in the past. A true free market of ideas demands it.
We need to get nation states on board and in order to do that must tell aristocrats that the future has no place for them.
Wow, honestly you didn't stay long enough if this was your lasting impression.