New York City bans trans fats

[pvn]

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Should unsanitary restaurants be closed down for producing food in filthy conditions?

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If I owned a restaurant, I would probably close it down if it were filthy, at least until I could clean it up.

I don't care if you close your restaurant down or not.

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Shouldn't you have the personal freedom to eat there?

Answer this real quick, and we'll go from there.

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If you want to eat in filthy restaurants, go right ahead, it won't bother me at all. Of course, I don't really understand WHY you would do that; it seems that rewarding such establishments with your business would simply encourage more restaurants to operate in filthy conditions.

[pvn]

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things which are potentially injurious and yield "practically nothing good."

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Skydiving.

Baseball (see earlier thread about kids getting killed by scary aluminum bats)

Church.

Ice Cream (tofutti tastes "almost" the same).

Motorcycles.

Poker.

[/ QUOTE ] There is a difference between outlawing trans fats and outlawing these things. I understand that you don't like outlawing either, and neither do I, but there is a difference. The government think it's helping society to arrive much faster to a place where the market would lead us eventually anyway (no trans fats).

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I'm sure we can find people who would think banning ice cream would be helping society. Clearly, lots of people think getting rid of poker would help society.

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The market is slow, outlawing is quick. And people won't protest. If you took away church or ice cream, people would be outraged because they feel like they get something good from these things. If you take away trans fats, nobody (really, nobody) will care except for people who care just because of principle and slippery slope ideas, like yourself and to some degree I.

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So the "difference" is that lots of people like one, but lots of people don't like the other?

How many people is it OK to oppress before oppression becomes bad? As long as it's just a few people, and as long as we can portray them as some sort of wackos, it's no problem, right?

[Woolygimp]

My family has been in the restaurant business for years, and the point I'm trying to make is consumer ignorance. It's impossible for a customer to be aware of all the conditions regarding the products they purchase whether it be ingredients in food, materials used in making their shoes, location and wages of the workers the factories hire..

So if it were legal for someone to run a filthy unsanitry restaurant, then wouldn't you be afraid that every restaurant you visit would fit that mold? Would you go to the backroom and check?

I know you know where I'm coming from, and these laws are great because they protect the consumer in areas where the consumer can't always protect themselves.

My post above wasn't saying that anyone would knowingly choose to eat at a filthy restaurant, but that's not to say that people wouldn't unknowingly fall victim if there was no law concerning the sanitation of food faculties.

From your position you have to agree with this:

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I open a large restaurant chain tomorrow and I put arsenic in the lasagna, yet don't advertise it. I'll list it in the ingredients if a consumer were to ask otherwise it's rather subtle. You come in with your family, and your daughter orders the lasagna and then gets sick and dies.

Who's responsible?

Obviously your dead daughter is at fault by being an irresponsible consumer by not asking the waiter if there was indeed arsenic present in the lasagna.

After all my reasoning for putting the arsenic in the lasagna to begin with is that I was exercising the right for people to choose whether or not they want a deadly substance in their lasagna.
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[/ QUOTE ] Right?

[PLOlover]

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You don't have to eat processed food. You don't have to eat at restaurants. You could eat only 100% all natural whatever if you want but many people don't want to do this because it is more costly and less convenient. So you have a choice and are demonstrating your preferences with your actions of buying or not buying such food.

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exact same argument for arsenic. hey it's in 95% of food and all restaruants, but hey, you made the choice. suffer the consequences.

[wtfsvi]

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I'm sure we can find people who would think banning ice cream would be helping society. Clearly, lots of people think getting rid of poker would help society.

[/ QUOTE ] Yes, that's fine. But can you find people that think outlawing trans fat will hurt society? Except for people like me and you, who think so because of slippery slope ideas and philosophical ideas about individual rights.

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So the "difference" is that lots of people like one, but lots of people don't like the other?

How many people is it OK to oppress before oppression becomes bad? As long as it's just a few people, and as long as we can portray them as some sort of wackos, it's no problem, right?

[/ QUOTE ] I did not say it was OK, I said there is a significant difference between outlawing something that nobody really wants (but they might not care one way or the other, so they might buy it if it's allowed and convenient), like trans fats, and something that a few people want a lot, but other people think is bad, like poker or sky diving. I'm not saying any of these two are OK, but one is a lot worse than the other.

edit: The third difference is the one vhawk pointed out. The welfare state has to pay for you if you get sick from all the unhealthy stuff you eat, so as long as you want to have a welfare state you might not get away with allowing people to do whatever they want. I know that you don't want to have a welfare state, but most people want it and think it's important.

[AlexM]

You've seen the smoking bans, right? I don't see how you could be shocked when this is the obvious next step.

[mosdef]

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My family has been in the restaurant business for years, and the point I'm trying to make is consumer ignorance.

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What do you think is the source of "consumer ignorance"?

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It's impossible for a customer to be aware of all the conditions regarding the products they purchase whether it be ingredients in food, materials used in making their shoes, location and wages of the workers the factories hire..

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That is correct. Insofar as any particular consumer demands that their product not contain something, it is the responsibility of the consumer to be informed, not the responsibility of the rest of the consumers to bear the burden.

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So if it were legal for someone to run a filthy unsanitry restaurant, then wouldn't you be afraid that every restaurant you visit would fit that mold? Would you go to the backroom and check?

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This is a good question, because thinking it through actually exposes the entire fallacy with your argument. If there was no "law" demanding "sanitary" (subjective term by the way) conditions, but sanitary conditions would benefit consumers, what do you think would happen? Do you think all of these consumers, who apparently would benefit from "sanitary" conditions, would all throw up their hands and say, "Well, if the government won't forbid unsanitary conditions I'll just have to eat my spagetti off the floor!"?

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I know you know where I'm coming from, and these laws are great because they protect the consumer in areas where the consumer can't always protect themselves.

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False dichotomy. The government is not the only agent that the consumer can delegate responsibility to keep them informed.

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I open a large restaurant chain tomorrow and I put arsenic in the lasagna, yet don't advertise it.

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Stop right there. Why on earth would someone do this? Is the law against putting arsenic in food the only thing stopping all restranteurs from doing this? Until you can provide any reasonable explanation for why one needs to worry about this, it's a totally irrelevant comparison.

[AlexM]

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The reason I support the ban is because it's too much of a pain in the ass to go around to different restaurants and ask the ignorant waiter if foods served there are cooked with trans fats.

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Then require the restaurants to inform people. Banning is entirely unnecessary.

[BCPVP]

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You don't have to eat processed food. You don't have to eat at restaurants. You could eat only 100% all natural whatever if you want but many people don't want to do this because it is more costly and less convenient. So you have a choice and are demonstrating your preferences with your actions of buying or not buying such food.

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exact same argument for arsenic. hey it's in 95% of food and all restaruants, but hey, you made the choice. suffer the consequences.

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Lol @ the arsenic comparison. No one is dying from eating trans fats. They may die sooner because they live an unhealthy lifestyle, but if that's your rationale for outlawing things, why not have a government-mandated menu and government-mandated exercise programs?

[Woolygimp]

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You've seen the smoking bans, right? I don't see how you could be shocked when this is the obvious next step.

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From what I've read smoking bans are to prevent second hand smoke inhalation and not necessarily to protect the smoker.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, however if someone doesn't want to inhale second hand smoke then they have that right.