NY Soda ProhibitionFollow

Sure. But if we're going to balance that on one side of the freedom scale and government passing a law mandating what can be sold on the other, there's really no contest, right? No matter how weighted a choice appears, there's still a choice. Contrasted to not having the choice at all, it's not hard to see which course of action curtails freedom and which doesn't.

Freedom has to include the freedom to make bad choices, else it's not freedom at all. Put another way, if we empower government to take away all the choices which it decides aren't good choices, how is that different than the government simply taking all choices away from us? There's always some choice that could be quantified as "better" than another. Thus, we could follow this logic to the point of the government taking all choices away but the one it's decided is the "best choice". At that point, we have zero freedom, right?


The same rationale used to justify limiting soda purchases to a certain size can be used to justify a specific "ideal" size. Thus eliminating all choice in the matter (and think of the money we'd save if there was only one size cup that ever had to be manufactured). Similarly, we could eliminate choices of drinks to the one "ideal" drink. We could eliminate all meal choices to the one "ideal" meal. Slippery slope? Sure. But there's no reason why a government which could mandate the size of the drink you can buy cannot (or even should not) also mandate the type of drink you can buy. It's a matter of what you've empowered the government to do and why. Failing to consider what other actions can be justified with the same argument is foolish IMO. It's not a matter of whether the next step in this kind of slope will occur, but when.

The same rationale used to justify limiting soda purchases to a certain size can be used to justify a specific "ideal" size.

Yeah, yeah, and the same rational used to justify speeding tickets can be used to justify summary execution of suspicious looking people. Who gives a fuck? Believe it or not, logic isn't an exercise in "finding the stupidest fucking metaphor possible".

Hey there irrational fear, so we meet again. Ha ha, just kidding. It never left.

What I find odd is he seems perfectly alright with people not being allowed to drive drunk in school zones as fast as they want. I guess soda is just that important.

Ha, I kid again. It isn't odd at all.

Which is why insurance companies charge more money for people who are higher risk. And they can even refuse to cover people who are considered too high risk to be worth covering. Do you understand that it is the very things that make a truly private insurance system "fair" that systems like Obamacare view as failures and attempt to correct? The entire point of getting government involved in mandating coverage is to ensure that the overweight smokers will have their health care paid for by the healthy people.

Whether they do it by simply charging everyone taxes and paying for everyone's health care directly, or mandating that insurance companies must cover everyone, mandating that everyone must buy insurance if they can, and then mandating the coverage that insurance must cover, doesn't matter. You're comparing one form of socialism to another, declaring them the same, and concluding that there's no way to avoid the problem of people who make good decisions having to pay for those who make bad ones.

There is a way to avoid this. Don't create mandates. Let the insurance companies choose who to cover and what to charge their customers. Let the buyers of insurance decide if the insurance is worth the cost. Let the market set the prices. Do this, and you'll see health care costs decrease dramatically across the board. People will find that for most health care, they don't need insurance. And for those things which do require insurance, the costs will be lower as well. Additionally, we'll find that people will actually take responsibility for their own health because they'll have to pay for themselves. Nothing like personal responsibility to drive good choices. And it'll do this while *not* infringing people's liberties. If someone wants to eat nothing but triple bacon cheeseburgers and supersized drinks, they can. But they'll have to deal with their health care costs as a result. They're free to make the bad choice, but have to pay for it.

Taking the responsibility for their actions out of the hands of the individual and to the government sounds great in the short run, but doing so also puts the power to regulate people's actions into the hands of the government. That's the problem. I'd much rather live in a world where I'm free to make whatever decisions I want, but I'm also expected to be responsible for the consequences of those decisions. That's freedom. You can't take away the responsibility for the choice without also taking away the freedom of the choice.

But they'll die with freedom.

What makes someone "deserve" health care though? I mean, we sling these words around without stopping to think about what they mean. Who gets to decide what people "deserve"? To my way of thinking, you don't deserve anything except the freedom to make your own decisions and take your own actions. You don't deserve health care, you purchase it. Just like you purchase any other good or service. If I take good care of my car, it'll cost me less to maintain it, right? Should I be forced to pay for someone else's car maintenance, regardless of how they care for it, because they "deserve" a car?

The larger point is that if you stop requiring people to pay for their own costs and expenses, they'll be less inclined to take any action to reduce those costs. And when we apply that to health care, this means that people will take less care with their own health. It's an interesting dilemma from an ethical perspective because on the one hand you have the inevitable number of people who will, through no fault of their own, become sick and require expensive care who might not be able to afford it, but on the other hand you have the inevitable number of people who, because they aren't responsible for the cost of their care, will not take care of their health and thus be more likely to fall ill to otherwise preventable ailments. Should the government step into this situation and choose one of those courses? Or should the government simply step aside and let nature (both human and natural) decide what happens?


Call me an old school conservative, but I think that human activities should always err on the side of not causing harm where possible. Doubly so in a case like this where there are massively negative economic and liberty aspects to the choice itself.

Then don't buy the soda. No one's forcing you to do anything here. But if someone wants to buy a larger soda and is prevented from doing so by law, that *is* an imposition on their freedom. I don't see how one is remotely balanced against the other.

That's why I said tricked instead of forced. I know you have this complete aversion to facts, but at least pretend to keep up, short stack.

Welcome to the point.

Let the insurance companies choose who to cover.

Haha. Or just go straight to single payer and don't bother with the wholesale collapse that would happen if you allow insurance companies to cut off coverage to people who cost them money. Lzaiez faire medical insurance markets work like this: "Let the sick people die".

We have one. Democracy. We decided health care was important and voted in a guy who said he'd create a system to provide it so we could obtain it. Then, four years later when the other guy was promising to do away with it, we voted in the first guy again.

The system works!

Edited, Mar 20th 2013 6:01pm by Jophiel

Well, you could say that 20oz drink are not for the common good.