Further to the discussion on mortality demographics, I present my arguments for why all countries that care about the health of their people should introduce a fat tax.
In my previous topic on these matters, You Live How You Eat, we noticed that culinary cultures which consume a low-fat diet have tend to have dramatically lower mortality rates from CVD’s and degenerative diseases than those who indulge in a high-fat, high-sodium ‘civilized’ diet. As such it is a good idea to encourage consumption to shift from high-fat to low-fat foods.
How will the fat tax work?
Research should be conducted so as to ascertain the optimal levels of taxation to maximize positive outcomes, and the tax will probably be introduced gradually. But I’ll give a rough idea of how the tax will work below.
Calculate the caloric fat content of a particular food (take the number of grams of fat per 100g and multiply by 9; divide this by calories per 100g to get %). Anything under 20% will remain untaxed. This includes vegetables, fruits, fish and some white meats (skinless chicken breast). Then a flat tax of 25% for 20-30% fat (this will account for leaner steaks), 100% for 30-50% fat (traditional red meats) and 200% for 50+% fat (fast food hamburgers, vegetable oils, etc).
Sodium will be taxed too. The RDA for sodium is 2g, or 4g of salt (max 3g/6g). Say, anything with more than 0.5g of sodium / 100g will be flat taxed at 50%.
A few foods, while OK in fat, are unacceptably high in cholesterol. The big one are eggs – one egg yolk = 2 days of RDA of cholesterol. Tax them at 200%. While some seafoods like prawns or oysters are medium-high in cholesterol, they have other health benefits, so leave them untaxed. I will not tax sugar because a) cakes, puddings, etc will already be taxed for their fat content and b) a lot of fruit actually contain a rather high % of sugar, but it is of a healthy kind. Fruit shouldn’t be taxed.
Why don’t you just stick with public information campaigns?
It is of course vital to propagandize the benefits for personal health of a low-fat diet on prime-time TV, radio, Internet and other media outlets. It goes without saying that advertising unhealthy foods will be a no-no, along with alcoholic drinks and tobacco. On the other hand, people do respond to price signals and meat and sweets costing less than fruit does not make a good contribution to public health. The fact is that countries with some specific diets (e.g. Okinawans have a life expectancy of 85 years) have health results that are objectively better than countries with other diets (e.g. Americans, Danes have a life expectancy of 77-78 years). So surely it would make sense to tax and subsidize in a way that shifts consumption patterns to the ones seen in countries/regions with the better health results?
Sounds radical! People won’t stand for it!
Radical problems (a million preventable deaths from heart disease per year in the US alone, etc) require radical solutions. The hoi polloi will be treated to an intense national information campaign informing them of the benefits of the low fat diet. Critics will suffer accidents. (j/k)
Seriously though. The elite has a vested interest in improving the health of the workforce. Firstly, there will appear articles in newspapers and programs on TV exploring the links between nutrition and health. Advocacy groups for healthy dieting will appear and momentum for legislative changes will build up. Eventually, the government will bow to the public interest and gradually step up the fat tax.
It will hurt the agricultural sector and the food industry!
In industrialized countries, agriculture tends to account for a low % of GDP (7.9% in Portugal, 4.6% in Russia, 2.0% in France, o.9% in the US), and accounts for a correspondingly low % of those countries’ workforces (10.0% in Portugal, 10.8% in Russia, 4.1% in France, 0.4% in the US). So a dip in these figures will not affect the national economy much. In any case producers can adjust to it if plenty of advance warning is given and changes are introduced gradually.
Same goes for the food industry. The demand for food will remain; they will just have to try to adjust to the new order of things. Maybe it will be too hard for companies like McDonalds or KFC, but who cares about them anyway?
Is it ethical to force me to pay for eating what I want to?
Well, for some products you can pay very dearly indeed for consuming them (e.g. illegal drugs), i.e. with jail time. Secondly, according to this fat tax policy paper, in France and some US states unhealthy snack foods like chips and soft drinks are already subject to taxes.
Incidentally, however, I have always supported legalizing all drugs, for the usual health, monetary and battling hypocrisy reasons, although they would remain heavily taxed (except red wine and to a lesser extent white wine, the consumption of which will be encouraged in moderate daily doses). On the topic of which, fat is actually also a drug – it is both debilitating and makes you irritable and mentally sluggish if consumed to excess in one session.
Finally, consumption of high fat foods will not, of course, be banned outright. You can still stuff yourself with butter and high-fat cheese if you really want to, you’ll just have to pay more for it.
How will it change consumption patterns?
Today, there is an illogical situation in which rich cakes sometimes cost substantially less than an equivalent weight in fruit or salad, in supermarkets or in catering. The fat tax will reverse this state of affairs by encouraging people to switch consumption patterns to a lower fat, healthier diet. After all, elasticity is high within foods.
Currently, even people who would otherwise want to eat healthily are discouraged from doing so because of higher prices because this is a niche market squeezed by the mainstream food market which is high in fat and sodium.
But it’s regressive, you capitalist scum!
Yes, it will affect the poor more than the rich. However, consider also the fact that it is the poor who suffer most from low-quality diets and the attendant symptons of obesity, heart disease, etc. Money from the fat tax can be used to support subsidies to healthy foods, community sports programs and a system of preventative healthcare, all of which are sorely lacking in Russia and the industrialized West.
A fat tax is a profoundly pro-poor measure.
It’s not radical enough!
I have considered converting the food industry into a totally planned thing, on the Soviet model but focused on the goal of fat reduction. Inefficiencies will invariably develop; but since food production a) constitutes a fairly small portion of GDP, b) the goals of what to increase, what prices to set, are quite clear and c) there aren’t many food products (relative to advanced industrial goods), it is a sound proposal.
Nonetheless, I think the market-based solution (fat tax, but free setting of prices) should first be completely explored and the planned model considered only if the former fails in its objectives (say, reduce by 50%+ annual cases of heart disease mortality, etc, over a decade since its full implementation).
You’re a crazed totalitarian bastard!
Yes, I am. Next.
OK, its good for healthcare, longevity and mortality statistics, etc. But its not an enjoyable diet.
Wrong. I can vouch for that personally.
I have cut out all butter, margarine, vegetable oils (switching to things like balsamic vinegar, salsa and low fat, low sodium tomato sauce and bolognese); cut out jams with any added sugars (there are some preserved with fruit concentrate, which I think is OK); only consume skimmed milk, low-fat cheese; no chocolate or coffee; a glass of red wine per day; only do skinless chicken breast or fish; cut out egg yolks. Of course, I don’t always follow it, but the only exceptions are in social settings where I go to a party or gathering, etc. As long as interruptions are infrequent rather than systematic, all is good.
Chicken and fish can be greatly enhanced by tossing in lemon, peppers, all kinds of spices, etc, and served with rice, pasta, etc. Consult this article for a list of healthy recipes. For instance, you can even make a delicious carrot cake (calories 159, cholesterol 0, fat 0.6g, calories from fat 3%).
The point is that a low fat diet is only a little bit more restrictive than an unrestricted fat diet, if you bother to find/adapt the appropriate recipes, and it is orders of magnitude better for health/wellbeing.
I don’t want strict, state controlled food provisions just for a few more years of life expectancy? Just let me be!
The key point is not increased longevity, which due to the high standards of treatment-based modern medical care, is not going to be much more than 5 years or so. The key point is a much increased healthy life expectancy.
Note how in the UK life expectancy has increased much more rapidly than healthy life expectancy. The main trend in this period? More consumption of fats, especially saturated, in the forms of fast food, which has increased obesity levels significantly over this period.
So the question isn’t whether you’d like a few more years or not, but whether or not you want to spend the last few years of your life incapacitated and hooked up to mediciny machines.
At least so far. If medical progress continues and radical life extension therapies become available by the middle of this century, those few added years could make the difference between death and immortality!
What else would you do?
As I said here, I would expend efforts on eliminating Russia’s alcohol epidemic, try to encourage a shift from spirits to red wine and offer monetary benefits to obese people making an effort to slim down. I would relax controls on gun sales because I think an armed citizenry leads to lower crime rates. I would try to think of some way to encourage calorie restriction amongst the population, but I doubt I’ll succeed.
Too many people both in Russia and in the West pursue sedentary lifestyles. As such, massive state resources will be limited to developing a culture of sport in the population, including but not limited to: advertising, funding and subsidies for sports centers and the people who use them. The Armed Forces can play an important role in this. To cover the whole population, the terms of conscription can be dropped further from 1 year to 6 months (as in Germany), but extended to women (as in Israel), so that the overall size will remain the same.
Related posts:
stalker, I know America’s Emperor had managed to devalue the meaning of word “freedom” to the point of almost complete meaninglessness, but still… Some of us may not like the idea of other people trying to control our eating habits. But the scariest part of your post is the idea of a “perfect nation” – THE GUN-TOTING VEGETARIANS… I mean how creepy is that?!
BTW, every time I see Israeli Army doing the actual shooting, I can never spot any girls pulling the trigger. If that military is split 50/50 genderwise, then what the hell are all those Israeli female-soldiers are doing in those barracks?
To summarize it all, your idea is way too Orwellian and unproductive. All it’ll do is create huge black market for fatty foods, create massive repressive apparatus for “War on Fat”, fill world prisons with fat junkies, and so on. Non-starter, IMHO. Forget about it, man.
1. Nobody is controlling your diet. You can still stuff yourself with whatever you want.
You’ll just have to pay more for it.
In the same way that when fill up gasoline in Europe, you have to pay more than the market would otherwise dictate (so as to take environmental costs into account) or when you smoke weed everywhere but in Holland you pay with risk of fine or even jailtime (which is totally irrational).
2. The problem today is that even people who’d prefer to eat health low-fat foods are restricted from doing so because the market caters for popular preferences, e.g. cakes, burgers, red meat, veg oil, etc.
Actually men in Israel serve 3 years and women 2, IIRC. And presumably the vast majority of professional soldiers as opposed to conscripts are male.
But considering that Russia as of today is not threatened by large-scale war, but this could change in the future, I think it would be wise to retain conscription but extend coverage. Another advantage of going down to 6 months is that it (by definition) solves the dedovschina problem (as everyone will be from the same class).
3. As for the black market, of course an optimal balance has to be struck. Increase prices to the extent that consumption patterns change, but not to the extent that a class of lard barons is created. As with most economics, it is a matter of balance.
4. I agree with you that as of today, however, this project is not realistic, firstly because there are far more pressing problems on which political capital is better spent (alcohol abuse and smoking), secondly, because the rule of law has yet to be truly consolidated. Until these two conditions are met, a fat tax is not very realistic. But I wouldn’t hurry to forget, since I’m convinced that it’s a good idea which will improve many lives.
stalker, you know and I know that nobody is restricted from eating healthy food in a developed market economy. You can buy all the vegetables, beans, fish and skinless chicken you want – and they aren’t prohibitevely expensive. Where are the restrictions? I don’t see any. People like eating junk because it tastes good, that’s all there is to it. And why shouldn’t they? Every pleasurable activity is detrimental to one’s health in the long run, if applied without moderation. Should we tax all the pleasure? In the North consuming fat is also a matter of survival, as low-calorie diet just won’t do. I can appreciate your general concern, but the state should limit itself to propaganda of healthy living, nothing more. Having real sex increases one’s risk of contracting some nasty deseases. That doesn’t mean that a government should tax it, and use the proceeds to distribute free dildos and inflatable dolls.
Oleg, this is a good point in a country without national health services, at the first look at least. In the UK my university pays 10% of my salary to the National Health Services (NHS) without asking my permission to do this. Even so, personally I am supportive of the NHS idea, but why, enjoying a healthy life style myself, I still have to pay that much to cure herds of fatty idiots with their hart attacks and other problems caused by bad eating habits and physical inactivity? This is simply unfair! If one is bound to use communal resource more than average, he should carry bigger burden as well. You are absolutely right Stalker, both for Russia and UK. I certainly do not want others to ride on my back. Americans can eat all what they want once they have not got an NHS. However, even in states those self-indulgent idiots drive costs of private medical insurances above the sky for everyone. Thus, tax collections, if properly implemented, can reduce the load on the righteous people even in states.
How to introduce and implement such a tax is the question. In the UK a good background propaganda was carried out already and it would not be a surprise for me if the Parliament will consider the tax in a near future.
In Israel, ladies are not allowed to take part in combat operations by law. Although, they are issued with personal weapon and do patrolling routinely, e.g. quite visibly on streets of Tel Aviv. In Germany all men should serve, without any exception, though many choose alternative service e.g. in sanitation or other non-popular communal services. Thus, a combination of these approaches looks quite viable and fair.
I think you are a bit unclear with regards to nutrition. I wonder whether you know that the ‘obesity epidemic’ in the US started after the country began to shift to a ‘low-fat’ diet. High-carbohydrate foods – especially with refined carbs – are also linked to health problems. Fats tend to aggravate pre-existing conditions but they do not cause obesity. Adipose tissue is the result of carb calories that are not burned for energy and instead are stored as fat cells. To arbitrarily tax ‘grams of fat’ would most likely lead to people eating more high-carb foods, and thus aggravate the obesity epidemic. There are other ways of imposing a tax like you suggest. For example, you could instead tax foods that are above a certain threshold of calories per gram.
Stalker, you should also reconsider your position on legalization of narcotics. Look at what alcohol does to demographics. Freely available drugs will be ten times worse.
@oleg,
Sex, like gluttony, is very hard to monitor. In any mortality as a result of it is not a very big health problem anywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa.
I’ll repeat, there will be no restrictions. Some foods will be taxed so as to shift consumption patterns to more desirable patterns. In the same way that in civilized countries cigs and alcohol are taxed to shift away consumption from them. Heck, junk foods are already taxed in France and some US states, according to that report I cited.
I disagree with your comment that “nobody is restricted from eating healthy food in a developed market economy”. Perhaps not, but it takes time that some people simply do not have. There are no healthy fast foods.
Take this example. Yes, I found the recipe and know how to bake a 5% caloric fat in a few hours. But it is much easier to take a 60% caloric fat cake from the supermarket shelves in a few seconds. Now if the price of that very high-fat cake is tripled, then there will appear greater demand for low-fat cakes, there’ll appear on supermarket shelves and one can buy them instead of messing around in the kitchen half a day.
(And yes, that low-fat carrot cake was delicious. You don’t need fats to have “luxury”.)
@jesse,
Yes, I am actually aware of this.
But firstly, I should point out the fall in caloric fat consumption has not been that great – going from memory, in the US, from around 45% a generation ago to around 37% today. Furthermore, the portion of that in bad fats like trans or saturated has increased.
I agree that high caloric consumption is detrimental to health, and the continuous increase in standard portions (a trend already made famous in pop culture by the Super Size Me doc) has definitely contributed much to the obesity epidemic.
Your idea of taxing foods “that are above a certain threshold of calories per gram” is a good one and I would think it might not be a bad idea to incorporate it together with the fat tax and sodium tax (along with exercise programs).
(But figuring out how to tax gluttony per se (the modern and worrying propensity to eat more) is a harder question.)
@fedia,
1. IMO, it is hypocritical that alcohol and tobacco, both much more dangerous than, say, weed or LSD, are legal while possession of the latter carries the risk of imprisonment (in jails where you could get raped and infected with HIV to boot).
Let me note that alcohol has a notable effect only in Russia and other countries in the post-Soviet space, which have been inculcated with the supposedly positive values of drinking shot after shot of vodka (or moonshine) for two generations. Even in Finland, known as a nation of hard drinkers, only some 4% of deaths are linked to alcohol (as I’ve written in the article).
2 The key is to regulate sales, slap high taxes on them and conduct regular graphic information campaigns about the dangers of addiction. Today the state gets no revenue from this (although criminal organizations do), spends lots of money on police and jails and is corrupted by the War on Drugs.
3. There is no evidence that I’m aware of that a liberal (Netherlands) as opposed to harsh (US/Russia) attitude to drugs results in greater addiction rates. (If anything Russia’s drug problem is an order of magnitude greater than in Holland.) On the contrary, there will be more of both social and financial resources to treat the addictions that do happen with the money saved by bringing to an end the wars on drugs.
@brother karamazov,
Glad someone agrees.
Although on the issue of the military, my opinion is that no conscript should be involved in combat operations unless under extreme (and today thankfully quite unlikely) circumstances.
Stalker,
I’m becoming a bit worried about you. I personally would prefer to live in a society with a life expectancy of 25 if in return the government would not impose any taxes on my or anybody else’s lifestyle.
Your arguments are based on the idea that the state can determine what is good for people.
I object to that on logical and moral grounds.
I’m too tired to debate this today, but I will take you up on this.
“Further to the discussion on mortality demographics, I present my arguments for why all countries that care about the health of their people should introduce a fat tax.”
Ok, I will put one more comment into place: countries that care about the health of their people should first and foremost make sure that food becomes affordable to everyone, that everybody has as much money as possible at their disposal, and that nobody will die as the result of war.
Secondly, I don’t care about the ‘health’ of anybody, as long as people are free to make their own decisions.
Your proposal makes me very, very angry – because it is so incredibly immoral.
The best way to protect the health of people would be to lock them all up and control their diet by force.
Please explain to me why that would not be a good idea based on a rational that would not in the final analysis show that your suggestion is nonsense.
Sorry.
bro karamazoff, if you resent paying for fat people’s healthcare, then why don’t you just go to the root of the problem and start taxing fat people directly, based on their weight. Weigh people every year and slap them with real “fat tax”, right on the spot. Most of them, BTW, became fat munching on carbs, not on fat. And a lot of skinny people eat plenty of fatty foods. So that would be unfair, wouldn’t it?
Then if we were to continue the “Fairness Debate”, why am I paying for Iraq War? I was, am and will always be against it. Why am I paying for firefighters just as much as people without smoke detectors. Why people without kids paying for public schools? And so on. It’s called “societal solidarity”, that’s why.
@ White Crow
I guess I will jump in here as I feel strongly about this subject. Your logic is not sound. It is a question of degree. We could also preemptively lock up the population to ensure that nobody kills, steals, etc. What stalker is advocating is a reasonable regulation that creates incentives for people to be more healthy. Show me the person who will gorge themselves on McDs every day of their life, and then opt out of medical treatment for coronary heart disease? Will they tell the ambulance to go home? No, they will use the system and overburden it with preventable, chronic diseases, thereby driving up the costs for the rest of us. Unhealthy habits carry enormous negative externalities – did you know that gas consumption is 1 billion more gallons per year than it was in 1960, solely due to America’s increasing weight (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-10-25-gasoline-obesity_x.htm)
A fat tax merely tries to incorporate some of the very real costs imposed on society by unhealthy individuals.
Jesse,
maybe I should add that I am absolutely opposed to state funded health care…..
Stalker,
Goverment policy(taxes or incentives) can change behaviour. However I believes in this case incentives to mantain a healthy lifestyle will work better. Cash payments to maintain your weight, go to a gym etc, not smoke etc…
DJP
Stalker,
Problem solved?
http://www.rbcnews.com/free/20080421172809.shtml
273,700 births in the
first 2 months of the year! So the total should be 1.7-2.0 million for the year and the program is only in its 2nd year. This turnaround is absolutely spectacular.
It looks like Putin has solved the birth side of the equation. Now he only needs to work on the mortality side.
By the way what are the chances of Putin/Kabaeva offspring crawling around the Kremlin soon?
DJP
@ White Crow
Well, if you want to proceed from an anarchist or libertarian perspective, that’s an entirely different conversation. If we didn’t live in a state system, then we probably wouldn’t have achieved a level of progress that allows people to become obese. So I guess your suggestion would also solve the problem as well.
Also, I think it’s ironic that people who clamor against the state involving itself in their lives exercise their ‘freedom’ by consuming products made by mega-corporations, which are larger than many states in the world.
Stalker, with regard to the narcotics situation, I am not speaking theoretically. Specifically in the Russian case, legalization of narcotics will result in massive excess mortality (as it already has).
Cool down Oleg, in my comment “fatty idiots” was just a notation standing for “people who consume too much fat”. A lapse of concentration, perhaps. I realise that most of fat people are just poor folk suffering from a genetic disorder and I am not against helping them. Further, all in order:
Why do I (and you!) pay for Iraq War? – Because our governments spent too much money to cure people pursuing non-healthy life styles instead of investing them into education (including political one) of electorates.
Why am I paying for firefighters just as much as people without smoke detectors? – Agree, this is yet another example of social injustice. Why – see the last paragraph.
Why people without kids paying for public schools? – Because even those people will need pensions when they will get old and weak.
Eventually, the main issue you raised – Social Solidarity. According to the definition, this is just a measure of the integration of the society within its current values. The key is what are those values? I assume that the ultimate value both personal and communal is the continuing evolution to which gains of humanity should be contributed. This is why I am answering your questions the way I do. There are marginal issues, which are difficult to address, but this is only for now; we will address them properly as we evolve. Nothing is perfect and will never be perfect, unless gets dead. I hope you do not think of termination or stagnation of our civilization?
Why I want the fat tax? – to redirect social funds to reinforce evolution of the society rather than its plunge to death.
Jesse, I don’t see the irony at all. I can boycott a corpoarion without fear of being punished for it. But if I tried to withold taxes, I’d be toast. I have no objections whatsoever to businesses of any size.
Your claim that without the state we would not have the level of development we now have is silly – that’s like crediting Chritianity for the development of science.
States have never contributed to economic progress – thoughj some have slowed it down less than others – compare the history of the Netherlands and Russia – the stronger the state the weaker the economy.
White Crow:
“the stronger the state the weaker the economy”
talk about denying reality. the complete opposite is the truth and always has been. just surveying the world economies will show that.
African and Latin america weak state = weak economies.
China,West Europe = strong states and strong economies
Without a strong state nothing can be achieved and nothing has ever been achieved. Furthermore without abundant energy and water nothing is achieved.
Good god, Stalker, you’re still pushing this? Oy.
You already know my opinion, no need to rehash it.
To all “freedom fighters”:
Love to the overwhelming liberties and denial of reasonable regulations is no more than an indication of irresponsibility and nihilism. Any structure appearing in Nature is formed because of a sophisticated interplay between energy gained (liberty) and energy lost (regulations), see works by I. Prigogine and S.P. Kurdyumov. Excess of energy losses results in decay of the structure; its lack leads to uncontrolled growth because of intrinsic instability and eventual blow-up. By optimizing the distribution of energy sinks (regulations) one can obtain infinitely complex (evolved) structures (systems). The law is universal. Not a single engineering mechanism would work without friction, electronics – without resistance, human society – without bureaucracy, etc. Fight against restrictions in the society means fight against the first law of thermodynamics or, in other words, trying to invent a perpetual motion. Better contribute into optimization of the system of limitations, like Stalker and I do, before saturated fats turn your brains into useless porridge!
“Why do I (and you!) pay for Iraq War? – Because our governments spent too much money to cure people pursuing non-healthy life styles instead of investing them into education (including political one) of electorates”.
bro karamazoff, you really think that if you get fat tax istituted, then all the healthcare savings will go to anti-war pamphlets? Somehow I think all that dough will be channeled straight into more arms purchases. So the more money is being spent on healthcare, the less money there is for war-making.
“Why people without kids paying for public schools? – Because even those people will need pensions when they will get old and weak”.
Really? Did it dawn on you that maybe if those childless folks weren’t paying for other people’s kids’ schooling that maybe they were able to secure their own retirement?
“Why I want the fat tax? – to redirect social funds to reinforce evolution of the society rather than its plunge to death”.
bro karamazoff, I thought that after all of the horrors of the 20th century people would finally understand that there is no such thing as “reinforcing the evolution”. Because it’s that very “reinforcement” that accelerates the “death plunge” you seek to avoid, exact opposite from preventing it. Remember “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” thing?
If not, maybe you should, it’s one of the few Biblical passages containing some wisdom. Bush also wanted to “reinforce evolution” of mankind to freedom, and look what happened…America is out of cool one trillion dollars, and Iraq is out of one million people. And there is no end to that “evolution”. On the contrary, it’s about to be “reinforced’ with another trillion greenbucks. When will you social engeneers finally learn your lesson?
In the end, few words in defence of fat people. Instead of blaming those affable slobs, and taxing ice-cream, why not tax sports gear??? So-called ACTIVE PEOPLE are always first in line for knee and hip replacements. They use more oxygen and they emit more CO2, just by the virtue of moving more.
It’s them who pollute hiking trails, disturb animals in national parks, hunt, fish, hurt themselves in the most remote areas and require expensive rescues. And then when they did everything possible to inflict maximum monetary harm on the society, they rub it in by living longer and leaching Social Security into the abyss of insolvency. Maybe we need fit tax instead of the fat one.
Disclosure: I am not fat.
BK: I am not opposed to ‘regulation’ – quite the opposite. I am firmly convinced that regulation is absolutely necessary – and inevitable. However, to argue that only the state can provide regulation is to deny the reality of every day experience when regulation takes place between citizens of different states acting across state borders.
I have no sympathy for anybody arguing for ‘anything goes’, because that’s just plain nonsense. Rules are necessary – the question is, however, whether the State is a necessary element for regulating social life.
Considering that different states have different degrees of regulation, and that, as a rule, less state regulation tends to coincide with greater economic welfare, there is an argument to be made against state regulation.
I am in no way opposed to restrictions – I think everybody has the right to restrict others from using his property without his consent, for example.
My argument is simply this: the State is not a necessary institution for the regulation of life. Society predates the state – states have their origin in predation, as even David Hume had recognized.
Stalker’s proposal only makes sense if you believe that the purpose of human beings is to exist for the welfare of the state. Otherwise it does not matter how young or old people die if the behavior that leads to their premature death is the result of their own choices.
Otherwise we would have to start regulating all dangerous behavior, including wearing high heels for women and too tight jeans for men.
The question is this: if you are in favor of ‘reasonable’ state regulation, how do you differentiate between ‘reasonable’ and ‘unreasonable’ levels of regulation? Who is to make that decision? Which general principle other than your personal preferences can you appeal to?
And what do you do if I disagree with you? Appeal to ‘majority vote’? You should recognize the dangers of that. Appeal to ‘expert opinions’? You should recognize the dangers of that, too. Particularly if you understand something about the sociology of science.
The idea that ‘fat is bad’, by the way, is at best a hypothesis. It is not a well tested hypothesis, and is far from being an established theory.
I for one eat a lot of fatty food, and I am not even close to overweight, and I don’t have any elevated levels of anything (my blood pressure is actually a bit too low). Would I get an exemption from the tax?
What about people who do hard physical work and need to have a lot of fat in their diet – such as construction workers and other blue-collar professions. Would they get an exemption? And if, who determines this?
As much as I respect the quality of Stalker’s analysis in general, this is not a well-thought out or reasoned proposal. What I do believe, however, is that this will become reality in the not so distant future.
Oh, before I forgot: I DO agree with your anti-gun control position. How come you can make a lot of sense and no sense at all in the same article???????
Of course, very little savings are and will be spent on education of electorate in any modern state. This is not profitable for governments in popular democracies as they would need to spend even more on further sophistication of propaganda to (still) manipulate the conformist majority of the population. Just a bit of sarcasm.
I am afraid it is not possible to secure your own retirement without raising kids. Perhaps the only work around is to buy a kilo of rice every day you work and store it in your garage. Then, you will have something to eat upon your retirement and will become very popular with local rodents. If you need something more you have to make sure that enough of former kids still work. When you think you are saving for your pension, you just pay pensions to current pensioners and hope that next generation will do the same to you. That is how modern pension funds work and why they collapse from time to time.
Some of your further remarks, e.g. on CO2 are reasonable and solvable from engineering point of view. Gas nano-analysers should be implanted into our mouths. They will measure CO2 exhaled and send it wirelessly to the national processing centre for further taxing. Something could be implanted into cows’ asses as well to deal with their farting – some say this is much more important for the green house effect. Your other worries about outdoor activities are no longer a threat in Britain because of availability of special insurances and some more or less fair regulations about them. Finally, as human life span grows, national retirement age in Britain grows as well – longevity is not a social burden here at all.
This idea of the way to hell is a popular one indeed, but not as wise as some others are. It is based on a poorly defined concept of hell. What a hell is that? Why should I be afraid of going to there? This is a purely religious idea with no relation to the secular society. Social experiments of the 20th century brought many troubles to some nations and made rich others. Bad for Russia it is the worst among the former ones. However, the humanity, as a whole, has certainly evolved because of those attempts of reinforcement. Without all those wars and revolutions we would live in a different world. Completely different issue is that they did not have solid scientific foundations and similar or even greater progress could be achieved if large scale computer simulations would be carried out first. Promising growth of computer power ensures that one day humanity will be able to self-optimize its evolution in a humane way. And backward simulation of what would happen without those experiments is very intriguing as well.
BW, do you really belief that by invading Iraq Bush also wanted to “reinforce evolution” of mankind to freedom? I think he wanted some grip on oil. And once again, my words “fatty idiots” should be read “people who consume lots of fat”, sorry if this insulted someone.
To White Crow:
Once upon a time there was a tax on length of shoe tips in medieval England in order to not let humble peasants look like noblemen. Why cannot we introduce the high heels tax today once there is a justified call for it? Do not see anything wrong in regulating everything, as long as the implementation is efficient and serves the values of current society. And our current most precious value, whether you like it or not, is the state welfare indeed. I do not say it should be this way, it just how it is, at our present level of evolution. We cannot let a recent school leaver to take his own life, because it is not exactly his own. He is an asset to the society, costing some $20-40K in the west, and the state is a major stakeholder. BW, your right to the home, you think you own, is not immune from challenges as well. The natural way forward is usual – fulfil the demand in regulating the society to maximize the state’s welfare (current criteria of reasonability) as much as possible, learn the lesson and move to the next step of social evolution, maybe without the state itself in its modern meaning. I believe our civilization did not make it too far from its cradle yet and hope it has a potential to make a fascinating journey towards unreachable perfection. Better step-by-step.
Currently, the decision maker is a small elite group of the society regardless of its political type. Conformists follow, with their murmuring about democracy in certain states. This is very disturbing, but this is what we have and that is why I share your scepticism in relation to “majority vote”. Concerning “expert opinions”, I cannot say I know much about sociology of science, but pretty confident that effect of the fat tax on the state’s welfare can be pretty accurately predicted with mathematical modelling and computer simulations by a properly qualified PhD student.
The idea that ‘fat is bad’ is not just a hypothesis, it is the statistical hypothesis. There is no knowledge in this civilization other than statistical hypotheses at all! The difference is in the estimated probability that a correlation is an accidental one. Even for newtonian mechanics this probability is not zero, though negligibly small, making it not practical to expect that tomorrow the Sun will rise in the West! Situation with ‘fat is bad’ is not as good as with the newtonian mechanics, but still quite typical for physiological data. Its statistical nature ensures that not everyone fits. So, there will be something for further refinement.
BK, our philosophical assumptions are so far apart that a fruitful and polite exchange would be impossible. I will therefore retire from this particular discussion.
In the era of the 64-oz. soda, the 1,200-calorie burger, food companies now produce enough each day for every American to consume 3,800 calories per day as compared to the 2,350 needed for survival. Not only adults but kids are also consuming far more calories than they can possibly use. http://www.phentermine-effects.com
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I don’t know about you guys, it’s strange.
When I am lacking over 20 hours of sleep and I have consumed loads of food within that time, my intelligence seems to increase and I become more talented at things like drawing.
Not really to do with this topic, but hey.. I’m not healthy so what the hell!
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