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Comment by Sebb767 | Hacker News Reader

Well, the other option is that people see sky-high exercise targets (from their POV) and not even get started. Yes, you need exercise, but people can't simply carve out three hours of their day twice a week to go to the gym and if you start with that expectation, most people simply won't. Walking 30 minutes is far more doable and proving that this already gives a benefit is not a bad thing.

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Six hours a week of exercise is sky-high, but 40-60 hours a week of work isn't, right?

In my opinion a lot of people would be served well by holistically thinking about what they're doing here on this planet.

People will get in shape ricky tick as you forbid them health insurance or fat tax them. Humans have no natural predator, no forced adaptations and selections - we must invent such.

The fat people with no health insurance paying alcohol and cigarette tax disprove this absurd claim.

You think people like being unable to control their body?

Being fat is already quite expensive and literally kills you in the long run, plus it makes finding a partner for reproduction arguably a lot harder. Next to all the moral problems your suggestions would bring, it already looks like it doesn't work.

> People will get in shape ricky tick as you forbid them health insurance or fat tax them

Increasing sin taxes (alcohol and cigarettes) and raising insurance rates on those who choose to overindulge on those aren't effective so this wouldn't be either. Forbidding people health insurance because they're not "in shape" just feels wrong and a pathway to eugenics imo

>Forbidding people health insurance because they're not "in shape" just feels wrong and a pathway to eugenics imo

And besides that, in countries where health insurance is to some extent or entirely public, you don't tend to see a rise in rates since health care is considered a kind of right.

It is eugenics. Obesity is degeneracy in the most dictionary non-emotional sense of the word. It has no benefits and should be rooted. In the jungle, people with stomachs too big would never have lived to reproduce or take care of offspring anyway - either by dying of hunger or being killed for their dead weight appetite.

> forbid them health insurance or fat tax them

Yeah, right after we yank insurance for anyone who refuses to get vaccinated. Or is the heavy hand of authoritarianism (and the sneakier one of eugenics) only welcome when it falls on Other People?

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