Soda Ban In New York Spreads To Boston, Worries Local Restaurants

You're acting like a child.

 

When in the hell did I say anything about one hour?

Your comment, of course, ignores human behavior. When you have been physically active, did you want water, a sports drink, or a Dr. Pepper? Usually people who have engaged in physical activity do not choose a huge soda. They want water or Gatorade...or something else that will quench their thirst.

 

You did not say one hour, I'm making that comment based on ad campaigns that encourage a kid to get '60 minutes of activity a day' as if that's the magic number to solve the issue.

 

Because they won't. Because eating unhealthy is cheaper than eat healthy in the shot term.

 

An hour simply is not going to cut it. When I was a kid in the 80s, we would play outside after school, come in, watch tv and play games...then go back out until dinner. During the summer, we would play outside until mid afternoon...watchntv and play games during the heat of the day and then go back out until dinner.

The fact that kids sit on their asses all day very day playing games and have little to no activity is making them fat a lot more than sodas are. Also, sodas should have sugar rather than this HFCS crap.

Processed foods like HFCS provide your body with nothing to break down, so it goes right to storage (fat).

 

JD88, we live in a representative democracy, this is the people speaking (or as close to it as it will ever get). It's never been any different.

The problem with this discussion of whether a large Soda Ban should be pursued is that libertarians conflate freedom with freedom to choose a specific size of soft-drink. The ability to choose a 64 oz coke or an 18oz coke is quite far down on the totem pole of freedoms. It's so laughably far down that it diminishes the idea of freedom. It laughable because certain people will give the freedom to buy a 64oz coke more value than the freedom to be free of worry about health care, or where your child's next meal is coming from after you get laid off from your job.

This discussion also conflates demand for a product with justification of the product. This leads "free marketeers" to argue that if you want to affect change you should simply stop buying the product. The sad fact is that these are the same arguments that people would use with respect to cigarette manufacturers. You can't expect companies to act in the social good, so we don't, we regulate them in an attempt to achieve adequate outcomes.

 

Tyranny of the majority is still wrong even if it's democratic. We can all vote to take your house away if we want. The people have spoken! It's all good!

Now you're conflating freedom (no one can stop me from choosing to purchase a drink from a willing party) with entitlement (everyone else is forced to pay for my health care).

Personally I find this nickel-and-dime tyranny insidious in its own way, elites trying to control the behavior of the populace.

The whole idea of freedom is that we aren't required to justify our personal choices to anyone else. To each his own. Different strokes for different folks. Live and let live. Mind your own business. Etc.

The left is like the little town from Footloose, except it's soda instead of dancing. All this control and restriction is justified for the good of society of course.

 

That is a ridiculous exaggeration and in no way applies to the application and purpose of this law.

Here we go with more talking point vomit words. Elites? You mean our elected government? Our given freedoms as Americans are wonderful but are in now way, and have never been, all encompassing. You can not do what you want, when you want, how you want and it has never been that way. Again, can you choose to drive without a seat belt without repercussion (from the Elites)? I won't even get started about how ridiculous it is for a staunch republican such as yourself to act like you want a laissez faire, "to each his own" society. Please.

 

No I mean people in power who think it's their job to impose their vision of good private behavior on the rest of us. They are supposed to serve us, not control us.

As long as you're not impacting someone else's ability to do the same, you should be able to do what you want. Pursuit of happiness and all that. I agree it usually isn't that way, freedom is not the natural order of things.

An argument could be made that wearing no seat belt endangers other drivers, so I'm ok with it as a requirement. But if it's just about personal safety, people can decide what risks they want to take with their lives. Otherwise why not ban motorcycles and skydiving and bungee jumping?

when have I claimed otherwise?

 

I think the argument with regard to this law is that people being fat in society have all sorts of external costs that the rest of us have to pay for. So their decisions do affect the rest of us.

I don't think there's any doubt this law would reduce obesity. There is plenty of research that people eat and drink what is available and but if less is provided, they don't miss it. And while you can still get refills, that assumes you're still at the location - for much of the fast food obesity problem, this simply lessens total consumption with to-go traffic.

My problem with the law is more its arbitrariness. There are lots of junk foods and unhealthy items out there, and to single out sodas just seems more attacking symptoms rather than core problems. I'd prefer taxing HFCS or not subsidizing unhealthier foods, etc.

 

Agreed, isn't this law in place to serve us? The obesity issue facing this nation is extremely underrated. You know as well as I do, people will not but their sodas down, no matter how many commercials are played, no matter how much information is passed out. This serves the people who consume to much sugar as well as those of us who have to pay for their health down the road. This does not take away peoples ability to get soda, just makes it harder, just like raising the price of cigs.

That was an unfair generalization and I take it back.

 

The representatives elected by the people is just as much of a justification in this country as saying that X is better than Y because X gives people more choices. Neither one offers any more or less justification for a policy.

No, you are conflating the freedom to chose something arbitrary with the actual freedoms that matter to human life like life, liberty, and happiness. Your view on what constitutes freedom is absurd and renders the term inert; moreover, you use your limited sense of the idea of freedom as a bludgeon as if it is the only definition. So, intending to pare down the meaning of freedom, you excise off legitimate freedoms like life by arbitrarily choosing to call them entitlements. You have yet to justify why the freedoms afforded to individuals by good health are somehow less legitimate than the freedoms to choose between a 18oz and a 64oz coke.

Well, personally, I find the tyranny of language used by those who raise a huff over arbitrary freedoms to be insidious in that it undermines the ability of this country to enact legislation that overall increases the freedom of the populace. By narrowing the definition of the word freedom, you actually do damage to the freedoms of individuals.

That's not the whole idea of freedom, it's a limited part of it. Freedom is a term used to define a whole panoply of rights. Some of which matter more and are sometimes run orthogonal to other freedoms.

The self-professed libertarians can't see past their own nose when it comes to what freedom is and which matter in most in life. So they choose to artificially constrain the meaning to their own myopic sense of the term ignoring that other individuals have different and legitimate views on what are freedoms matter.

 

You have the freedom to obtain health care, no one can stop you.

Being entitled to health care places a burden on others, who are forced (against their will if need be) to work and pay for your care.

 

No kidding it places a burden on others, many freedoms run orthogonal to other freedoms. You might think that the freedom to be able to buy a 64 oz coke and not just an 18 oz coke is a freedom that truly matters, while the freedom to know you can afford health care does not, but that's a painfully limited view of freedom.

Sure, the freedom to choose between a 64 oz coke and a 18oz is a freedom, but it isn't nearly as important as the freedom to know that if you get laid off from your job your family won't have to starve on the street. And it sure doesn't matter more than the freedom to know you won't be ruined by medical debt if by the vagaries of fate you are struck down by illness. You don't care about these because you don't care about actual freedoms, you care about arbitrary freedoms. I said it before - your definition of freedom is so limited as to render the idea of freedom inert.

 

Who is choosing matters I would think. Others telling me what to do is not freedom. I readily agree we must give up some freedom from our natural state to be in and benefit from society, but how much and which are a matter for debate, no?

The other thought is where does this stop, or does it? Do we all get chia seed cubes to eat every meal, every day, because that would be healthier than steak and eggs? I don't like that future. Part of being human is engaging in negative pleasures (from bungy jumping to smoking) and I don't want to stifle that with BANS when there are alternative routes to the same goal (look at the studies comparing mandatory PE for kids vs no, for example).

 

But this happens no matter what. If we ban sodas, we are telling the person what they can or can't drink. If we don't ban sodas, then we are telling everyone else they have to pay for other people who are a burden on society.

 

That assumes a ban of soda is the only mechanism to solve/reduce the problem. IMO a ban is the most extreme solution, to be enacted only when no alternatives are available. The presumption has to be against government banning practices. Otherwise you are on a slippery slope.

In addition, you can get health problems from your backyard grill, peanut butter, salt, and a billion other things. Are we going to ban all of those because of potential health costs?

 

I agree with all of this and am opposed to the ban because I think it's a bad and unreasonable solution to the problem. My only point is that it's not really a "freedom" issue because no matter what route you take here, someone is losing their freedom.

 

You are assuming that if there is some less obtrusive mechanism to accomplish a goal you cannot attempt to accomplish that goal without using the most unobtrusive means. Additionally, I feel like you are misconstruing the ban here because the ban is not on all soda only certain sized sodas.

HayesStreet, while you are correct in that there is no limiting principle in allowing for targeted bans to correct for perceived social ills and you could face a slippery slope, there is no limiting principle in the other direction as well. Say I believe in individual freedom to choose all things. I would necessarily believe that my choice should not be in any way constrained by any type of collective action, and I would necessarily be against any type of regulation of anything - I would be against regulation by government, and I would even be against self-regulation by business because it artificially constrains individual consumers' choices. There is a slippery slope in either direction - that's why we try to have a democratic system of government with 3 branches to keep us from falling down either side.

Every action taken constrains individual freedom to choose, even if it is constraining my freedom to choose inaction. The EPA, by setting carbon emissions standards, constrains my choice because I can no longer purchase the enormous automobile I want. Courts, by voiding race restrictive covenants on deeds, constrain my choice to convey my property in the manner I want it to be conveyed. Subsidies for corn constrain my choice by crowding out other options. The Social Security system constrains my choice by taking my money and paying into the system whether I want it to or not. Zoning constrains my choice of what I can build on my land. City ordinances prohibiting watering at certain hours of the day constrain my choice to choose to be able to consume as much as water as I want for whatever purpose I want at whatever hour I want. Taxes of any sort by any level of government constrain my choice because they are necessarily spent in manners in which I personally will not choose. Any action constrains the freedoms available to an individual, so the question is always to what degree does it constrain individual freedom (at what cost) and to what end (at what benefit).

For the above reasons, to say you are against a ban on large sized soda because it violates peoples' freedom to choose seems like a silly argument to me. To rail against it because there are better ways to get at the goal seems less silly to me because, while there is always a better way to do something and we shouldn't let the existence of a better option constrain us into inaction, we should at least try to make the best policy we can. As Major points out, freedoms get trampled either way you cut it. In this case, the trade off is the freedom to buy and sell large sodas balanced against the freedoms of tax payers not to have to pay the consequences. So, is there a better way to achieve this goal? Probably. They could ban soda all together, that would probably be more effective at cutting obesity than simply a ban on large sodas but the costs would be higher as choice would be constrained even more. They could provide monetary incentives to individuals not to buy sodas. That would maximize the freedoms of individuals to buy whatever size of soda they wanted at the additional expense of tax payers. Or ****, they could fine fat people like they wanted to do in Arizona under Jan Brewer. Or they could just leave the status quo - people get to choose whatever soda they want and tax payers foot the bill down the line.

 

I am asserting that if another mechanism can address the problem, and it is not the most extreme option, we should do that first.

Never said that.

I never proposed anarchy. In fact I went to great lengths to express an understanding that being a part of society means there are certain tradeoffs with "freedom" to chose your own path.

I think your position that our choice is BAN or INACTION is silly. That isn't the choice.

Nope, that a false scenario (no pun intended). Those are not the only choices (and even then there is no guarantee this ban is anything more than a band aid to the problem). Again, taking the most extreme action, that infringes the most, should not be the first option IMO. Don't see what is unreasonable about that.