13 ms·

Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society

Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. 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.

maxerickson 7y ago
There's nothing particularly unusual about being a libertarian in the "what's good for me" sense.
- baddox 7y ago
  True, pretty much everyone is “for freedom as long as it doesn’t impact other people, except in some cases.”
smackmybishop 7y ago
There's a point there that I don't think gets enough discussion: 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...
- undefined3840 7y ago
  In SF sugary drinks are taxed extra. 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...
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    One of the unfortunate side effects of the SF tax though is that an $8 canister of sports drink powder (essential to provide calories and minerals during longer periods of exertion) has a $7 tax. I don't think a tax approaching 90% is in any way just.
    - CameronNemo 7y ago
      > I don't think a tax approaching 90% is in any way just. For this specific case, or in general? Because there are certainly externalities that are larger than the internalized cost of a good.
      - nitrogen 7y ago
        In this specific case. The drink facilitates athletic activity, and taxing it as if it harms health is ludicrous. Honestly I think the whole sugared drink tax is a bit ridiculous, but taxing a sports drink mix at 90 effing percent when a soda is taxed at a few percent can't be the true intent.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  I'm not sure how banning advertising for something destructive and unhealthy is nearly as much of a slippery slope as you are implying. 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.
- Retric 7y ago
  Banning advertising is very different from banning the products themselves. The intent of advertising is to increase consumption so the impact is more widespread than personal choices. It’s in effect a form of meme pollution.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Almost any kind of change starts small and then builds up. I don't see anything to indicate that banning ads isn't just the first step in the process. Cigarettes have become more and more restricted over time and they also started with banning ads. If this doesn't alarm you yet, then will you be alarmed once they start banning ads for meat?
    - furyg3 7y ago
      This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. Cigarettes have been around for a very long time, and the act of smoking them long-term is basically terminal behavior (which we’ve also known about for quite a while). Many countries have banned advertising or limited it, but even in many ‘progressive’ countries (eg Germany) cigarette advertisement is still alive and well. And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. 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.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        >This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. 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?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
  Personally I believe that this is the end state of socialized health care, and I'm afraid we'll see it implemented on a wide scale within the next 20 years. It'll likely start with a hate tax, which is already in affect in a handful of locations. 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.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    The U.S. already has plenty such laws without socialized healthcare: cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large etc. Drug prohibition is probably the most prominent example, but we’re seeing efforts to decriminalize those concurrent with efforts to socialize healthcare. I think your concerns are unfounded.
    - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
      >I think your concerns are unfounded. > 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.
      - jakelazaroff 7y ago
        I thought your concerns were that this is the end state of socialized healthcare? I’m simply saying that they’re uncorrelated.
  - king_panic 7y ago
    The amount of misinformation surrounding human health is criminal. The restaurant/food industry and "healthcare" industry is a giant scam. The system sells you the problem -- processed food, sugar, alcohol, snacking -- and then sells you the "solution" at exorbitant costs -- doctors appointments, drugs, surgeries. They get you coming and going. The biggest problem is eating frequency, bar none. Humans are not meant to eat 24/7. When the body fasts, it's healing. People are figuring that out. Look up snake_diet_wizard on Instagram. He promotes prolonged fasting. The health and weight loss transformations are amazing. One hundred pounds of body fat lost are standard. We heal when we fast.
- bbanyc 7y ago
  Singapore is famously the country that banned chewing gum. Personal freedom has never been a priority there. 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.
  - avar 7y ago
    They banned the sale of chewing gum, they didn't outright ban it. You can still chew gum there and bring it into the country. It's a useful distinction because they've really banned some other things, and they're much more serious about those.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    While the stated goal is indeed reducing residential segregation, it also has the suspiciously convenient side effect of ensuring that every voting district has a Chinese majority.
    - audiometry 7y ago
      The population is something like 70% Chinese. How are you going to randomly assign locations and NOT have a Chinese majority............
- belorn 7y ago
  Banning advertisement is the nice way to reduce the social costs of universal healthcare as it only act as a industry regulation. 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.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  Erm, we just killed the food pyramid which was held up as a standard of health for 30 years. Are you sure you want to enact bans on what the government thinks is unhealthy? 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.
  - smackmybishop 7y ago
    Just to be clear, I'm against universal healthcare for this reason. I think we should pay for the consequences of our own choices, and agree the government is terrible at deciding what's unhealthy.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    The poster was making a point that this kind of ban is a huge slippery slope. They were not speaking in support of the ban.
    - friendlybus 7y ago
      Ok, fair enough
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
I think this is a good thing but society pays for almost everything. Almost every bad decision a person makes impacts society and someone pays for it.
undefined3840 7y ago
It’s a “friendly authoritarian” surveillance state. It’s great if you obey the rules, but you sound like you lean toward libertarianism...Singapore is the complete opposite.
- trevyn 7y ago
  For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singa...
squarefoot 7y ago
"This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets." 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.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  It's weird, I rode motorbikes off road as a teenager and wouldn't have dreamed of not wearing a helmet, heavy boots and gloves etc. 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.
  - throwaway07Ju19 7y ago
    This is like saying you don't get why some men don't always wear condoms. For some, riding without a helmet is vastly more pleasurable and thrilling.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      this is something I don't get. How is getting hit by bugs and rocks more pleasurable?
      - cornstalks 7y ago
        My favorite is getting throat-punched by a big juicy bug at 70 miles per hour. But yeah, getting one of those in the face (and near/in the eye especially) is something you do not want to happen.
tootie 7y ago
I've spent time there as well. It's a great place but very authoritarian. Also seems to be a lot of endemic racism that is just considered acceptable.
srl 7y ago
> This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. 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".)
- adrr 7y ago
  Helmet laws and seat belt laws cut the supply of organs to those in need.
  - junipertea 7y ago
    They also hopefully decreased the number people that need them
    - philwelch 7y ago
      Nah, organ recipients are usually people with chronic illnesses rather than people who survived traumatic accidents.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  People being injured or killed harms other people. Especially in countries with some form of universal healthcare (i.e most of the developed world).
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Maybe even more in the other countries. Loss of productivity and loved ones is also expensive, albeit harder to directly measure.
  - gdhbcc 7y ago
    By that argument you could justify any restriction of peoples freedom. Ultimately if the state chooses to provide such services, then it must accept the costs that come along with it.
refurb 7y ago
Should we stop people from doing high risk activities in general? Mountain climbing? Sky diving? Those impact society as well, and my medicinal expenses are higher when they get hurt.
- thablackbull 7y ago
  When those start to have a noticeable impact on society, I'd imagine yes, they'd start to do something about it. Right now, diabetes is indeed a serious problem. > 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/diabetes https://www.healthhub.sg/a-z/diseases-and-conditions/626/dia... [2] https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/BR10093093/br-external/MinistryOfHealth-Singapore-e.pdf https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/B...
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  I knew someone was going to push the limit - how about exercise, it kills some people. 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.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    It's not a useless post at all. It's sometimes difficult to quantify the negatives and positives of an activity. For example, eating meat. I have heard a lot about how eating meat is harmful to people's health and our environment. Shouldn't we ban that as well?
Mirioron 7y ago
Society pays a high cost for eating meat. It takes a lot of resources to grow meat for consumption. Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of things pointing towards how meat consumption isn't good for our health. So, let's ban advertising for meat products. Next step we levy heavy taxes on meat products and for the final step we outright ban it. After all, it's for your own good. The state knows best.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 7y ago
  All true. I guess the balance of power doesn’t support that, partly because: 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.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >All true except that. 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.
11235813213455 7y ago
ads sort of control your freedom of choices paradoxically, through subconscious
leppemd9 7y ago
Not just health costs, but environment too. Why must we collectively be ok with enabling a profit margin on sugar water that requires factories, immense material resources to transport (cans, bottles) and prioritized placement in global distribution? 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.
marcosdumay 7y ago
Ads are by definition something that impacts other people. 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.
Uhuhreally 7y ago
Although motorcycling is very dangerous, I don't think riders should be forced to wear anything. Instead I think the manatory training should go to a much more advanced level before you can go on the road.
proc0 7y ago
Imagine 50 years ago they had passed a law to ban any advertising of products that are not low-fat or non-fat. That research turned out to be wrong and eating fat is good. 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.
rorykoehler 7y ago
I like Singapore too and have lived there. Other countries could learn a lot from how Singapore is run but it has it's own worts. It's very dystopian in certain regards. It's a really good example of the trade off between freedom and safety.
- dnate 7y ago
  > It's a really good example of the trade off between freedom and safety. Do you mean an example of being very far on the safety side, sacrificing freedom?
  - rorykoehler 7y ago
    Correct
andrepd 7y ago
The argument is that "freedom of choice" is a slippery concept, when you have massified advertisement, which targets people basest neurological triggers to make them more likely to drink soda/drink beer/stuff their face with hamburgers/buy weight loss products/vote for candidate X.
hellofunk 7y ago
> People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. Wow, honestly you didn't stay long enough if this was your lasting impression.
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
FWIW, Singapore gained some notoriety a few years back for being the least happy country in the world, worse than eg. Syria, Haiti and Afghanistan: https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/singapore-least-happy/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/singapore-leas... 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.
- budabudimir 7y ago
  This pool seems to be completely out of touch with reality. Venezuela in the top 10 happiest countries?
mensetmanusman 7y ago
You weren’t there when Malaysia was ruining the air then?
mensetmanusman 7y ago
Everyone’s life affects other people by a measurable amount, this is why talk of freedom gets complicated.
mFixman 7y ago
This is not like forcing motorcycle rivers to wear helmets. This is like banning cigarette ads on public spaces. 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.

maxerickson 7y ago

There's nothing particularly unusual about being a libertarian in the "what's good for me" sense.

baddox 7y ago
True, pretty much everyone is “for freedom as long as it doesn’t impact other people, except in some cases.”

smackmybishop 7y ago

There's a point there that I don't think gets enough discussion: 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...

undefined3840 7y ago
In SF sugary drinks are taxed extra. 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...
- nitrogen 7y ago
  One of the unfortunate side effects of the SF tax though is that an $8 canister of sports drink powder (essential to provide calories and minerals during longer periods of exertion) has a $7 tax. I don't think a tax approaching 90% is in any way just.
  - CameronNemo 7y ago
    > I don't think a tax approaching 90% is in any way just. For this specific case, or in general? Because there are certainly externalities that are larger than the internalized cost of a good.
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      In this specific case. The drink facilitates athletic activity, and taxing it as if it harms health is ludicrous. Honestly I think the whole sugared drink tax is a bit ridiculous, but taxing a sports drink mix at 90 effing percent when a soda is taxed at a few percent can't be the true intent.
BubRoss 7y ago
I'm not sure how banning advertising for something destructive and unhealthy is nearly as much of a slippery slope as you are implying. 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.
Retric 7y ago
Banning advertising is very different from banning the products themselves. The intent of advertising is to increase consumption so the impact is more widespread than personal choices. It’s in effect a form of meme pollution.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Almost any kind of change starts small and then builds up. I don't see anything to indicate that banning ads isn't just the first step in the process. Cigarettes have become more and more restricted over time and they also started with banning ads. If this doesn't alarm you yet, then will you be alarmed once they start banning ads for meat?
  - furyg3 7y ago
    This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. Cigarettes have been around for a very long time, and the act of smoking them long-term is basically terminal behavior (which we’ve also known about for quite a while). Many countries have banned advertising or limited it, but even in many ‘progressive’ countries (eg Germany) cigarette advertisement is still alive and well. And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. 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.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      >This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. 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?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
Personally I believe that this is the end state of socialized health care, and I'm afraid we'll see it implemented on a wide scale within the next 20 years. It'll likely start with a hate tax, which is already in affect in a handful of locations. 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.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  The U.S. already has plenty such laws without socialized healthcare: cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large etc. Drug prohibition is probably the most prominent example, but we’re seeing efforts to decriminalize those concurrent with efforts to socialize healthcare. I think your concerns are unfounded.
  - ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
    >I think your concerns are unfounded. > 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.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      I thought your concerns were that this is the end state of socialized healthcare? I’m simply saying that they’re uncorrelated.
- king_panic 7y ago
  The amount of misinformation surrounding human health is criminal. The restaurant/food industry and "healthcare" industry is a giant scam. The system sells you the problem -- processed food, sugar, alcohol, snacking -- and then sells you the "solution" at exorbitant costs -- doctors appointments, drugs, surgeries. They get you coming and going. The biggest problem is eating frequency, bar none. Humans are not meant to eat 24/7. When the body fasts, it's healing. People are figuring that out. Look up snake_diet_wizard on Instagram. He promotes prolonged fasting. The health and weight loss transformations are amazing. One hundred pounds of body fat lost are standard. We heal when we fast.
bbanyc 7y ago
Singapore is famously the country that banned chewing gum. Personal freedom has never been a priority there. 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.
- avar 7y ago
  They banned the sale of chewing gum, they didn't outright ban it. You can still chew gum there and bring it into the country. It's a useful distinction because they've really banned some other things, and they're much more serious about those.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  While the stated goal is indeed reducing residential segregation, it also has the suspiciously convenient side effect of ensuring that every voting district has a Chinese majority.
  - audiometry 7y ago
    The population is something like 70% Chinese. How are you going to randomly assign locations and NOT have a Chinese majority............
belorn 7y ago
Banning advertisement is the nice way to reduce the social costs of universal healthcare as it only act as a industry regulation. 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.
friendlybus 7y ago
Erm, we just killed the food pyramid which was held up as a standard of health for 30 years. Are you sure you want to enact bans on what the government thinks is unhealthy? 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.
- smackmybishop 7y ago
  Just to be clear, I'm against universal healthcare for this reason. I think we should pay for the consequences of our own choices, and agree the government is terrible at deciding what's unhealthy.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  The poster was making a point that this kind of ban is a huge slippery slope. They were not speaking in support of the ban.
  - friendlybus 7y ago
    Ok, fair enough

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago

I think this is a good thing but society pays for almost everything. Almost every bad decision a person makes impacts society and someone pays for it.

undefined3840 7y ago

It’s a “friendly authoritarian” surveillance state. It’s great if you obey the rules, but you sound like you lean toward libertarianism...Singapore is the complete opposite.

trevyn 7y ago
For example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singa...

squarefoot 7y ago

"This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets." 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.

noir_lord 7y ago
It's weird, I rode motorbikes off road as a teenager and wouldn't have dreamed of not wearing a helmet, heavy boots and gloves etc. 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.
- throwaway07Ju19 7y ago
  This is like saying you don't get why some men don't always wear condoms. For some, riding without a helmet is vastly more pleasurable and thrilling.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    this is something I don't get. How is getting hit by bugs and rocks more pleasurable?
    - cornstalks 7y ago
      My favorite is getting throat-punched by a big juicy bug at 70 miles per hour. But yeah, getting one of those in the face (and near/in the eye especially) is something you do not want to happen.

tootie 7y ago

I've spent time there as well. It's a great place but very authoritarian. Also seems to be a lot of endemic racism that is just considered acceptable.

srl 7y ago

> This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. 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".)

adrr 7y ago
Helmet laws and seat belt laws cut the supply of organs to those in need.
- junipertea 7y ago
  They also hopefully decreased the number people that need them
  - philwelch 7y ago
    Nah, organ recipients are usually people with chronic illnesses rather than people who survived traumatic accidents.
alkonaut 7y ago
People being injured or killed harms other people. Especially in countries with some form of universal healthcare (i.e most of the developed world).
- jacobush 7y ago
  Maybe even more in the other countries. Loss of productivity and loved ones is also expensive, albeit harder to directly measure.
- gdhbcc 7y ago
  By that argument you could justify any restriction of peoples freedom. Ultimately if the state chooses to provide such services, then it must accept the costs that come along with it.

refurb 7y ago

Should we stop people from doing high risk activities in general? Mountain climbing? Sky diving? Those impact society as well, and my medicinal expenses are higher when they get hurt.

thablackbull 7y ago
When those start to have a noticeable impact on society, I'd imagine yes, they'd start to do something about it. Right now, diabetes is indeed a serious problem. > 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/diabetes https://www.healthhub.sg/a-z/diseases-and-conditions/626/dia... [2] https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/BR10093093/br-external/MinistryOfHealth-Singapore-e.pdf https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/421/HESA/Brief/B...
tempguy9999 7y ago
I knew someone was going to push the limit - how about exercise, it kills some people. 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.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  It's not a useless post at all. It's sometimes difficult to quantify the negatives and positives of an activity. For example, eating meat. I have heard a lot about how eating meat is harmful to people's health and our environment. Shouldn't we ban that as well?

Mirioron 7y ago

Society pays a high cost for eating meat. It takes a lot of resources to grow meat for consumption. Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of things pointing towards how meat consumption isn't good for our health. So, let's ban advertising for meat products. Next step we levy heavy taxes on meat products and for the final step we outright ban it. After all, it's for your own good. The state knows best.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 7y ago
All true. I guess the balance of power doesn’t support that, partly because: 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.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >All true except that. 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.

11235813213455 7y ago

ads sort of control your freedom of choices paradoxically, through subconscious

leppemd9 7y ago

Not just health costs, but environment too. Why must we collectively be ok with enabling a profit margin on sugar water that requires factories, immense material resources to transport (cans, bottles) and prioritized placement in global distribution? 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.

marcosdumay 7y ago

Ads are by definition something that impacts other people. 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.

Uhuhreally 7y ago

Although motorcycling is very dangerous, I don't think riders should be forced to wear anything. Instead I think the manatory training should go to a much more advanced level before you can go on the road.

proc0 7y ago

Imagine 50 years ago they had passed a law to ban any advertising of products that are not low-fat or non-fat. That research turned out to be wrong and eating fat is good. 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.

rorykoehler 7y ago

I like Singapore too and have lived there. Other countries could learn a lot from how Singapore is run but it has it's own worts. It's very dystopian in certain regards. It's a really good example of the trade off between freedom and safety.

dnate 7y ago
> It's a really good example of the trade off between freedom and safety. Do you mean an example of being very far on the safety side, sacrificing freedom?
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  Correct

andrepd 7y ago

The argument is that "freedom of choice" is a slippery concept, when you have massified advertisement, which targets people basest neurological triggers to make them more likely to drink soda/drink beer/stuff their face with hamburgers/buy weight loss products/vote for candidate X.

hellofunk 7y ago

> People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. Wow, honestly you didn't stay long enough if this was your lasting impression.

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

FWIW, Singapore gained some notoriety a few years back for being the least happy country in the world, worse than eg. Syria, Haiti and Afghanistan: https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/singapore-least-happy/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/world/asia/singapore-leas... 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.

budabudimir 7y ago
This pool seems to be completely out of touch with reality. Venezuela in the top 10 happiest countries?

mensetmanusman 7y ago

You weren’t there when Malaysia was ruining the air then?

mensetmanusman 7y ago

Everyone’s life affects other people by a measurable amount, this is why talk of freedom gets complicated.

mFixman 7y ago

This is not like forcing motorcycle rivers to wear helmets. This is like banning cigarette ads on public spaces. 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.