I'd prefer to make my own choices on what I eat and drink. I'm a big boy and I can make my own informed decisions, and the sanctimonious tone of this practice is insufferable. "We know better than you ignorant masses, so we're going to save you from yourself".
I also like that they lead with an image of Coke Zero, which has no sugar nor calories, and happens to be my drink of choice. But I made that choice myself, without my employer or government telling me I had to.
I completely agree with you about making our own decisions on our health, and very much oppose soda taxes. That said, as I read it, UCSF didn't ban soda, they made a decision, as an institution, not to stock it on campus. While not technically a private organization, they should still have the ability to choose what they offer their employees. By the same token, employees should be able to bring their own soda and seek employment somewhere that does stock sodas.
"UCSF didn't ban soda, they made a decision, as an institution, not to stock it on campus."
This calls to mind "Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness"[0]. It discusses, in part, setting up decisions and choices so that the default choice is in the best interest of the decider. (It's been a while since I read it. Improvements on my sentence-long summary welcome :) They also discuss what they term "liberal paternalism".[1] Good, interesting stuff if this are interests you.
This seems in line with the decision UCSF made. You still have the choice to drink sugary soda. They're just not going to make it as easily available.
Where this line is drawn is often going to be contentious. That said, there's always going to be some sort of line, right? Why this is being called into question now is that something is changing. At some point in the past, soda machines weren't on campus. Putting them on campus likely didn't have this same issue. But it did change the environment, and opened up more choice. What choices should be made available? All legal ones? All healthy ones? I think it's an interesting and valid question, one that needs to take into account both the individual and the community as a whole.
Why is it when a public org makes a decision on your behalf it is paternalism, but when a company decides to put 10-15 teaspoons of sugar in almost every drink you have access to, it is choice?
The situation is actually more complicated than your question suggests because a public university is a mashup of government, corporation, and parent.
So the simple answer to your question is that your relationship to government is not voluntary and is backed by the the use of force. If the government forbids something from being sold you have no legal recourse beyond leaving the jurisdiction.
If a company makes a change that is unwelcome, the market readily adapts to providing alternative solutions that are more welcomed by the market.
The relationship you have with a corporation can easily be replaced unlike the relationship you have with your government.
Lots of policy conundrums with public schools disappear when you consider the same situation at a private school: religious content, political philosophy, gender segregation, choice of beverages to provide, and so on. That isn't to say that policy choices don't have pros and cons, just that in a private entity the policy choices are un-complicated by constitutional concerns or by concerns about them being universally applied (to all public schools, for example).
"The relationship you have with a corporation can easily be replaced unlike the relationship you have with your government."
That was exactly my (counter)point. Your argument is theoretical, but in practice often the relationship with a company is as difficult to change as with government.
The example raised of sugary drinks, in practice, due to aggressive marketing and positioning meant that sugary drinks were the only option in most places I lived for quite some time (school, public places, fast food, work) unless you had access to a tap. (The bottling of water in the last few years has made a dent in that stranglehold.) Clearly the market can be easily manipulated at least in the short term, with advertising, market monopolisation, lies from sugar industry lobbyists..
"just that in a private entity the policy choices are un-complicated by constitutional concerns or by concerns about them being universally applied"
Arguable. Private policy choices, if economically successful create internal feedback effects and spread. (Bear in mind economics does not follow peoples values, wishes or best interests.. at best it follows their desires, and not even always). But even otherwise, it matters little if you are one of the unfortunate kids attending that school with skewed religious / political content.
Do you accept it as a compromise for a state subsidised healthcare system?
"I want free/subsidised healthcare" and "I want to gradually erode my health without realising it OR incredibly cheaply OR because in helpless to not do so" are normally incompatible.
It is definitely consistent as a compromise for state subsidized healthcare, but it's also perfectly consistent to think that the state should neither nudge people away from soda or subsidize healthcare.
If someone says that they would prefer it if the state lowered taxes rather than subsidizing healthcare, then healthcare gets subsidized anyway, and then soda gets regulated and that same person objects, it seems a bit disingenuous for the government to then argue that it is entitled to regulate soda because it's paying for that person's healthcare.
Seat belts and helmets protect the individual using them, so no they shouldn't be required.
Heroin hurts the individual using, so it should be warned against but not criminalized. You can't stop self harm by inflicting harm on the perpetrator. See also the regulation of marijuana which is a huge waste of money and only creates more problems than it solves. Compare with suicide prevention.
Vaccines protect the population as a whole through herd immunity, so are different from your other examples.
You do use seat belts for the safety of others. Back seat passengers without seat belts increase the risk of front seat passengers dramatically during a crash. And front seat passengers without belts run the chance of turning in to a mansize projectile endangering all in an arch in front of the vehicle.
You could also ague that anything that lowers the severity of traffic accidents lessens the work need by police and clean up crews. Effectively protecting them as working roadside can be a risky job.
> Seat belts and helmets protect the individual using them, so no they shouldn't be required.
Seat belts protect other people from you. If you are driving at street speeds and have to make a sudden sharp turn to evade something, such as a deer or child or pet that has darted into the road, you are much more likely to lose control if you are not wearing a seat belt due to centrifugal forces moving you away from your normal position upright and in front of the steering wheel.
Do you think that insurance companies should have the right to withhold coverage from people who don't use seat belts or helmets? Also, do you think the State should have the right to withhold drivers' licenses from people who cannot get insurance?
Wouldn't that come down to liability vs comprehensive? As it is, states only require liability insurance, which seems unlikely to be affected by my wearing of seatbelts or helmets. Helmets are optional in several states, yet I've never heard of that causing a problem for acquiring motorcycle insurance.
It is ironic that they showed Coke Cherry Zero when it says they replaced all the sugary drinks (except natural fruit juices) with water and zero-calorie drinks.
(Coke Zero is also my first choice and I didn't know it came in Cherry.)
A lot of smart folks just have enough other things to deal with in their life to allow them to make informed decisions on every single topic. At the same time, marketing machines use side-channels to put unhealthy choices at the front of their minds. I don't see a problem with countering that bias. It doesn't mean they are dumb.
Public health is also a big factor in society, even economically, so your argument below about vaccines does apply to healthy eating as well.
Fruit juices have vitamins and minerals that soda does not. With that said, there's also a huge difference between the old herbal beverages (Cocaine & kola nut flavorings, "root beer", 21 natural plant flavors, etc), and modern artificially-colored and artificially-flavored concoctions.
I have a can in front of me, it is sweetened with Acesulfame Potassium and Aspartame.
> In a recent study, fruit flies fed sucralose consumed more total calories than those fed sugar.
I'm not a fruit fly, and everything is a trade off. If this has been widely proven in human trials it'd be one thing.
> Fruit juices have vitamins and minerals that soda does not.
Vitamins and minerals are available in more than just fruit.
> artificially-colored and artificially-flavored
The Coke Zero in front of me has no artificial flavors listed, but is "caramel colored", so maybe that's artificial. Artificial doesn't inherently mean "bad for you".
Great, also excited to hear your objections to health education in public schools. And the WHO. And food stamps that don't enable people to buy banana boo-boos.
Education is not the same as prohibition. Refusing to pay for junk food is not the same as prohibiting it from being sold. I don't have much of an opinion on the WHO.
So what this proves is that diet soda is not nearly as good as "sugar" soda and that Universities like experimenting on their staff and students...
I don't much care for soda, but if my throat needed it I'd like to be able to buy it. Diet soda only yields benefit for people with diabetes/pre... Other than those people, it's worse thanks to all the extra additives. I really don't enjoy people telling other people that they're not being healthy (:so we'll force you to be:)
“Obesity rates have gone up steadily for years at the same time soda consumption has gone down for years,” said William Dermody, a spokesman for the American Beverage Association.
Big Soda isn't playing fair when it implies Big Bacon is the Bad Guy.
Is it better we have full agency and can potentially abuse things (sugar/fat, guns, drugs) or have limited agency that protects us from ourselves in the interest of public welfare?
I prefer freedom, but freedom comes with responsibility for your choices. That means no subsidized or free health care when you make poor choices.
Conversely, that is why socialism inherently limits freedom. As soon as I am responsible for your "needs" (health, food, childcare), I will start demanding that you make choices I feel are good ones (good diet, productive career so you can provide for yourself, good family planning choices, etc.).
Would that be a job that circumstantially for all intents and purposes requires you to sit down for 8+ hours a day. Is that a poor choice? Would that take away my healthcare subsidy?
Is playing American Football, or kickboxing a similarly poor choice?
Would - and here's where I get facetious in a hope of highlighting the issue with the way you raise your choices/free healthcare point - knowingly continuing the pregnancy of a child with Downs Syndrome be regarded as a poor choice?
This is exactly my point. When Sally has to pay the consequences for Joe's choices, she will have her own ideas about what Joe should do, and try to force him to do so using her vote.
This turns ordinary differences of opinion or culture into political fights.
If Sally doesn't have to pay for Joe's poor choices, Joe can figure out for himself what he feels is best, and that's called freedom.
If you're the kind of person who feels entitled to tell others what to do to begin with. I'm perfectly happy to pay taxes so everyone can have socialized health care, and to stay out of other people's choices.
The more one pays for the choices of others, the more they feel entitled to be influence those choices.
If the health care costs keep going up, and/or they start rationing/queueing, that may have a big enough impact on you that you change your opinion.
Even if you keep your opinion, when you vote for socialism you are voting to force everyone to pay for Joe's poor choices. They might not be so generous.
If you want to just pay into a no-strings-attached social fund, and not force everyone else, that would preserve freedom.
It is an interesting dilemma, isn't it? One I think about quite a bit. One way to view this dilemma is that we recognize that we have tendencies as part of our human psychology to do things that are not in our long term best interests. We're not perfectly rational actors. But since we can discover these tendencies, we have the opportunity to put into practice habits and conventions that prevent us from falling for our own foibles.
I think your phrase "protects us from ourselves" is apt. I struggle a bit with the "limited agency" aspect of it as it sounds like it could have negative connotations, though it's accurate in a strict sense.
I think this is related to us looking out for each other. Where's the line between limiting someone's agency in some malicious sense and honestly trying to be a good person? Can we look out for people we don't know personally? How does this work when we're looking out for the community as a whole?
I think this is a good question. If you choose to down vote, I'd appreciate it if you'd also take the time to reply in a comment.
The quote from C. S. Lewis about a "tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims" is the worst kind of tyranny is very appropriate. There is a strong difference between being told what we should eat vs what we can eat.
It's nearly universally accepted that minors lack the ability to fully realize what their choices entail, e.g. juvenile court, age of consent. Applying the same rules to minors and adults is not a good solution.
I'd argue in the face of multi-billion dollar marketing and truthiness by Big Food (e.g. creative ways to include sugar on a list of ingredients to distort the volume of its content) , that many adults also "lack the ability to fully realize what their choices entail".
Tax negative externalities of firms that produce such goods without reservation or exemption. It sucks but it's the most logical thing to do in this context. Most importantly, it doesn't levy the tax on a single issue but on all goods which have them (cars, phones, medicines, etc all have some negative externality on society). I doubt it'll ever come to be since it seems the modern liberal mind set is to ban rather than properly levy a tax to cover the costs of current damage done by given producers.
So long as what you do does not affect me directly, you should be allowed the liberty to do as you may, even if it puts your life (and only yours) at risk.
Would it matter if the cost is shared in common as a tax? This seems like the best option considering people assume the alternative must be that they are the only ones with the burden when all would in fact share it. His taxes cover your burdens and your taxes cover his. Are you both even then? Or are you going to nickel/dime every human you meet that consumes sweets on occasion?
I would never tell someone to give up their individual liberty so that we can save a buck in an system that has far greater issues contributing towards cost inflation. Our freedoms and our liberties are fundamental to our being a free society; they should be treasured and not bartered.
>Sometimes the government needs to step in. (in no particular order:)
Let's see what you got here because I think you're being naive.
>lead paint
That causes harm to everyone both directly (health risks) and indirectly (disposal costs). So the ban on lead paint was a benefit for us all.
>DDT
Ditto.
>opioids
Nope, they're regulated. Morphine is a form of them.
>microbeads
This is the same as the DDT and lead paint items. Common risk but indirectly through how they harm fish stock which are part of the food web that makes the nitrogen cycle possible.
>antibacterial soaps
Yet again, indirect harm to all.
I've yet to discern a pattern in your argument that shows where sugary sodas are bad. Obesity sucks, I'm a big fat blob here so I know the damage it does personally (bad back and probably going to get heart disease at this rate). What you should notice that health issues like this are covered under insurance and sodas can be hit with a sin tax to cover additional costs. Trying to go out of our way to ban stuff like this is misplaced as the individual consumer won't ever be able to cover the cost. Producers of such goods can but since our tax code is a mess it's a miracle we get any taxes from them. So if you want to really hit who is doing harm it would be the producers of such goods. From sodas to cars every good comes with a part of it's risks (that harms) socialized but it's profits privatized. That means we should tax firms to cover those negative externalities and not individuals who consume them.
> Horrifically stupid wingnuts and experts for hire will sometimes imply that a supposed worldwide ban on DDT has killed millions of people by giving them malaria or some other mosquito-borne disease, and that Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was responsible for the alleged ban. The myth seems to have originated from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and from libertarian Roger Bate (and is promoted by his organization Africa Fighting Malaria).
> Carson devoted some of her book into weighing the pros and cons of DDT use,[4] but her findings did not lead to a global ban. DDT got banned in dozens of countries, but there was (and still is) no global ban on DDT; only agricultural use is almost globally banned. Places with deadly mosquito-borne illnesses still use DDT, and in some places excessive use has led to the development of DDT-resistant mosquitoes.[5][6] In fact, the drastic reduction of DDT use in agriculture delayed the onset of resistance in mosquitoes.
> Not only is DDT still approved by the WHO for use against malaria (in indoor residual spraying,[wp] which is the spraying of walls of a home so a mosquito landing after it bites should get a fatal dose), but the Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty (POPs) has a special clause for DDT.[7] Any nation may endorse the treaty calling for an end to DDT; but any nation may also use DDT at any time, for severe health reasons, by essentially writing a letter to WHO saying, "We have a health problem we think DDT may be useful to combat, so we're going to use DDT."[8]
> 4. DDT was banned ONLY for agriculture use in the U.S. It was banned in a few European nations. [Addition, December 30, 2014: In fact, the U.S. action against DDT by EPA specifically called for DDT use in any fight against a vector borne disease, like malaria.]
> [The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants] specifically permits the public health use of DDT for the control of mosquitoes (the malaria vector).
Seeing that obesity is an epidemic, it's clear to me that people aren't able to self-regulate. It's not that this generation of humans are worse than the previous, it's just that we've created a food landscape where the bad stuff is cheap and the most accessible. Individual choice and education won't fix this anytime soon.
I also like that they lead with an image of Coke Zero, which has no sugar nor calories, and happens to be my drink of choice. But I made that choice myself, without my employer or government telling me I had to.