4 ms·

> Only a minority of people can withstand an onslaught... Is that true? Most people aren't addicted to anything let alone social media..I really don't buy the

> Only a minority of people can withstand an onslaught... Is that true? Most people aren't addicted to anything let alone social media..I really don't buy the claim that people have literally no control over their actions. What's your solution? Ban sugar, alcohol and social media? Padding on the sidewalks?

micromacrofoot 4y ago
> Most people aren't addicted to anything let alone social media Even if it's just 5-10% (difficult to prove one way or the other, but some have estimated it's within this range) that's a massive amount of people on a global scale. That's enough to influence elections, for example. Scrutiny seems reasonable.
- thebean11 4y ago
  Sure let's say it's 10%, is the conclusion you draw from that that free will doesn't exist? Do 100% of people need to give up the freedom of choice to lower that figure? Not sure what you're getting at about elections, are you saying that's a reason to intervene? I don't really want the government making policy for the purpose of influencing election outcomes.
  - oblio 4y ago
    So dramatic. 100% of people will need to give up some luxuries so that everyone can benefit, and especially <<vulnerable groups>> can benefit. Taxes work the same way. Laws in general work the same way (otherwise we'd assume everyone is smart, fair and calculated heck, perfect, all the time).
    - thebean11 4y ago
      Can you be more specific then about what we're discussing, if it's not "ban things that the 10% is addicted to"?
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
        They aren't talking about bans, but other controls. Cigarettes are not banned outright, but cigarette companies are banned from advertising in a lot of mediums and cigarette cartons have a warning label about the harmful effects of smoking them. For a long time there were PSAs about how bad they were for you too, to counteract the damage already done by the tobacco industry's marketing. And we tax them pretty harshly. People still smoke, it is still legal to smoke. We could do similar things for food and social media without outright banning it.
        thebean11 4y ago
        Yeah that's fair. Like I alluded to in a sibling comment thread, though, I think doing the same thing for food is pretty dangerous given our still pretty limited understanding of what foods are actually bad for you. Eggs are still oscillating between healthy and unhealthy every few years (although I think we're settling on healthy? Who knows!). Cigarettes aren't needed to sustain life so there's not as much risk to meddling like that. The only thing I can really get behind is stricter controls on individual ingredients that are very clearly unhealthy and obviously don't need to be part of your diet (BPAs, trans fats, etc). Once you start messing with society's macros though it's fraught territory and very easy to do harm IMO.
oblio 4y ago
> What's your solution? Ban sugar, alcohol and social media? Padding on the sidewalks? There isn't "one solution". And bans generally are not a solution. But we need to fight with the same weapons they're fighting, for example, let's take sugar and unhealthy foods. They're presenting their food as fun and glamorous, let's blow that up, like we did for tobacco. No more mass advertising for it, anywhere. Horrible labels showing disfigured obese people that are suffering because of their addiction to junk food. The food is cheap because they use crap ingrediens? Let's tax food based on universal standards agreed upon not by the industry, but by healthcare specialists. The more you're off the mark from healthy food, the more you get taxed (excises, same as for alcohol and tobacco). Heck, I'd earmark those excises as funding for subsidies meant for producers of healthy, bio foods. These junk food companies are making their stuff cool, so let's prevent that and they're making it cheap by passing their externalities to us (diminished long term health) so let's make their food more expensive and let's make the healthy stuff cheaper. Ah, more than that, quotas of healthy food in every place serving or offering food. Get rid of food deserts. Poor people with low mobility should have access to healthy food at decent prices. Yes, this is all very complicates. Yes, it's very political. But doing nothing achieves nothing. Worse than that, doing nothing actively degrades the situation since these actors are actively harming people in very subtle ways.
- thebean11 4y ago
  20 years ago the sugar lobby told everyone that sugar was good and fat was bad. I'm all for banning specific ingredients and processes that are known poisonous (like BPAs for example are banned in many countries, deservedly) but unilaterally deciding what's healthy and having quotas for healthy foods is extreme. It will be the sugar vs fat thing all over and only the rich will benefit. Just to make sure I understand what you’re proposing, taco trucks and ice cream shops would be illegal in your ideal world yeah?
  - oblio 4y ago
    > 20 years ago the sugar lobby told everyone that sugar was good and fat was bad. And we're 20 years from that and now we know better. Which lobby is it this time, the healthy living one, that's lying to us? ... > Just to make sure I understand what you’re proposing, taco trucks and ice cream shops would be illegal in your ideal world yeah? Did I stutter? Did I propose bans anywhere? And why is having quotas for healthy foods extreme? Sell 20% healthy foods out of your entire stock. How hard is that? We have quotas for all sort of things <<all>> the time. The roof hasn't fallen. Separate note: I guess this is the risk of arguing with libertarians :-) I'd venture you're one.

micromacrofoot 4y ago

> Most people aren't addicted to anything let alone social media Even if it's just 5-10% (difficult to prove one way or the other, but some have estimated it's within this range) that's a massive amount of people on a global scale. That's enough to influence elections, for example. Scrutiny seems reasonable.

thebean11 4y ago
Sure let's say it's 10%, is the conclusion you draw from that that free will doesn't exist? Do 100% of people need to give up the freedom of choice to lower that figure? Not sure what you're getting at about elections, are you saying that's a reason to intervene? I don't really want the government making policy for the purpose of influencing election outcomes.
- oblio 4y ago
  So dramatic. 100% of people will need to give up some luxuries so that everyone can benefit, and especially <<vulnerable groups>> can benefit. Taxes work the same way. Laws in general work the same way (otherwise we'd assume everyone is smart, fair and calculated heck, perfect, all the time).
  - thebean11 4y ago
    Can you be more specific then about what we're discussing, if it's not "ban things that the 10% is addicted to"?
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
      They aren't talking about bans, but other controls. Cigarettes are not banned outright, but cigarette companies are banned from advertising in a lot of mediums and cigarette cartons have a warning label about the harmful effects of smoking them. For a long time there were PSAs about how bad they were for you too, to counteract the damage already done by the tobacco industry's marketing. And we tax them pretty harshly. People still smoke, it is still legal to smoke. We could do similar things for food and social media without outright banning it.
      - thebean11 4y ago
        Yeah that's fair. Like I alluded to in a sibling comment thread, though, I think doing the same thing for food is pretty dangerous given our still pretty limited understanding of what foods are actually bad for you. Eggs are still oscillating between healthy and unhealthy every few years (although I think we're settling on healthy? Who knows!). Cigarettes aren't needed to sustain life so there's not as much risk to meddling like that. The only thing I can really get behind is stricter controls on individual ingredients that are very clearly unhealthy and obviously don't need to be part of your diet (BPAs, trans fats, etc). Once you start messing with society's macros though it's fraught territory and very easy to do harm IMO.

oblio 4y ago

> What's your solution? Ban sugar, alcohol and social media? Padding on the sidewalks? There isn't "one solution". And bans generally are not a solution. But we need to fight with the same weapons they're fighting, for example, let's take sugar and unhealthy foods. They're presenting their food as fun and glamorous, let's blow that up, like we did for tobacco. No more mass advertising for it, anywhere. Horrible labels showing disfigured obese people that are suffering because of their addiction to junk food. The food is cheap because they use crap ingrediens? Let's tax food based on universal standards agreed upon not by the industry, but by healthcare specialists. The more you're off the mark from healthy food, the more you get taxed (excises, same as for alcohol and tobacco). Heck, I'd earmark those excises as funding for subsidies meant for producers of healthy, bio foods. These junk food companies are making their stuff cool, so let's prevent that and they're making it cheap by passing their externalities to us (diminished long term health) so let's make their food more expensive and let's make the healthy stuff cheaper. Ah, more than that, quotas of healthy food in every place serving or offering food. Get rid of food deserts. Poor people with low mobility should have access to healthy food at decent prices. Yes, this is all very complicates. Yes, it's very political. But doing nothing achieves nothing. Worse than that, doing nothing actively degrades the situation since these actors are actively harming people in very subtle ways.

thebean11 4y ago
20 years ago the sugar lobby told everyone that sugar was good and fat was bad. I'm all for banning specific ingredients and processes that are known poisonous (like BPAs for example are banned in many countries, deservedly) but unilaterally deciding what's healthy and having quotas for healthy foods is extreme. It will be the sugar vs fat thing all over and only the rich will benefit. Just to make sure I understand what you’re proposing, taco trucks and ice cream shops would be illegal in your ideal world yeah?
- oblio 4y ago
  > 20 years ago the sugar lobby told everyone that sugar was good and fat was bad. And we're 20 years from that and now we know better. Which lobby is it this time, the healthy living one, that's lying to us? ... > Just to make sure I understand what you’re proposing, taco trucks and ice cream shops would be illegal in your ideal world yeah? Did I stutter? Did I propose bans anywhere? And why is having quotas for healthy foods extreme? Sell 20% healthy foods out of your entire stock. How hard is that? We have quotas for all sort of things <<all>> the time. The roof hasn't fallen. Separate note: I guess this is the risk of arguing with libertarians :-) I'd venture you're one.