[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
I think we should shame the self-centered, negative, complaining people. [/quote]
Why? They don’t live off the products of other people’s labor.
[quote]
With the way things are now, the first isn’t possible without the latter.[/quote]
True.
And the latter will not be possible for a very long time without the first.
It’s a vicious circle. And a double bind.
One that no amount of shame will break.
[quote]challer1 wrote:
Here you go DB:
Using google cache since Forbes only makes some of their content free for a little while before they pull/hide it for whatever reason. Study reporting that the average healthy person racked up 281,000 euros in health costs over their lifetime to 250,000 euros for an obese person. This gap is widened much further in the US, if you consider that not many obese people actually live long enough to collect meaningfully from social security or medicare.[/quote]
The flaw in your thinking is that a person living on social security and medicare is living off the product of their own labor. They paid into the system (involuntarily) for the required amount of time and they are only drawing out what is rightfully theirs. Someone living on “disablility” and medicaid because they are fat, or bi-polar is not just drawing out what they put in, but is likely to siphon off far more resources than they ever contributed when they were in the workforce.
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]challer1 wrote:
Here you go DB:
Using google cache since Forbes only makes some of their content free for a little while before they pull/hide it for whatever reason. Study reporting that the average healthy person racked up 281,000 euros in health costs over their lifetime to 250,000 euros for an obese person. This gap is widened much further in the US, if you consider that not many obese people actually live long enough to collect meaningfully from social security or medicare.[/quote]
The flaw in your thinking is that a person living on social security and medicare is living off the product of their own labor. They paid into the system (involuntarily) for the required amount of time and they are only drawing out what is rightfully theirs. Someone living on “disablility” and medicaid because they are fat, or bi-polar is not just drawing out what they put in, but is likely to siphon off far more resources than they ever contributed when they were in the workforce.[/quote]
Well, what about people who end up in a coma after some sort of accident who were, prior to the accident, living entirely off the product of their own labor? Do we simply pull the plug on them when their insurance runs out? Is that all the value of a person is? The money they contribute to society? Is that what we base our value as a human being on? That’s really sad.
I wonder how much productivity fit people give vs the obese and if it makes up for or more than makes up for the additional costs. [/quote]
thats what im thinking. Theres a reason many fortune 500 companies have bulk gym memberships for their employees. A fit person is a motivated and productive person for the most part. Id like to know what they contribute in comparison to the morbidly obese who plague th health care system and sponge off of the govt for their medical expenses and dissability etc. Where the fit and employed person pays taxes and spends money on luxeries from protein to porsche that inturn stimulates the economy further.
[quote]roadwarrior83 wrote:
I wonder how much productivity fit people give vs the obese and if it makes up for or more than makes up for the additional costs. [/quote]
thats what im thinking. Theres a reason many fortune 500 companies have bulk gym memberships for their employees. A fit person is a motivated and productive person for the most part. Id like to know what they contribute in comparison to the morbidly obese who plague th health care system and sponge off of the govt for their medical expenses and dissability etc. Where the fit and employed person pays taxes and spends money on luxeries from protein to porsche that inturn stimulates the economy further. [/quote]
I don’t know what the raw numbers would bear out, but I HIGHLY suspect that the amount of people who are morbidly obese and sucking off the govt’s teat is statistically insignificant when compared to the amount of people in general who receive some sort of assistance from the gov’t at a net loss for the gov’t.
There are way more people who are unhealthily fat and who pay into the system as well, and they represent a lesser “drain” than people who are fit and in shape but go on to live 20 or 30 years longer as a result. The fact is that all these attempts at prolonging our lives when the end is near costs WAY more than what some fat fuck who can’t get up off the couch long enough to do anything other than cash his monthly stipend from the gov’t is costing.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Well, what about people who end up in a coma after some sort of accident who were, prior to the accident, living entirely off the product of their own labor? Do we simply pull the plug on them when their insurance runs out? Is that all the value of a person is? The money they contribute to society? Is that what we base our value as a human being on? That’s really sad.[/quote]
If they haven’t shown signs of recovery by the time the insurance runs out, then they are extremely unlikely to ever recover. So why should we keep spending medical resources to maintain someone in a persistent vegetative state? How many people would want to go on existing like that anyway? Our resources are not infinite. The medical care that you would have “society”, meaning other productive people, continue to pay to support a vegetable after his insurance and family’s financial resources have been exhausted could go to pay for medical care for someone who has a much greater chance for an improved outcome.
But to keep it simple, lets just say that everyone is entitled to the care that they pay for. Just like if I go to the grocery store and buy groceries, then I am entitled to the groceries that I paid for. That’s incredibly simple, yet somehow it flew right over your head.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
What IS wrong with the current “muffin-top trend” amongst women these days? What sort of legitimate, tangible societal norm are they flaunting?
[/quote]
Lets see:
1)They whittle down the number of attractive women, making the dating market hyper-competitive for men
-
Hurt satisfaction in marriage. I wonder how many of these erectile dysfunction cases would suddenly disappear if the average woman was a normal weight. Studies show the smaller the waistline on the woman, the bigger, creamier the load for the man.
-
Helped the porn industry become a billion dollar industry. With all these men having to settle for these ultra-fat beasts, it’s no wonder the average American man spends so many hours watching porn.
4)Contorts beauty standards. Hordes of fat women are now pushing positive body image non-sense, so we have future generations thinking being 30lbs overweight is now thin. If you’re a fat woman you should have low-confidence. The average 350lb black woman’s self-esteem is way too high.
- Gives the remaining thin women a license to give more shit. Because the supply of thin women has taken a huge negative shock, the average man will now put up with much more because of how scarce her goods currently are.
[/quote]
-
There are more than 17 million women in Canada. If you can’t make do with those kinds of numbers then it’s YOU who should be shamed out of existence, not fat-asses.
-
In the words of James Brown, "Baby, be mellow and be sweet. Forget about the diet, sit down and eat. Losin’ that weight you don’t. Because the more you got the more I want, and it makes me wanna scream now OOOOWWWWWHHHHHHH! "
But seriously, the weight of a guy’s wife is his problem and his alone when it comes to marriage satisfaction. That isn’t something that should be addressed by anyone but him and his wife.
-
The abundance of porn in this country has much more to do with the accessibility that the Internet provides. There’s something like 160 million females in this country, probably 100 million of which are “of age”. If a guy can’t find an attractive women to fuck that is a problem with HIM and not the availability of attractive women. There are myriad reasons for the explosion of porn in North America.
-
This is a point I should have come to expect from someone whose ancestors lived in a caste system. What is wrong with a person having self-esteem? What sort of issues have you had with fat women in your life that make you think they are not entitled to self-esteem? You sound like someone with a distorted view of yourself and your attractiveness to women who has been aggressively rejected by fat women who you feel should be happy to sit on your cock.
-
Again, not a problem for anyone other than the specific man involved. Is this something you’ve dealt with on a very personal, intimate level? Because that is precisely what it sounds like. I imagine that you are someone with a bloated sense of self, probably well beyond a clinical level of narcissism, who is struggling with coming to terms with the constant rejection you receive from women. I suspect you are guilty of #5 because to YOU attractive women are a rare commodity and it angers you that you are forced to put up with all sorts of shit from the very few whose tolerance for alcohol is low enough for you to be able to afford to get them drunk enough to make the mistake of fucking you.[/quote]
Personal attacks? Yawn You know fuck all about my life and everything you just wrote was nothing but empty insinuations.
The reality is 1/3 of all American women are overweight or obese. While some of these fatties may end up happily married to some loveable loser, many of them end up alone, childless and living empty miserable lives. Aside from what I’ve already mentioned from the male perspective, the west is churning out lonely cat ladies at record rates.
In England which also has high obesity rates, More than half of all women aged 45 are unmarried and 1/5 of them are childless. Boy I bet a society with statistics such as these will be sustainable!
So don’t peddle this “well it’s just you” crap to me. Obesity, especially female obesity has much larger repercussions on society than just straining the healthcare system.
[quote]therajraj wrote:
So don’t peddle this “well it’s just you” crap to me. Obesity, especially female obesity has much larger repercussions on society than just straining the healthcare system.
[/quote]
Pretty much the crux of the entire problem here. To insinuate that things are just honky-dory with American health and the natural tendency of humans to prefer more beautiful and healthier humans, it is either naive or willfully ignorant to keep brushing aside this argument as if the net effect were negligible.
I know I’m like a broken record sometimes with my America/Japan comparisons, but when they work, they work. Here, we do NOT have near epidemic levels of diabetes, heart disease, stroke or many of the other myriad health problems that America does. In fact, the biggest current crisis here is our Social Security system because people tend to live TOO long and retirement is effectively forced at the ridiculously young (for Japanese) age of 65. The divorce rate is FAR lower (yes, I understand, there are many factors involved in this), hence, intact families are far more prevalent. Eating disorders…what are those? Believe it or not, kids in Japan generally even LIKE vegetables!
This is in danger of turning into a “why fat is bad” thread, so I’ll just stop by repeating that the take away point is that this issue, much like the issue of broken families, rising divorce rates, rampant unprotected sex, women having children by multiple fathers, and on and on DO, very much DO, have far reaching consequences that affect all of us. Is it not just common sense that pretty radical, comprehensive infrastructural and demographic changes are going to result in unavoidable consequences for the entirety of the society in question?
Seriously?
[quote]therajraj wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
What IS wrong with the current “muffin-top trend” amongst women these days? What sort of legitimate, tangible societal norm are they flaunting?
[/quote]
Lets see:
1)They whittle down the number of attractive women, making the dating market hyper-competitive for men
-
Hurt satisfaction in marriage. I wonder how many of these erectile dysfunction cases would suddenly disappear if the average woman was a normal weight. Studies show the smaller the waistline on the woman, the bigger, creamier the load for the man.
-
Helped the porn industry become a billion dollar industry. With all these men having to settle for these ultra-fat beasts, it’s no wonder the average American man spends so many hours watching porn.
4)Contorts beauty standards. Hordes of fat women are now pushing positive body image non-sense, so we have future generations thinking being 30lbs overweight is now thin. If you’re a fat woman you should have low-confidence. The average 350lb black woman’s self-esteem is way too high.
- Gives the remaining thin women a license to give more shit. Because the supply of thin women has taken a huge negative shock, the average man will now put up with much more because of how scarce her goods currently are.
[/quote]
-
There are more than 17 million women in Canada. If you can’t make do with those kinds of numbers then it’s YOU who should be shamed out of existence, not fat-asses.
-
In the words of James Brown, "Baby, be mellow and be sweet. Forget about the diet, sit down and eat. Losin’ that weight you don’t. Because the more you got the more I want, and it makes me wanna scream now OOOOWWWWWHHHHHHH! "
But seriously, the weight of a guy’s wife is his problem and his alone when it comes to marriage satisfaction. That isn’t something that should be addressed by anyone but him and his wife.
-
The abundance of porn in this country has much more to do with the accessibility that the Internet provides. There’s something like 160 million females in this country, probably 100 million of which are “of age”. If a guy can’t find an attractive women to fuck that is a problem with HIM and not the availability of attractive women. There are myriad reasons for the explosion of porn in North America.
-
This is a point I should have come to expect from someone whose ancestors lived in a caste system. What is wrong with a person having self-esteem? What sort of issues have you had with fat women in your life that make you think they are not entitled to self-esteem? You sound like someone with a distorted view of yourself and your attractiveness to women who has been aggressively rejected by fat women who you feel should be happy to sit on your cock.
-
Again, not a problem for anyone other than the specific man involved. Is this something you’ve dealt with on a very personal, intimate level? Because that is precisely what it sounds like. I imagine that you are someone with a bloated sense of self, probably well beyond a clinical level of narcissism, who is struggling with coming to terms with the constant rejection you receive from women. I suspect you are guilty of #5 because to YOU attractive women are a rare commodity and it angers you that you are forced to put up with all sorts of shit from the very few whose tolerance for alcohol is low enough for you to be able to afford to get them drunk enough to make the mistake of fucking you.[/quote]
Personal attacks? Yawn You know fuck all about my life and everything you just wrote was nothing but empty insinuations.
The reality is 1/3 of all American women are overweight or obese. While some of these fatties may end up happily married to some loveable loser, many of them end up alone, childless and living empty miserable lives. Aside from what I’ve already mentioned from the male perspective, the west is churning out lonely cat ladies at record rates.
In England which also has high obesity rates, More than half of all women aged 45 are unmarried and 1/5 of them are childless. Boy I bet a society with statistics such as these will be sustainable!
So don’t peddle this “well it’s just you” crap to me. Obesity, especially female obesity has much larger repercussions on society than just straining the healthcare system.
[/quote]
First off, there is a huge difference between overweight and obese. So don’t lump the two together into the same 1/3 of Americans.
And your statistics are way off, as usual. The fact is that TWO-THIRDS of American women are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. One-third of American women are obese. And yet, the birth rate continues to sit at a net gain each year, despite obesity’s best efforts to prevent such an occurrence.
Churning out cat ladies at a record rate? A completely unverifiable claim held up as statistical evidence of a (poor) argument is the surest sign that you have no clue what you’re talking about. Of course, your stats are totally off anyways, so what’s the difference?
And unless you blindly and ignorantly think that the sign of a healthy, fully-developed country is a high birth rate, the fact that the birth rate in this country is allegedly threatened by a proliferation of obese women is a very good thing for the future of this country. Here is a nice graphic showing the birth rate by country. Tell me when you notice what all the countries with low birth rates have in common and what the ones with high birth rates have in common.
The fact is that declining birth rates along with a very low infant-mortality rate are signs of a stable, healthy society. Let sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent have the high birth rates. Obviously the booming population growth in those areas has done wonders for their economy and their society.
Shit Raj, how ignorant can you really be? Do you think a nation of more than 300 million citizens and which happens to have hundreds of thousands of people risking life and limb to sneak into it each week is in danger of disappearing because some of the women here like their food a little too much?
Fuck man, I say bring on all the obese women this country can handle if it means an eventually declining population here. Fuck it! The freeways are already packed, the public school system is overcrowded, housing is becoming more scarce in urban centers, we’re starting to run out of space to put everyone without opening up huge tracts of protected land and resources to accommodate more development and we’re guzzling gasoline faster than we can pull it out of the ground.
If obese women means less people in the long run, I’m all for it. So what if there’s about 35 million obese women in this country? Personally, I like women a little on the thick side as opposed to thin. I’d rather bang Christina Hendricks over some rail-thin heroin chic model any day. If 1/3 of women are obese, that leaves me with roughly 65 million women to choose from. I’ll take those odds any time.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
So don’t peddle this “well it’s just you” crap to me. Obesity, especially female obesity has much larger repercussions on society than just straining the healthcare system.
[/quote]
Pretty much the crux of the entire problem here. To insinuate that things are just honky-dory with American health and the natural tendency of humans to prefer more beautiful and healthier humans, it is either naive or willfully ignorant to keep brushing aside this argument as if the net effect were negligible.
I know I’m like a broken record sometimes with my America/Japan comparisons, but when they work, they work. Here, we do NOT have near epidemic levels of diabetes, heart disease, stroke or many of the other myriad health problems that America does. In fact, the biggest current crisis here is our Social Security system because people tend to live TOO long and retirement is effectively forced at the ridiculously young (for Japanese) age of 65. The divorce rate is FAR lower (yes, I understand, there are many factors involved in this), hence, intact families are far more prevalent. Eating disorders…what are those? Believe it or not, kids in Japan generally even LIKE vegetables!
This is in danger of turning into a “why fat is bad” thread, so I’ll just stop by repeating that the take away point is that this issue, much like the issue of broken families, rising divorce rates, rampant unprotected sex, women having children by multiple fathers, and on and on DO, very much DO, have far reaching consequences that affect all of us. Is it not just common sense that pretty radical, comprehensive infrastructural and demographic changes are going to result in unavoidable consequences for the entirety of the society in question?
Seriously? [/quote]
Legitimate concerns. But really, what is different about fat-related health problems and the myriad other health problems associated with poor lifestyle choices? I’m not arguing that fat isn’t bad, only that it isn’t bad in the way many think it is and that it isn’t a unique drain on the economy here. We have all sorts of drains on the economy, of which this is one.
You know what else is draining on the economy? People who live far distances from where they work. The commute time means more gas used, more emissions, more damage to the roads, more traffic (and less worker productivity as a result), and so forth. You know what else is a drain on the economy? Why don’t we shame people like my buddy who drives 45 miles each way from San Jose to SF in his F-350 to go to work? Why don’t we shame farmers, many of whom are subsidized so that they can grow food at artificially-high prices that the consumer wouldn’t otherwise be paying, all while we also subsidize their water usage which is one of the biggest sources of pollution in this country?
And to get back to the original point of this thread, what is shaming people going to do solve the obesity epidemic in this country? And if shaming does work, then why stop there? The fact is that virtually everyone in this country contributes in some way, shape or form to the degradation of American society that you guys are all so worried about. Like I said earlier, I just want to see some consistency.
So if shaming DOES work (which I would disagree with) why stop there? Shouldn’t we be shaming pretty much everybody in this country? Shouldn’t we be shaming the farmers, instead of making bullshit Super Bowl commercials with that fucking windbag, Paul Harvey, rambling on about them? Shouldn’t we also be shaming everyone who has written into their will that they don’t want the plug pulled if they’re in a coma? Shouldn’t we be shaming everybody who chooses to have their child rather than abort it if keeping it means getting govt assistance to support it? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone involved with the glorification of drug dealers and pimps and the perpetration of violence against women? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone who has to take out some student loans to go to college rather than pay for it out of their own pocket? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone who makes their money selling the food products that contribute to obesity? Shouldn’t we be outside of fast food restaurants shaming everyone who goes in, regardless of weight, and spends their money in it, thereby allowing a business profiting off the looming obesity/healthcare crisis in this country?
The other thing is that in a way, this is social Darwinism at its best. Obese people clearly aren’t all that intelligent, and those who are genetically predisposed to obesity don’t have the choicest genes to be tossing around. Maybe in the long run what this really represents is a streamlining of our society, sort of like how the free market streamlines itself when things get to crowded. What is the end goal here, to allow the dumbfucks to continue living on as some other sort of leach on society? Or to simply let things take care of themselves?
I don’t know, it’s pretty convoluted, I suppose. But in the end, I think water seeks its own level, you know what I mean, Cortes?
With all the religious talk mixed in with the obesity shaming this video came to mind:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
The other thing is that in a way, this is social Darwinism at its best. Obese people clearly aren’t all that intelligent, and those who are genetically predisposed to obesity don’t have the choicest genes to be tossing around. Maybe in the long run what this really represents is a streamlining of our society, sort of like how the free market streamlines itself when things get to crowded. What is the end goal here, to allow the dumbfucks to continue living on as some other sort of leach on society? Or to simply let things take care of themselves?
I don’t know, it’s pretty convoluted, I suppose. But in the end, I think water seeks its own level, you know what I mean, Cortes?[/quote]
I had posed the idea in the other thread that we essentially speed up the process. Obese people clearly leach off the system. Why not remove any kind of constraint? Wholly pay for their kids to get the scooter at an early age, remove taxes on any health related issue, customize the ramps, parking lots and other public venues for the obese? At some point life will be so easy for them they’ll be in a vegetative state, the obesity will lower their life expectancy by even more on average. Kids will die before their parents. That would lead to true shame.
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
[quote]challer1 wrote:
Here you go DB:
Using google cache since Forbes only makes some of their content free for a little while before they pull/hide it for whatever reason. Study reporting that the average healthy person racked up 281,000 euros in health costs over their lifetime to 250,000 euros for an obese person. This gap is widened much further in the US, if you consider that not many obese people actually live long enough to collect meaningfully from social security or medicare.[/quote]
The flaw in your thinking is that a person living on social security and medicare is living off the product of their own labor. They paid into the system (involuntarily) for the required amount of time and they are only drawing out what is rightfully theirs. Someone living on “disablility” and medicaid because they are fat, or bi-polar is not just drawing out what they put in, but is likely to siphon off far more resources than they ever contributed when they were in the workforce.[/quote]
There is no flaw in fact. Obese people cost “the system” less than fit people. It’s nothing personal, it’s just the way things are. This is not my opinion nor it is a statement of morality.
At no point did I say that a fit person living to an older age should not collect social security or medicaid. As you mentioned already, they paid into the system and that is what it is for. However, the fact remains that these people do live long enough to collect, and in the end will cost “the system” more than the fat person will on average. This is relevant because the original point was that fat people need to be shamed into losing weight, when it’s not anyone’s business how someone else chooses to live their life if it doesn’t affect them. People tend to think that it is their business how fat another person is due to the mistaken belief that obesity somehow costs the thin fit person money. It does not.
[quote]
[quote]roadwarrior83 wrote:
I wonder how much productivity fit people give vs the obese and if it makes up for or more than makes up for the additional costs. [/quote]
thats what im thinking. Theres a reason many fortune 500 companies have bulk gym memberships for their employees. A fit person is a motivated and productive person for the most part. Id like to know what they contribute in comparison to the morbidly obese who plague th health care system and sponge off of the govt for their medical expenses and dissability etc. Where the fit and employed person pays taxes and spends money on luxeries from protein to porsche that inturn stimulates the economy further. [/quote]
Sorry but that’s both wrong and ridiculous. The wrong part is that Fortune 500 companies have wellness programs because it saves THEM money. That does not mean it saves “the system” money. A fit person who does not get sick while working and then retires at 62 is great for the company… because most of the funding for their health care for the next 20 years of life is going to be coming from medicare/medicaid, not the company’s coffers.
The ridiculous part thing is the bit about the morbidly obese who supposedly plague the health care system. The amount of people on disability due to being too fat to work is negligible. Most of the 1/3 of the obese in the US work jobs and run businesses just like the rest of us.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
So don’t peddle this “well it’s just you” crap to me. Obesity, especially female obesity has much larger repercussions on society than just straining the healthcare system.
[/quote]
Pretty much the crux of the entire problem here. To insinuate that things are just honky-dory with American health and the natural tendency of humans to prefer more beautiful and healthier humans, it is either naive or willfully ignorant to keep brushing aside this argument as if the net effect were negligible.
I know I’m like a broken record sometimes with my America/Japan comparisons, but when they work, they work. Here, we do NOT have near epidemic levels of diabetes, heart disease, stroke or many of the other myriad health problems that America does. In fact, the biggest current crisis here is our Social Security system because people tend to live TOO long and retirement is effectively forced at the ridiculously young (for Japanese) age of 65. The divorce rate is FAR lower (yes, I understand, there are many factors involved in this), hence, intact families are far more prevalent. Eating disorders…what are those? Believe it or not, kids in Japan generally even LIKE vegetables!
This is in danger of turning into a “why fat is bad” thread, so I’ll just stop by repeating that the take away point is that this issue, much like the issue of broken families, rising divorce rates, rampant unprotected sex, women having children by multiple fathers, and on and on DO, very much DO, have far reaching consequences that affect all of us. Is it not just common sense that pretty radical, comprehensive infrastructural and demographic changes are going to result in unavoidable consequences for the entirety of the society in question?
Seriously? [/quote]
Legitimate concerns. But really, what is different about fat-related health problems and the myriad other health problems associated with poor lifestyle choices? I’m not arguing that fat isn’t bad, only that it isn’t bad in the way many think it is and that it isn’t a unique drain on the economy here. We have all sorts of drains on the economy, of which this is one.
You know what else is draining on the economy? People who live far distances from where they work. The commute time means more gas used, more emissions, more damage to the roads, more traffic (and less worker productivity as a result), and so forth. You know what else is a drain on the economy? Why don’t we shame people like my buddy who drives 45 miles each way from San Jose to SF in his F-350 to go to work? Why don’t we shame farmers, many of whom are subsidized so that they can grow food at artificially-high prices that the consumer wouldn’t otherwise be paying, all while we also subsidize their water usage which is one of the biggest sources of pollution in this country?
And to get back to the original point of this thread, what is shaming people going to do solve the obesity epidemic in this country? And if shaming does work, then why stop there? The fact is that virtually everyone in this country contributes in some way, shape or form to the degradation of American society that you guys are all so worried about. Like I said earlier, I just want to see some consistency.
So if shaming DOES work (which I would disagree with) why stop there? Shouldn’t we be shaming pretty much everybody in this country? Shouldn’t we be shaming the farmers, instead of making bullshit Super Bowl commercials with that fucking windbag, Paul Harvey, rambling on about them? Shouldn’t we also be shaming everyone who has written into their will that they don’t want the plug pulled if they’re in a coma? Shouldn’t we be shaming everybody who chooses to have their child rather than abort it if keeping it means getting govt assistance to support it? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone involved with the glorification of drug dealers and pimps and the perpetration of violence against women? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone who has to take out some student loans to go to college rather than pay for it out of their own pocket? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone who makes their money selling the food products that contribute to obesity? Shouldn’t we be outside of fast food restaurants shaming everyone who goes in, regardless of weight, and spends their money in it, thereby allowing a business profiting off the looming obesity/healthcare crisis in this country?[/quote]
Because that’s more like micromanaging. I can’t know for certain, but, as I’ve been saying, both human pride and shame provide a crucial social function serves to keep most members of a social group adhering to behaviors beneficial to the group. Were either one removed, or either one completely unrestrained, we’d have a major problem on our hands because of the selfish, greedy, carnal, hungry, ambitious, nature of the human animal.
I’m saying that expressing one’s disapproval at another’s unhealthy or unethical lifestyle choices comes naturally to us. And that it is only very recently, extremely recently, from a historical perspective, that we have decided to turn this very basic, innate human inclination on its head. I think that may be imprudent, to say the least.
Let’s take move away from the fat topic for a moment. How about a problem we can probably both agree is empirically harmful to our society if we are using crime and poverty, among many other factors, as a standard. Unwed mothers. Particularly those who decide to sire multiple children with different fathers without any means or even real plans for how to provide for them, save government assistance.
Since Candice Bergman made it taboo to ever utter a syllable of ill will regarding the single mother, what options are we now left with?
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
The other thing is that in a way, this is social Darwinism at its best. Obese people clearly aren’t all that intelligent, and those who are genetically predisposed to obesity don’t have the choicest genes to be tossing around. Maybe in the long run what this really represents is a streamlining of our society, sort of like how the free market streamlines itself when things get to crowded. What is the end goal here, to allow the dumbfucks to continue living on as some other sort of leach on society? Or to simply let things take care of themselves?
I don’t know, it’s pretty convoluted, I suppose. But in the end, I think water seeks its own level, you know what I mean, Cortes?[/quote]
How’d that work out for Rome?
[quote]IFlashBack wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
The other thing is that in a way, this is social Darwinism at its best. Obese people clearly aren’t all that intelligent, and those who are genetically predisposed to obesity don’t have the choicest genes to be tossing around. Maybe in the long run what this really represents is a streamlining of our society, sort of like how the free market streamlines itself when things get to crowded. What is the end goal here, to allow the dumbfucks to continue living on as some other sort of leach on society? Or to simply let things take care of themselves?
I don’t know, it’s pretty convoluted, I suppose. But in the end, I think water seeks its own level, you know what I mean, Cortes?[/quote]
I had posed the idea in the other thread that we essentially speed up the process. Obese people clearly leach off the system. Why not remove any kind of constraint? Wholly pay for their kids to get the scooter at an early age, remove taxes on any health related issue, customize the ramps, parking lots and other public venues for the obese? At some point life will be so easy for them they’ll be in a vegetative state, the obesity will lower their life expectancy by even more on average. Kids will die before their parents. That would lead to true shame. [/quote]
I’m all onboard. Why fuck around with shaming them into being thin dumbfucks that stick around longer? I mean, if we’re going to work on the assumption that shaming works, aren’t we also working on the assumption that what is for the greater economic good of the society as a whole is superior to the mental health/self-esteem of individual fatties?
If that is the assumption, why even pretend that we give a fuck about them at all? I say we get right down to brass tacks and provide them with subsidized barrels of lard and encourage suicide amongst their kind. That would save us the trouble of paying for their lifestyles any longer than is necessary and it would have the doubly-stimulating effect of keeping undertakers, cemetery workers, gunsmiths, truck drivers and fat-rendering plants up and operational. Maybe we should REALLY start taking our economic future into our own hands and allow anyone with a Level 2 obesity to be shot on sight by any American citizen. That would also keep our shooting hand nice and steady and sharp for when the shit hits the fan and the gov’t takes over everything and we need our guns to protect ourselves from Big Brother and all that bullshit.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]therajraj wrote:
So don’t peddle this “well it’s just you” crap to me. Obesity, especially female obesity has much larger repercussions on society than just straining the healthcare system.
[/quote]
Pretty much the crux of the entire problem here. To insinuate that things are just honky-dory with American health and the natural tendency of humans to prefer more beautiful and healthier humans, it is either naive or willfully ignorant to keep brushing aside this argument as if the net effect were negligible.
I know I’m like a broken record sometimes with my America/Japan comparisons, but when they work, they work. Here, we do NOT have near epidemic levels of diabetes, heart disease, stroke or many of the other myriad health problems that America does. In fact, the biggest current crisis here is our Social Security system because people tend to live TOO long and retirement is effectively forced at the ridiculously young (for Japanese) age of 65. The divorce rate is FAR lower (yes, I understand, there are many factors involved in this), hence, intact families are far more prevalent. Eating disorders…what are those? Believe it or not, kids in Japan generally even LIKE vegetables!
This is in danger of turning into a “why fat is bad” thread, so I’ll just stop by repeating that the take away point is that this issue, much like the issue of broken families, rising divorce rates, rampant unprotected sex, women having children by multiple fathers, and on and on DO, very much DO, have far reaching consequences that affect all of us. Is it not just common sense that pretty radical, comprehensive infrastructural and demographic changes are going to result in unavoidable consequences for the entirety of the society in question?
Seriously? [/quote]
Legitimate concerns. But really, what is different about fat-related health problems and the myriad other health problems associated with poor lifestyle choices? I’m not arguing that fat isn’t bad, only that it isn’t bad in the way many think it is and that it isn’t a unique drain on the economy here. We have all sorts of drains on the economy, of which this is one.
You know what else is draining on the economy? People who live far distances from where they work. The commute time means more gas used, more emissions, more damage to the roads, more traffic (and less worker productivity as a result), and so forth. You know what else is a drain on the economy? Why don’t we shame people like my buddy who drives 45 miles each way from San Jose to SF in his F-350 to go to work? Why don’t we shame farmers, many of whom are subsidized so that they can grow food at artificially-high prices that the consumer wouldn’t otherwise be paying, all while we also subsidize their water usage which is one of the biggest sources of pollution in this country?
And to get back to the original point of this thread, what is shaming people going to do solve the obesity epidemic in this country? And if shaming does work, then why stop there? The fact is that virtually everyone in this country contributes in some way, shape or form to the degradation of American society that you guys are all so worried about. Like I said earlier, I just want to see some consistency.
So if shaming DOES work (which I would disagree with) why stop there? Shouldn’t we be shaming pretty much everybody in this country? Shouldn’t we be shaming the farmers, instead of making bullshit Super Bowl commercials with that fucking windbag, Paul Harvey, rambling on about them? Shouldn’t we also be shaming everyone who has written into their will that they don’t want the plug pulled if they’re in a coma? Shouldn’t we be shaming everybody who chooses to have their child rather than abort it if keeping it means getting govt assistance to support it? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone involved with the glorification of drug dealers and pimps and the perpetration of violence against women? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone who has to take out some student loans to go to college rather than pay for it out of their own pocket? Shouldn’t we be shaming everyone who makes their money selling the food products that contribute to obesity? Shouldn’t we be outside of fast food restaurants shaming everyone who goes in, regardless of weight, and spends their money in it, thereby allowing a business profiting off the looming obesity/healthcare crisis in this country?[/quote]
Because that’s more like micromanaging. I can’t know for certain, but, as I’ve been saying, both human pride and shame provide a crucial social function serves to keep most members of a social group adhering to behaviors beneficial to the group. Were either one removed, or either one completely unrestrained, we’d have a major problem on our hands because of the selfish, greedy, carnal, hungry, ambitious, nature of the human animal.
I’m saying that expressing one’s disapproval at another’s unhealthy or unethical lifestyle choices comes naturally to us. And that it is only very recently, extremely recently, from a historical perspective, that we have decided to turn this very basic, innate human inclination on its head. I think that may be imprudent, to say the least.
Let’s take move away from the fat topic for a moment. How about a problem we can probably both agree is empirically harmful to our society if we are using crime and poverty, among many other factors, as a standard. Unwed mothers. Particularly those who decide to sire multiple children with different fathers without any means or even real plans for how to provide for them, save government assistance.
Since Candice Bergman made it taboo to ever utter a syllable of ill will regarding the single mother, what options are we now left with? [/quote]
It comes naturally to the judgmental, IMO. It is easy for humans to hate others for our differences. We like to attack things that are different from us. We’re fit, so fat is bad. Is it? Why should we not try to rise above this so-called instinct rather than embrace it? In particular in situations where it really has no affect on the judge or even society as a whole, as is the case with obesity?