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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   34833 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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An “authoritarian” solution by better than no solution

No, that is exactly what it is not.

especially when your absence of a solution is annihilation of the population.

You have failed to demonstrate this, certainly.

I am sure if we can go to the moon that we can establish a useful “harm tax”

Oh come on, that was a canard before I was born. And we could still go to the moon then.

given the usual complexity of tax law, would never be fully justifiable on a web forum.

A most marvelous formulation which, unfortunately, will not fit in the text box of this post, right?

First, one one carb drink is identical to all carb drinks. Carb drinks do not necessarily have to contain HFCS or simple sugars.

A carb drink for an athlete has to contain "fast carbs", simple sugars and/or short-chain polysaccharides. But the point is more general; there are many common products (including bulk flour and sugar) which are bad for some, good for others, and which therefore cannot be properly handled by any sort of "harm tax" on the product.

Second, there are a number of viable workarounds that can be implemented such as doctor’s permission or write-offs for healthy people.

These are not viable workarounds. If they were, you wouldn't need your "harm tax", you could just tax unhealthiness directly.

A trillion dollar problem can have a 20 billion dollar solution and be well worthwhile.

If the solution does not work, that its cost is less than that of the problem it fails to solve does not make it worthwhile.

It is demonstrated (certainly) that our health is ever-worsening with no end in sight. This, plus the fertility consequences of poor health, predicts future annihilation.

A carb drink for an athlete has to contain "fast carbs", simple sugars

It has unique benefits to the athlete, but we do not base the legality of things on what benefits an athlete. Complex carbohydrates are useful for athletes, and athletes can just deal with not having access to simple sugars not in the form of fruit.

X should be legal for Y therefore we can not make it illegal for non-Y

There are many medications and so on that are limited to certain groups of individuals. This is just not a strong criticism.

These are not viable workarounds

Why are they viable in so many contexts today, whether we’re talking about special allergy medications or special ADHD medicine?

It is demonstrated (certainly) that our health is ever-worsening with no end in sight.

There is no "our health". My health is excellent and not much changing presently.

It has unique benefits to the athlete, but we do not base the legality of things on what benefits an athlete. Complex carbohydrates are useful for athletes, and athletes can just deal with not having access to simple sugars not in the form of fruit.

Taking the position that I can't take Gatorade on a bike ride because someone else consumes too much sugar is part of the memeplex that has cemented my enmity against the public health complex.

There are many medications and so on that are limited to certain groups of individuals.

I don't think literally requiring a loicense to buy sugar is where I want society to go.

The loicense would be for non-taxed simple sugars for athletes

I don’t think ‘creating a black market in untaxed Gatorade’ is the best answer to obesity as a social crisis.

Consider (1) prohibitions are meant to reduce, not eliminate, (2) prohibitions have always worked to reduce in America, whether for alcohol or marijuana use (the latter having risen in legalized areas).

Black market would be a non-issue for Gatorade, which is a specially tailored product made by food scientists to cause habitual use. The black market would be for sugar, but since obesity is in part a problem of convenience, it’s still a non-issue. As someone who has smoked, I can assure you that tax-free tobacco is hard to come by.

Black market would be a non-issue for Gatorade, which is a specially tailored product made by food scientists to cause habitual use.

Got a cite for that? The original recipe was developed specifically for athletes to deal with dehydration by a doctor who specialized in renal medicine. As originally used by the Gators the recipe was: water, salt, sodium citrate, fructose, monopotassium phosphate, lemon juice and cyclamate. Current ingredients for lemon lime: water, sugar, dextrose, citric acid, salt, sodium citrate, monopotassium phosphate, gum arabic, glycerol ester of rosin, natural flavor, yellow 5. I see a swap from fructose to dextrose and plain sugar for sweetening, but both are simple sugars. The cyclamate, an artificial sweetener originally added along with lemon juice to make the concoction palatable, was fully dropped. Citric acid and natural flavor replacing lemon juice for something like the same flavor that won't go bad in a matter of days unrefrigerated. Gum arabic and glycerol ester of rosin are stabilizers, so you don't have the flavorings, sugar or the salts settling to the bottom of the bottle. And yellow 5 for color. Everything seems more in line with modifications so that it can sit in a bottle on a shelf without going bad, not attempts to make it addictive. The sugar and salts are there for a reason. Pure water is not great when dehydrated, the human body needs electrolytes (sugar and salts) as well. Plants are a different story.

It is demonstrated (certainly) that our health is ever-worsening with no end in sight. This, plus the fertility consequences of poor health, predicts future annihilation.

We're not seeing infertility due to poor health. And no, we don't see that our health is "ever worsening with no end in sight".

Complex carbohydrates are useful for athletes, and athletes can just deal with not having access to simple sugars not in the form of fruit.

And now your "harm tax" is itself causing harm, of the same sort it purports to prevent.

Why are they viable in so many contexts today, whether we’re talking about special allergy medications or special ADHD medicine?

Special allergy medications being by prescription actually turned out to be unworkable; most of them are over the counter now. The reason special exemptions to your various taxes for healthy people, gated by doctors, are not viable is that the scale of the exemption would need to be far too large.

We're not seeing infertility due to poor health

We sure are.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1701216318303694

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reproductive-problems-in-both-men-and-women-are-rising-at-an-alarming-rate/?amp=true

And no, we don't see that our health is "ever worsening with no end in sight".

We sure do, see OP post.

And now your "harm tax" is itself causing harm of the same sort it purports to prevent

This is genuinely nonsensical. An endurance athlete not having access to simple sugars might reduce performance, but the magnitude of the harm of sugar is, man, something like 100,000x the benefit it gives to endurance athletes (who are already healthy). You can be perfectly healthy without access to simple sugars, but obviously access to simple sugars is making many people grossly unhealthy.

but the magnitude of the harm of sugar is, man, something like 100,000x the benefit it gives to endurance athletes

I'd like to see a source for this bizarre statistic.

Why would you expect there to be a pre established source for such a comparison? Luckily for us we can reason without sources.

Sugar is not making the difference between an athlete improving their health or not. Sugar is for performance gain among vigorous exercisers. If they did not have sugar, their health would not reduce significantly, although their transient performance might. Sugar has led to obesity, though, which is 100,000 times worse for health averaging out across the population than the performance gains of sugar in exercisers. Eg, if you take out sugar, obesity will decrease, but exercisers won’t take anything approaching a hit that would cancel out the decrease in obesity

All you did was base one thing without a source on something else without a source.

You believe that there are athletes who would not exercise without sugar? And that this loss in health among people who exercise is greater than the loss of health from people who are addicted to sugar?

We do not need a source for common sense thinking, and it is disingenuous to demand a source for something that obviously cannot have one. There is nothing wrong with reasoning on your own, from evidence that a reasonable person can agree on. We do this all the time.

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