You can't really legislate fatness away directly, no. It's not like you can make an anti-fat law. You can tax junk food, which will work to an extend in curbing consumption of it. It worked, by-and-large, with tobacco products, and they are addictive. It won't totally eliminate the problem, sure.


Edit: as others have already said, although the young and old can be burdens, they are not deliberately and irresponsibly engaging in self-destructive and socially damaging behaviours. They also can't reasonably control being young or old. You CAN control how much food you put into you. You won't get fat if you don't consume more calouries than you burn. It's as simple as that and is very basic physics. The energy you consume must go somewhere if you don't burn it. What makes this worse is that these obese people get classified as "disabled" when the only disability they have is self-control. Then they whine and moan to be treated with kid gloves and get special treatment at public expense.


As for the comment about the first world, especially America, it would be fair and accurate to criticize their unethical consumption behaviour as well. I do believe I have, so for those, don't try to pretend as if I am just picking on fatty. Most Americans could stand to cut needlessly wasteful behaviour and still live good lives, including waste in diet. The average could stand to reduce his diet and probably be better off. Thanks for mentioning it.

however, if you really want to deal with the old people, I advocate the duty to die under certain circumstances.

Well, I actually saw a blog that was recommending liposuction and turning it into biodiesel.

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National Debt =

Well, it used to be free.

And your silly interpretation of things I've said in various threads is absurd. If you would have read more closely, you would have seen a consistent pattern of opposition to large/powerful federal governments and a pattern of thinking that the government has no right to protect people from themselves.

Freedom is only abused when it directly harms someone else, e.g. exercising your right to bear arms by shooting your neighbor for no reason.

No, the government doesn't have to nanny (by which, if you'd paid attention, I mean this notion of taking care of the citizens from cradle to grave, e.g. providing numerous social services). If people choose to do stupid things then let them bear the consequences of their own actions. The fact of the matter is that we (at least in America) don't need much governance and what little we do need should be kept as local as possible.

But if someone gets fat then that's their problem and that person can bear the consequences. It's the kind of thing in the article I linked in the original post that I object to when I show my utter contempt for the nanny staters. It is not the role of government to protect people from themselves or to dictate to individuals what and how much they can consume. If anything, these people should be rewarded because they're being such great consumers, which is exactly what the American government wants us all to be.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Goodness forbid that fat people actually pay the social costs of...being fat. =D

There are no "social costs." They should, however, pay for their own obesity-induced illnesses and should have to pay for however many seats on an aircraft they actually occupy.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

No, there actually are social costs. You're dead wrong, as usual. Their obesity not only raises food costs, it wastes food energy. It also creates unnecessary pollution, additional fuel use, and costs people more for transport, which raises costs for others. Obesity also manufactures illnesses that waste social resources that can be better spent elsewhere. Obesity also increases costs for employers and decreases, like smoking, work efficiency in some enterprises. This is all bad for society.

It's not my problem you don't recognize or understand that society is not made up of people living in isolated bubbles or costs beyond yourself. That's your deficiency.

No, obesity does not raise food costs. It is damned idiotic of you to even suggest such a thing. I can just picture it: some 500-pound broad on Welfare is sitting on the couch in her trailer in West Virginia watching Oprah and then, all of a sudden, her obesity just magically causes the prices at the Kroger's down the road to go up. No, prices go up because the people who make those decisions CHOOSE to raise prices. As for wasting food energy, what the hell are you talking about???? Yes, an obese person has to expend more energy to carry out the most basic mobility than an average-sized person but it isn't so much waste (because it is actually being used for its intended purpose) as it is inefficient. But so what? It isn't affecting your food energy in the least. And, no, being obese does not create pollution. Again, let's take that fat lady in West Virginia: I can just picture it now. She's there sitting on the couch - but this time she's watching Jerry Springer - and all of a sudden her obesity is somehow magically increasing the level of pollution in the air.

It also doesn't cost any more to transport food that is purchased by obese people than it does to transport food that is purchased by skinny people.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

The fact is that they often eat more food that means more food has to be produced (thus raising prices), and more food has to be transported (thus increasing pollution).

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Often, but not always. Even so, Americans often eat more than Ethiopians eat. So what?

No, having to produce more food does not somehow magically cause prices to mysteriously rise all by itself! No, prices rise because PEOPLE CHOOSE to raise prices. Besides, the need to produce more means there's more of a market and, thus, more potential profit for the farmers.

It would still have to be transported if Americans had more kids or had a large influx of immigrants. So what? You have a choice: either the farmers get to make more money (from selling more crops) or the air gets to be just a little less polluted.

Shame on you for wanting to put the farmers out of business!

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

They eat from a different market and so their food prices are not related to ours.

I find it surprising that you haven't heard of supply and demand. I'll tell you, in this thing, let's call it a free market, where all the goods are traded, when demand for one good goes up, than the price goes up, following that, the increased price causes more people to produce that good, to increase supply, than the price goes down a bit, but not as far as it went up to begin with. So what we have is increased demand, leads to both an increased supply and an increased price.

we're not talking about kids or immigrants, so that strawman is meaningless.

And I don't want to put them out of business, only make them dirt poor and live as slaves to the nanny state. :azn:

If the food prices go down, than they get to take that extra land (that they don't use for food, because of lower demand) and put it too something else to generate money for them, like biofuels or micro solar plants.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides