New York City bans trans fats

[xorbie]

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"You are not owed non-poisonous food. If you want to buy some food and you want it to be poison-free, then you need to find someone that is selling poison-free food at prices you are willing to pay. It is not anyone else's responsibility to make the food available, or to identify which foods are poisonous for you, or to insure the cost of such food is tolerable to you."

Since this is so obviously false to you, you should have no problem telling me exactly who owes me non-poisonous food, testing to ensure it is not poisonous, at whatever price I want.

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Again, black or white. It's either delicious food at whatever price you want or nobody is responsible for anything. Try harder to come up with a middle ground.

Here are the facts:

It is currently the responsibility of a good many people to provide me food that is not poisoned so long as I pay them whatever they charge.

It is currently the responsibility of a good many people to identify what is poisonous to me, because I am incapable of doing so myself, not having an advanced degree in biochemistry and human nutrition.

You either misunderstand responsibility, misunderstand the world and how people view it, or somehow imagine that problems magically dissapear along with the government that ineptly attempts to solve them (and sometimes causes more).

[vhawk01]

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First, you have no right to purchase non-poisonousfood from anyone.

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good argument. that will teach those pesky new yorkers who want to cut into corporate profits!

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You seriously think that you have a right to non-poisonous food? Perhaps this undue sense of entitlement is part of the disconnect here.

[vhawk01]

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First, you have no right to purchase non-poisonousfood from anyone.

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good argument. that will teach those pesky new yorkers who want to cut into corporate profits!

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Even as you have written it, it is still true. You are not owed non-poisonous food. If you want to buy some food and you want it to be poison-free, then you need to find someone that is selling poison-free food at prices you are willing to pay. It is not anyone else's responsibility to make the food available, or to identify which foods are poisonous for you, or to insure the cost of such food is tolerable to you.

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Honestly, do you even read what you type? Are you this far removed from the "real world"? Are you just explaining how things might be in some theoretical circumstance? Do you realize that parroting some psuedo-philosophy doesn't actually make it so?

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It is fundamentally important that you do not actually think you have a right to non-poisonous food. If you do believe you have this right, aside from the "theoretical" problem of you laughably trying to demonstrate this, then we probably don't share enough common ground to make discussion useful. If I believe I have a fundamental right to tasty food, or healthy food, or yellow food, or YOUR food, you cannot convince me otherwise, but we cannot have discourse.

[vhawk01]

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All I can say is that as far as government bans go, I'm all for it. Trans fats most likely cost more money than they save through health care costs

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Cost more for whom? Save health care costs for whom? How do the answers to these two questions change with and without government intervention? Which set of answers makes sense to you?

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Costs more for society. I won't fall into your trap of assuming that things aren't the way they are, regardless of whether this is ideal.

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, and the loss in quality of life certainly makes up the difference.

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Whose quality of life? As measured by whom? Who should be taking responsibility for changing who's quality of life?

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Again, this is why I try to avoid these threads. Nothing but constant abstract gibbering, the same exact catch phrase in every thread. Yes the individual is responsible... trust me I understand this rather simple concept. Perhaps if you took more time to adress each issue instead of just pointlessly yapping about AC fantasies, people would take you more seriously (and I don't mean here at 2+2).

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With that said, I don't think the government should be in the business of making such bans, and I do think that given some time the "market" would sort this out, especially in a city like NY. Perhaps they should consider passing this down in Alabama or whereever.

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So what you're saying is that people should only have government step in and make decisions for them when they are "too stupid", for example like Alabamans. Sounds like a robust political philosophy to me.

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Actually, that is more or less what I'm saying. If you're going to have the government make these sorts of decisions, better do it when people are less informed. Again, focus on the issue.

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All I can say to the AC people is that you should really read up on information assymetry. The arguments posed continue to be, by and large, laughable.

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Imperfect information is a natural condition of transactions. Furthermore, government intervention is not an improvement unless the government is somehow magically endowed with complete information for all transactions, which we know is not the case.

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I didn't say anything about government intervention curing information assymetry, I'm just having a laugh at the AC solutions which are posed as if they do something that is miles better (very little thought is required to see why this isn't the case... consider what some large 3rd party food testing company would operate like).

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In any event, I think your post is off base because you've chosen to portray posts rejecting the government intervention as posts that say:

- transfats are good
- free market transactions are free of imperfect information problems

Neither is a valid interpretation.

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I've said neither. I choose to interpret these posts as saying stuff like "personal responsibility yay! market yay! government nay!", which is rather accurate. The fact is that the principle you are fighting for is beyond compromised at the moment, and trying to pick your battle in this particular case is absurd.

The inability to see shades of grey is, IMO, one of the downfalls of man. Not everything is bad/good. This ban is bad in the sense that the government really ought not be in the business of doing such things (omg I agree with you), but beyond the principle violated, this ban is very likely to increase social welfare.

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So your argument technique is to argue from incredulity, argue from ignorance, and essentially call your opponents nerds. Well, if its THEORETICAL its obviously useless and stupid.

Go figure that statism would win in arguments based on what is actually happening, since we live in a statist society.

Here, let me try it. Statist societies promote murder, rape, homelessness, disease and death. Whats that you say? Statism doesn't HAVE to be like that? There are statist solutions to these problems? ENOUGH OF YOUR EGG-HEADED IDEALISM, I SAY! Just look at how the statist world actually IS! Clearly statism is horrible, at least if you don't want to be raped.

[pvn]

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So your argument technique is to argue from incredulity, argue from ignorance, and essentially call your opponents nerds. Well, if its THEORETICAL its obviously useless and stupid.

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Well done. It took me about a week to nail xorbie down last time he sprang up in Politics. It took you all of what, three posts? Gold star.

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Here, let me try it. Statist societies promote murder, rape, homelessness, disease and death. Whats that you say? Statism doesn't HAVE to be like that? There are statist solutions to these problems? ENOUGH OF YOUR EGG-HEADED IDEALISM, I SAY! Just look at how the statist world actually IS! Clearly statism is horrible, at least if you don't want to be raped.

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YAY Glorious statism!

[pvn]

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All I can say is that as far as government bans go, I'm all for it. Trans fats most likely cost more money than they save through health care costs, and the loss in quality of life certainly makes up the difference.

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This here is a glimpse of the future. Once the government starts providing healthcare, the door is open for all sorts of invasive control in order to "control costs."

And yet again, we see that while proponents of voluntary action are the ones slammed as "worshipping the dollar above all else" the proponents of statism are leading the charge with arguments putting economic efficiency above personal freedom.

Freedom: too expensive.

ENJOY!!!

[Adebisi]

In 10 years when you want to go out on a Sunday morning for a nice greasy breakfast, all the diners/restaurants will only be serving yogurt, fruit, whole wheat pancakes, egg whites, and turkey bacon.

[RainDog]

Just want to voice some support for PLOlover and Woolygimp for speaking truth deep in AC land.

Transfats (or shall we say partially hydrogenated vegetable oils) are a deceitful mechanism to poison the masses.

Sometimes I like to eat out. I don't have the time to make an inquiry to ignorant employees working for ignorant managers about the existence of trans fat in their cooking oils at every single place I eat at! I don't know and most of the time they don't know.

Because of the fact that it's cheaper, the stuff proliferates. I, as a health conscious person, want the option to go to restaurants that don't have trans fat and I don't equate this to other "liberties" the government may or may not take away.

I hate cigarette smoke, but I don't think the government should have the right to dictate whether or not people can smoke in public places. It's a different issue. It is a businesses right to be a smoking establishment. I can SEE whether or not people are smoking. I can sit in non-smoking sections. People get satisfaction out of smoking.

[xorbie]

See, this is why you guys are ridiculous. You have to understand I'm not trying to convert any of you guys, I'm quite aware of what you would like the world to be. Everyone else is too. AC yay, statism no! I get it, really I do. I don't have the infinite patience to debate this when neither side is going to change their fundamental (almost moral) stance.

My point was very simple. I:

a) Do not think the government should be involved in passing legislation like this.

b) Don't think that third party, open market solutions are going to solve all of life's problems, nor that a preference for the fundamental moral stance behind it is any more valid than any other moral stance. In particular, because everyone has to buy food out if they cannot make it themselves, there must be good food regulation industry. Now if you privatize it, you might save money, but the problem is that people don't understand the science enough to ever be well informed enough to estimate the actual risks involved with eating certain foods/chemicals. There's no way for me to really judge how good your oversight company is compared to some other one, and which one is really worth the best. You can say that there would be some other industry that did nothing but rate these, but again... how do I trust that industry? The government is not a solution in and of itself, but no solution is perfect. Oversight is difficult, and you can't just imagine the problem away (particularly in this day and age where there is just too much information and technology) by turning to the market.

c) I think, given all that, that this is probably a good idea. The fact of the matter is that even though they should not, people do rely on the government to ensure that the food they eat does not kill them. The fact is that while trans fats may not kill you right now, they clearly have a very adverse impact on quality of life.

Would another law be better? Yes. Would it be better if everyone understood how bad these things were for you so that restaraunts like these couldn't be in business? Yes. Are these things the case? No. Will this law help? Probably.

End.

[pvn]

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Transfats (or shall we say partially hydrogenated vegetable oils) are a deceitful mechanism to poison the masses.

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Are you suggesting there's a willful conspiracy to kill people via transfats?

Who is behind this dastardly plot? And what's the motivation?