Sunday 3 June 2012

Ban on Super Size

Hi guys, welcome to Orygyn!

Sorry, it's been too long. To introduce this post, I need to talk about long past YouTube drama. In 2009, a number of high-profile YouTubers engaged in video debates with a YouTuber called Lee Doren, more commonly known as HowTheWorldWorks. At the time, he worked for a libertarian think tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and he has a history of dishonesty in making his videos. It's been a while since any of my subscriptions made a video about him, but the most recent 1 concerns his opposition to a New York ban on 16oz+ drinks containing more than 25 calories per 8 oz from delis, restaurants, concession stands, movie theatres and other public areas where such drinks can be bought, but not convenience stores or supermarkets. 2 of my subscriptions responded to Lee's video with essentially the same criticism: "there are much bigger problems out there".

Given Lee's reputation, this post is unlikely to win fans with many viewers, if there will be any, but I agree with him here. The logic of the ban is to discourage obesity and encourage healthier consumption choices but I fundamentally disagree with banning anything as a way to go about it, except when any characteristic of the food or drink which could possibly be valued by the consumer can be exactly replaced by a healthier option. In other words, if a drink can look, smell and taste exactly the same when the sugar is replaced by a healthier substitute, ban away. This is clearly not the case with the NY ban and appealing to the notion of "first world problems" is a very poor way to dismiss legitimate criticisms of it. Let me explain.

First off, there can only be 1 worst problem in the world, and due to the subjective nature of "bad" or "suffering", we will likely never agree on what problem that might be. This should be embarrassingly obvious to everyone. To lump something into the category of "first world problems", so you can then ignore it, is an exercise in arbitrarily deciding which problems are significant and which aren't, a decision which is also subjective. Lee's argument appeals to the notion of freedom which has significant implications for the idea of ignoring it. The community that I'm a part of on YouTube is, for the most part, very liberal. Many of us are for abortion and euthanasia and against the drug wars and Middle East wars. To anyone who fits that criteria, but agrees that the issue should be dismissed as a "first world problem" and allow the ban to be enacted, a justification is required. Like drugs and euthanasia, this is an issue of freedom. What particular characteristics of the NY ban make it any different? I oppose the ban because the 1 significant potential justification that I mentioned earlier falls short of a reason to enact the ban. If there's a problem with obesity, the answer is providing the relevant information on the drink and, beyond that, education in schools. Chances are the recommended daily intake of sugar, fat, and many other chemicals is already present on the drink, so education is the more relevant solution.

The videos addressing Lee's criticisms, that I saw from my subscriptions, suggested that you can get around the ban by buying 2. This is where I would have a problem with individual vendors. I support your right to sell any size of drink and have no judgement of anyone for selling very large drinks, but to provide a price incentive for those really large drinks is something I'd have a problem with. I still support your right to do it, but I would find that to be very distasteful.

I want to end by saying that if freedom is your thing, follow through, even on minor issues.

8<{D-

5 comments:

  1. "I fundamentally disagree with banning anything as a way to go about it, except when any characteristic of the food or drink which could possibly be valued by the consumer can be exactly replaced by a healthier option."

    If the healthier option is not more expensive than the less healthy option then businesses would make that switch from the less healthy alternative to the healthier alternative voluntarily due to the fact that consumers almost universally value their health and would thus prefer to buy the healthier beverage over the equal-cost, equal-tasting, less-healthy beverage. There would thus be no reason to impose a ban.

    This makes me wonder why you even mentioned this exception. Perhaps you disagree that cost is a characteristic of the drink that is possibly valued by the consumer? I'm not sure why you would think this, but in case you do think this:

    Let's assume that this healthier alternative costs more than the current less healthy beverage. You can buy Yummy Beverage A for $X or Yummy Beverage B for $(nX), where n>1. The two beverages are similar in all respects except for the cost to produce the beverages and the fact that most people agree that Beverage B is healthier for you.

    Some consumers prefer the healthier Beverage B despite being more expensive while other consumers prefer the less healthy Beverage A because it is less expensive. People voluntarily choose to make, sell, and purchase whichever beverages they want.

    By imposing a ban on Beverage A, not only would you be violating peoples' right to sell Beverage A (in my view, violating peoples' rights is a sufficient reason to oppose the ban), but also you would be preventing consumers from having the option to decide for themselves how much they value their health relative to other things.

    If Beverage B was only a very small amount healthier than Beverage A, but was three or four times the cost, then obviously (I hope) you would not support the ban because clearly the very small increase in healthiness is not worth such a large increase in cost. You and the vast majority of other consumers would prefer the cheaper, slightly-less-healthy beverage than the over-priced slightly-more-healthy beverage.

    If Beverage B was far healthier than Beverage A and cost only slightly more, then most likely you and the vast majority of consumers would prefer to buy Beverage B over beverage A. In this situation, as in the situation where A and B cost the same, the fact that consumers almost universally value their health would lead businesses to almost exclusively sell Beverage B only, since almost nobody would rather buy Beverage A.

    So the market appears to solve this problem itself. Let's examine a third situation, however. Let's imagine that the relative costs and healthiness of the two beverages is such that roughly 70% of consumers prefer the healthier, more-expensive Beverage B, while roughly 30% of consumers prefer the less healthy, less expensive Beverage A. Assuming that you are part of the 70%, let's consider why you might want to impose a ban on Beverage A.

    One reason may be that it is in your self-interest (and the self-interest of the rest of the 70%) to do so, because any business that wished to sell the Beverage would have to sell the version that you prefer, version B.

    ....continued:

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  2. ...continued:

    Another reason may be that you think you would be helping the 30% by making it so that they can only buy the healthier alternative--the alternative that you think is better for them.

    So again, freedom is a right and only individuals can take other individuals' freedoms away. You probably don't care about violating peoples' rights, though, at least in this instance (if you did then you would be opposed to all bans, without exception). Thus, I will again mention what taking away peoples' freedoms means in this context:

    By imposing a ban on beverage A you would be preventing consumers from having the option to decide for themselves how much they value their health relative to other things. The 30% would rather buy the less expensive, less healthy Beverage A than the more expensive, healthier Beverage B. Yet, through the act of your ban you would be saying that you think that you are better able to determine how much people ought to value their health relative to other things than those 30% of people. Are you really that pompous?

    Lastly, assuming that you aren't really that full of yourself and would not support the ban, there is still one more instance where I would need to persuade you to eliminate this exception from your opposition to banning things.

    Imagine again that A and B are the same in every respect, *including cost*, except that B is regarded as much better for your health.

    I originally said that the market would take care of this problem and that there would thus be no need to impose a ban, since businesses would probably stop completely stop selling A and would only sell B since almost all of their customers value their health.

    This is true, but to to get to root of the moral problem let's imagine that one person would still rather buy the less healthy Beverage A for whatever reason. Maybe he just wants to exercise his rights.

    In this instance, would you really support threatening to use violence against someone... let's use me as an example... to prevent me from selling the less healthy beverage to this person who wants to purchase it?

    This is what the ban is. I'm trying to get you to see the gun in the room (like the "elephant in the room"). To ban something is not just to decide as a collective that "we" don't want people to sell it. Rather, you are deciding as an individual to use physical force against other individuals to prevent them from peacefully interacting with each other in a voluntary manner.

    And actually, when you ban something through the state, you are also threatening others (taxpayers) with violence to force them to pay for the costs of banning a thing. Thus, not only are you threatening people want to sell Beverage A, but you are also threatening people who do not want to pay for your law enforcers to threaten violence against people who want to sell A.

    So many people manage to just ignore this fact when determining their political views, but it's very important that you see it for what it is. Perhaps you may want to try imagining yourself making the threats of violence personally, rather than the police officers and other law enforcers who actually end up using the physical force when people fail to obey the state's demands.

    Somehow I doubt that you would ever point a gun at me for selling the less healthy beverage A. Very few people would. And yet, by supporting a ban on beverage A--for whatever reason--you would be supporting having other people point guns at me for selling beverage A.

    As the narrator says in George Ought to Help ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGMQZEIXBMs ):

    "If we feel negatively towards the idea of threatening George personally, can we really be comfortable with the threats made against him by agents of the state?"

    Peace.

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  3. "I want to end by saying that if freedom is your thing, follow through, even on minor issues."

    And if freedom isn't my thing, then what? Is it okay for me to take peoples' freedoms away from them? No. Peoples' freedoms should be respected even on minor issues regardless of whether or not freedom is "your thing" (whatever that means). The slogan that I made for my blog makes that exact point: "advocating peace in all situations, at all times, without exception." You should *always* respect peoples rights. To take away a person's freedom is to violate that person's rights.

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    Replies
    1. "Imagine again that A and B are the same in every respect, *including cost*, except that B is regarded as much better for your health."

      This is the criteria I specified for enacting the ban. I agree with you on the cases you mentioned before this scenario. In this scenario there is no possible benefit in choosing option A at all. Logically, a vendor would emphasise the greater health benefits or lesser health risks of option B, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the vast majority of people would voluntarily choose option B, in fact psychological effects of having a different label on the bottle or marketing it as a new product might turn people off. For example, where I live, it is seen as uncool to buy Weight Watchers cakes or biscuits.

      In an absolute worst case scenario, what if A was actually poisonous? Since I know you're an anarchist, I know that your position would be consistent here, but even if market forces make poison vendors uncompetitive, they will still inevitably find consumers among the first few people they sell to. There would be no way in advance to know what a particular vendor will sell.

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    2. "Logically, a vendor would emphasise the greater health benefits or lesser health risks of option B, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the vast majority of people would voluntarily choose option B, in fact psychological effects of having a different label on the bottle or marketing it as a new product might turn people off."

      If both A and B were sold then I can see your point that some consumers would still buy A due to different marketing, etc, but I think you're missing something: The vast majority of businesses wouldn't even sell A. Why would they? Why would they bother to stock two products that are equal in every way (including cost) except that one is less healthy? I can understand that some consumers would choose to buy A due to marketing, but it seems very unlikely that any business would choose to sell A in the first place.

      "In an absolute worst case scenario, what if A was actually poisonous?"

      I was actually considering using poison as an example earlier when I said:

      "To get to root of the moral problem let's imagine that one person would still rather buy the less healthy Beverage A for whatever reason. Maybe he just wants to exercise his rights [or maybe A is poison and he wants to buy it because he wants a tasty way to commit suicide]."

      In this case, the person who wishes to buy the poisonous beverage A would not be the ignorant consumer that you imagine accidentally buying a product that he prefers less than another product, but rather would be a conscientious consumer intentionally and knowledgeably buying the product that he truly prefers.

      Perhaps another reason why someone may want to buy a poisonous beverage (other than to commit suicide or give it to someone else to kill them or some other reason that you may not agree with) would be to test its affects on an animal in some scientific experiment (perhaps its poisonous to humans, but not poisonous to this animal). Surely in such a case you would not want to violently prevent someone from selling beverage A to the scientist to do his work? Must you add exceptions to your exception or can you just respect peoples' rights and not worry about the rare instances in which you might want to violate them?

      Your poison example is different so I will respond to it as well:

      If a product is poison and I tell my customers that it's non-poison then I am committing fraud. You wouldn't ban my poison to deal with the problem you are illustrating, but rather would seek compensation from me for fraud and the damages that the poison causes to my customers who bought the poison thinking it was non-poison. If you think that beverage A should be banned because it is poison then detergent should also be banned because it is poisonous to drink. Your detergent company should be held responsible for committing fraud if it advertises its poisonous detergent as safe to drink, but detergent should not be banned.

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