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Comment by gregkerzhner | Hacker News Reader

Annually? Everything sounds high when you say it annually!

Looking at the numbers on a smaller scale, if you don't count the unlimited wine, the monthly quota works out to be about 2.2 drinks / night - about 1.5 shouts of liquor and less than 1 light beer a night.

Thats a pretty resonable amount of alcohol to consume - just slightly higher than the 14 drinks / week maximum that many health authorities recommend.

How would you feel if the government regulated how much sugar or salt you can eat, how many hours of video games you can play, or maybe even forced you to exercise 400 hours (per year)?

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> How would you feel if the government regulated how much sugar or salt you can eat, how many hours of video games you can play, or maybe even forced you to exercise (400 hours / year)?

That's actually an interesting idea... Not saying I'd recommend it, but I'd be interested in how this affects a population at a large scale.

Requiring physical activity might lead to population demand for parks, more social interaction, less isolationism, less conflict. And I've had times where a hard limit on video games would've been nice. Incentivizing a society to not fall to their vices doesn't sound too bad.

Two per day is not quite what the US government recommends:

Adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink or to drink in moderation by limiting intake to 2 drinks or less in a day for men and 1 drink or less in a day for women, when alcohol is consumed. Drinking less is better for health than drinking more.

2/day is a recommended upper bound, applied on days where alcohol is consumed. Not the same as "you can drink 2/day year -round without consequence."

> How would you feel if the government regulated how much sugar or salt you can eat,

One reason this would be bad is there is actually very little evidence that salt is bad for you. It's entirely possible most people don't get enough salt.

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