10 ms·

Regulation through voluntary goodwill never works in aggregate. Blaming actors rather than regulators will always be futile in the end as players in a system wi

Regulation through voluntary goodwill never works in aggregate. Blaming actors rather than regulators will always be futile in the end as players in a system will almost always trend towards self interest in the long run, as has been proven time and time again Of course many would argue there's no need to regulate at all, and that's a fair position to hold too. There's nothing inherently wrong with providing products that offer a tradeoff between health and enjoyment. As long as consumers are aware of the longer term costs

mahmoudhossam 3y ago
Regulatory capture prevents regulators from doing their jobs, and I'm not sure any amount of regulator blaming will change that. Naming and shaming companies, however, can make them change their strategy.
- wilg 3y ago
  I’m not so sure. Placing the blame at regulators would encourage people to vote for politicians that will regulate more effectively. That’s a direct link, versus hoping corporate shame trickles through to regulation.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    No it won't. Nobody is going to make something like this the center of their platform, and most voters don't do nuanced appraisals of a candidate's whole platform because it's a waste of time, they go with their gut feeling about 2 or 3 big issues and whether the politician has an appealing personality. If this wasn't true then height wouldn't be so strongly correlated with political success. Furthermore, look at a recent example of a pro-strong regulation policy: the Obama admin believed in a well run regulatory state, and the first lady led a public health campaign promoting healthier school lunches with more fruits and vegetables as well as exercise. You'd think encouraging kids to eat unprocessed food and exercise would be wholly inoffensive, but the other political party and its media surrogates treated it like the imposition of communism and complained endlessly about 'freedom' and 'waste'. Your version is how things ought to work, and how it was more or less assumed it does work for many years, but it's based on an obsolete understanding of political markets. Ubiquitous networking has made it easy for like-minded people to find and coordinate with each other, and some people favor perverse outcomes. Approximately 30% of people are willing to suffer an economic loss in order to inflict a greater loss on their opponents, and that personality type now controls one of the country's two major political parties.
    - Digit-Al 3y ago
      Just a heads up. I could be wrong, but I believe you meant to say "encourage kids" instead of "enrage kids" lol. I was a bit confused until I worked it out.
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        Well-spotted, thanks; I've corrected it. The monospaced serif font in the HN reply box is not conducive to proofreading.
    - quags 3y ago
      Another example would be Bloomberg as mayor of NYC. A sugar tax was attacked as an attack on the poor, minorities, overreach of government, attack on freedom to name a few. I can’t see it being supported any time soon by another politician as Bloomberg was in a position to be able self fund a campaign and be a bit more drastic in certain areas. You mention Michelle Obama who got more crap as well for trying to get kids to exercise as well.
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        Good point. I disliked Bloomberg as an individual (although he proves me wrong in that height isn't everything) but thought the sugar tax was a great idea. I was quite depressed by the reaction to it, because a lot of left-leaning people took umbrage at it, citing the popularity of soda among minorities and the poor. I was more into party politics at the time, and was astonished at how intense and sustained the opposition was on Democratic forum sites. Thoughtful arguments about public health policy, corporate greed, agricultural subsidies, etc. etc. were dismissed with bullshit rhetoric about people's right to enjoy their favorite soda flavor. It was organic too, in the sense of not being astroturfed - I knew the people on the forums quite well, but they just dumped all their regular principles once they felt they were affected b¥ an issue that hit their taste buds.
  - mahmoudhossam 3y ago
    What prevents companies from bribing the next guy though? It worked well enough the first time and the funds are already in the budget for this.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    What should a more effective regulator be doing with respect to food?
  - nradov 3y ago
    Expanding the regulatory state is the last thing we need. Instead we should constrain the power of unelected regulators to set rules in most areas, thus decreasing the impact of regulatory capture. If restricting sugary foods is a good idea then let the elected politicians do so directly and take the heat for it. Don't allow them to escape responsibility by delegating their authority to bureaucrats.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
In a competitive system is it selfishness or survival?
bloppe 3y ago
Clearly people are choosing sugary products. The only thing that would be inappropriate for food companies to do would be to lie about the health effects of that sugar. This article seems to imply they're lying (or at least misleading) quite a bit.
- fbdab103 3y ago
  Don't forget <s>bribing</s> funding researchers to say fat was worse than sugar [0] >Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings chronologically into a narrative case study. The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development. [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...
  - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
    Careful though because all that doesn't mean fat isn't a cause of CHD. As far as I can tell the evidence for fat's relation to CHD was not fabricated by teh sugar lobby, it was only drummed up to try and hide the evidence for sugar's role.
    - fbdab103 3y ago
      I am admittedly not up to date on the latest literature, but my understanding was that sugar was significantly worse than fat. Not necessarily that fat was free of negative health outcomes.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
Blaming Regulators or industry almost never works. Ultimately the consumer is the only one capable of making the thousand choices a day necessary. I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it that some government regulator should or even can micromanage the diet of ordinary citizens. The idea that it is possible for them to control the nutritional composition of food and the balance consumed is absurd at face value. Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?
- wredue 3y ago
  As opposed to the world where corporations manage it, and they stuff everything with sugar? It sucks that this is the dichotomy, but yes, absolutely, a bureaucrat will probably end up getting better food to you than corporate interests.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 3y ago
  The idea that it is possible for them to control the nutritional composition of food and the balance consumed is absurd at face value. It doesn't seem that absurd to me. If the government banned the production and import of potato chips, you could still make them at home, but people would probably make a lot less of them. Unlike drugs, food is not conveniently hidden and the value is too low per unit volume to justify illicit production. Therefore food which is banned generally will not be produced at scale. If the government did set out to materially improve the dietary habits of the citizenry, it would definitely be possible. It would be politically infeasible and possibly tyranny, but it would be very doable.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I meant the word can in the context of a free society, with practical constraints. I agree that if you ignore the constraints it would be trivial. There are so many brutal and oppressive solutions it isn't even worth listing examples.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 3y ago
Madmallard 3y ago
There needs to be more strict management of the capacity for humans to screw other humans over. Thomas Hobbes talks about this a good amount in The Leviathan
paulddraper 3y ago
[flagged]
- omginternets 3y ago
  HN is not just one guy, you know …
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    I'm looking at the top comments.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      I see the word "ban" in three places. A hypothetical, someone talking about artificial sweeteners, and your comment. Regulation and banning are different things.
    - omginternets 3y ago
      And?
    - blast 3y ago
      One guy writes all the top comments?
      - paulddraper 3y ago
        *One majority up votes all the top comments.
- massysett 3y ago
  To be fair, it might not be the same people on HN saying those two things. However it is just bizarre to see the social trends on this. On one hand tobacco has been stigmatized, and on the other pot is legalized. On one hand legislators propose banning sugary foods or taxing them, and on the other hand they legalize smartphone sports betting. It’s just bizarre.
- deleted 3y ago
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> As long as consumers are aware of the longer term costs I'm OK as long as consumers rather than society are expected to bear the longer term costs. There is nothing worse than hearing "legalize hard drugs!" followed by "let's sink billions of dollars into treatment for those poor drug addicts!"
timst4 3y ago
As if anyone had a choice about climate change. Cigarettes, oxy, sugar, and carbon are all alike in that their detrimental effects were hidden, downplayed, or denied for decades. Now, here we are with a destroyed ecosystem and rampant addiction. Choice is a meaningless word in the context of capitalism. There is only manipulation. Regulation was needed 60 years ago, and now we are the ones left holding the bag.
Buttons840 3y ago
Maybe I'm letting my own existential dread and depression into the policy debate, but I've often made short-sighted decisions because there's not much else to live for and little hope for the long-term in general. Why drink water instead of soda if you'll never be able to retire? Perhaps we should look for a political solution to this problem first. Anyone else ever felt this way, or am I just depressed?
- tayo42 3y ago
  eating like crap isnt going to help your depression besides a quick feeling of happiness/dopamin from sugar
omniglottal 3y ago
"As long as consumers are aware" is important, yet insufficient. Those consumers must also have alternative options available in the market. Competition isn't just on price, but on features. Consumers, aware, are pissed, but if a boycott means they starve, an agro company can just wait for the next season of insulin consumers.
koonsolo 3y ago
It depends on your countries health system of course. If that one is sponsored by the government, it's only fair to tax the shit out of unhealthy food.
- alkibiades 3y ago
  exhibit a of why we don’t want socialized medicine. because it justifies this exact thought process
  - koonsolo 3y ago
    I'm from Belgium, and it's actually pretty great here to go to the docter, dentist, surgeon or pharmacy. Not the craziness of US. To each their own I guess.

mahmoudhossam 3y ago

Regulatory capture prevents regulators from doing their jobs, and I'm not sure any amount of regulator blaming will change that. Naming and shaming companies, however, can make them change their strategy.

wilg 3y ago
I’m not so sure. Placing the blame at regulators would encourage people to vote for politicians that will regulate more effectively. That’s a direct link, versus hoping corporate shame trickles through to regulation.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  No it won't. Nobody is going to make something like this the center of their platform, and most voters don't do nuanced appraisals of a candidate's whole platform because it's a waste of time, they go with their gut feeling about 2 or 3 big issues and whether the politician has an appealing personality. If this wasn't true then height wouldn't be so strongly correlated with political success. Furthermore, look at a recent example of a pro-strong regulation policy: the Obama admin believed in a well run regulatory state, and the first lady led a public health campaign promoting healthier school lunches with more fruits and vegetables as well as exercise. You'd think encouraging kids to eat unprocessed food and exercise would be wholly inoffensive, but the other political party and its media surrogates treated it like the imposition of communism and complained endlessly about 'freedom' and 'waste'. Your version is how things ought to work, and how it was more or less assumed it does work for many years, but it's based on an obsolete understanding of political markets. Ubiquitous networking has made it easy for like-minded people to find and coordinate with each other, and some people favor perverse outcomes. Approximately 30% of people are willing to suffer an economic loss in order to inflict a greater loss on their opponents, and that personality type now controls one of the country's two major political parties.
  - Digit-Al 3y ago
    Just a heads up. I could be wrong, but I believe you meant to say "encourage kids" instead of "enrage kids" lol. I was a bit confused until I worked it out.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      Well-spotted, thanks; I've corrected it. The monospaced serif font in the HN reply box is not conducive to proofreading.
  - quags 3y ago
    Another example would be Bloomberg as mayor of NYC. A sugar tax was attacked as an attack on the poor, minorities, overreach of government, attack on freedom to name a few. I can’t see it being supported any time soon by another politician as Bloomberg was in a position to be able self fund a campaign and be a bit more drastic in certain areas. You mention Michelle Obama who got more crap as well for trying to get kids to exercise as well.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      Good point. I disliked Bloomberg as an individual (although he proves me wrong in that height isn't everything) but thought the sugar tax was a great idea. I was quite depressed by the reaction to it, because a lot of left-leaning people took umbrage at it, citing the popularity of soda among minorities and the poor. I was more into party politics at the time, and was astonished at how intense and sustained the opposition was on Democratic forum sites. Thoughtful arguments about public health policy, corporate greed, agricultural subsidies, etc. etc. were dismissed with bullshit rhetoric about people's right to enjoy their favorite soda flavor. It was organic too, in the sense of not being astroturfed - I knew the people on the forums quite well, but they just dumped all their regular principles once they felt they were affected b¥ an issue that hit their taste buds.
- mahmoudhossam 3y ago
  What prevents companies from bribing the next guy though? It worked well enough the first time and the funds are already in the budget for this.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  What should a more effective regulator be doing with respect to food?
- nradov 3y ago
  Expanding the regulatory state is the last thing we need. Instead we should constrain the power of unelected regulators to set rules in most areas, thus decreasing the impact of regulatory capture. If restricting sugary foods is a good idea then let the elected politicians do so directly and take the heat for it. Don't allow them to escape responsibility by delegating their authority to bureaucrats.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

In a competitive system is it selfishness or survival?

bloppe 3y ago

Clearly people are choosing sugary products. The only thing that would be inappropriate for food companies to do would be to lie about the health effects of that sugar. This article seems to imply they're lying (or at least misleading) quite a bit.

fbdab103 3y ago
Don't forget <s>bribing</s> funding researchers to say fat was worse than sugar [0] >Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings chronologically into a narrative case study. The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development. [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  Careful though because all that doesn't mean fat isn't a cause of CHD. As far as I can tell the evidence for fat's relation to CHD was not fabricated by teh sugar lobby, it was only drummed up to try and hide the evidence for sugar's role.
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    I am admittedly not up to date on the latest literature, but my understanding was that sugar was significantly worse than fat. Not necessarily that fat was free of negative health outcomes.

s1artibartfast 3y ago

Blaming Regulators or industry almost never works. Ultimately the consumer is the only one capable of making the thousand choices a day necessary. I'm not sure where the idea comes from that it that some government regulator should or even can micromanage the diet of ordinary citizens. The idea that it is possible for them to control the nutritional composition of food and the balance consumed is absurd at face value. Do some people actually want to live in a world where some bureaucrat manages their diet?

wredue 3y ago
As opposed to the world where corporations manage it, and they stuff everything with sugar? It sucks that this is the dichotomy, but yes, absolutely, a bureaucrat will probably end up getting better food to you than corporate interests.
asdfasgasdgasdg 3y ago
The idea that it is possible for them to control the nutritional composition of food and the balance consumed is absurd at face value. It doesn't seem that absurd to me. If the government banned the production and import of potato chips, you could still make them at home, but people would probably make a lot less of them. Unlike drugs, food is not conveniently hidden and the value is too low per unit volume to justify illicit production. Therefore food which is banned generally will not be produced at scale. If the government did set out to materially improve the dietary habits of the citizenry, it would definitely be possible. It would be politically infeasible and possibly tyranny, but it would be very doable.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I meant the word can in the context of a free society, with practical constraints. I agree that if you ignore the constraints it would be trivial. There are so many brutal and oppressive solutions it isn't even worth listing examples.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 3y ago

Madmallard 3y ago

There needs to be more strict management of the capacity for humans to screw other humans over. Thomas Hobbes talks about this a good amount in The Leviathan

paulddraper 3y ago

[flagged]

omginternets 3y ago
HN is not just one guy, you know …
- paulddraper 3y ago
  I'm looking at the top comments.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    I see the word "ban" in three places. A hypothetical, someone talking about artificial sweeteners, and your comment. Regulation and banning are different things.
  - omginternets 3y ago
    And?
  - blast 3y ago
    One guy writes all the top comments?
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      *One majority up votes all the top comments.
massysett 3y ago
To be fair, it might not be the same people on HN saying those two things. However it is just bizarre to see the social trends on this. On one hand tobacco has been stigmatized, and on the other pot is legalized. On one hand legislators propose banning sugary foods or taxing them, and on the other hand they legalize smartphone sports betting. It’s just bizarre.
deleted 3y ago

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

> As long as consumers are aware of the longer term costs I'm OK as long as consumers rather than society are expected to bear the longer term costs. There is nothing worse than hearing "legalize hard drugs!" followed by "let's sink billions of dollars into treatment for those poor drug addicts!"

timst4 3y ago

As if anyone had a choice about climate change. Cigarettes, oxy, sugar, and carbon are all alike in that their detrimental effects were hidden, downplayed, or denied for decades. Now, here we are with a destroyed ecosystem and rampant addiction. Choice is a meaningless word in the context of capitalism. There is only manipulation. Regulation was needed 60 years ago, and now we are the ones left holding the bag.

Buttons840 3y ago

Maybe I'm letting my own existential dread and depression into the policy debate, but I've often made short-sighted decisions because there's not much else to live for and little hope for the long-term in general. Why drink water instead of soda if you'll never be able to retire? Perhaps we should look for a political solution to this problem first. Anyone else ever felt this way, or am I just depressed?

tayo42 3y ago
eating like crap isnt going to help your depression besides a quick feeling of happiness/dopamin from sugar

omniglottal 3y ago

"As long as consumers are aware" is important, yet insufficient. Those consumers must also have alternative options available in the market. Competition isn't just on price, but on features. Consumers, aware, are pissed, but if a boycott means they starve, an agro company can just wait for the next season of insulin consumers.

koonsolo 3y ago

It depends on your countries health system of course. If that one is sponsored by the government, it's only fair to tax the shit out of unhealthy food.

alkibiades 3y ago
exhibit a of why we don’t want socialized medicine. because it justifies this exact thought process
- koonsolo 3y ago
  I'm from Belgium, and it's actually pretty great here to go to the docter, dentist, surgeon or pharmacy. Not the craziness of US. To each their own I guess.