[ExI] morality

spike at rainier66.com spike at rainier66.com
Fri May 19 20:02:47 UTC 2023



-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
efc--- via extropy-chat

>
>>... It depends on how you classify "unhealthy food."  Do you have a
universal definition of it, or an objective measure?  Neither does anyone
else.  Consider a classic American low cost meal: hamburgers.  Does that
count as healthy or unhealthy?  Why?

>...I think that in the examples I've heard, junk food is classified as Mc
Donalds hamburgers...

Are we now targeting specific businesses?  If McDonalds is junk food, then
how about the nearly identical In-n-Out?  Burger King?  Do we tax all of
them?  Do some get to skate because they offer salads to go along with those
burgers, to make a healthy balanced diet?  McDonalds does.  I don't know
about Wendys.

Daniel fast food is what keeps homeless people alive.  High school students
live on the stuff, if there is one close enough to campus.  I don't think we
want to suggest increasing taxes on the foods that sustain poor people,
particularly when it seems perfectly arbitrary what gets taxed and what
doesn't.  I have seen no objective measure for determining if something is
junk food or if it is not, but do consider the rise of the breakfast cereal
industry in Battle Creek Michigan starting with John Harvey Kellogg.  This
is a story for another time.

>...Personally, for me, it is the quantity of a thing that determines how
dangerous it is for you. ...
Best regards,
Daniel

Of course.  McDonalds has been sued for making their wares so compelling
that proles devoured too much of it and got fat:

https://www.neatorama.com/2010/10/30/man-sued-mcdonalds-for-making-him-fat-a
nd-won/#:~:text=Here's%20the%20bizarre%20story%20of,for%20over%20a%20dozen%2
0years.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/health.healthandwellbeing

There is nothing wrong with the food itself.  I flatly refuse to fault
McDonalds or any other purveyor of anything, for offering a product so good
that buyers use too much of it to their detriment.  Of course businesses
will do that.  Making money is their job.  Making a lot of it is their moral
obligation to their own stockholders.  Of course it is the responsibility of
the proles to eschew gluttony, and go easy on the good old glaze donuts too.
I love em, soooo good with a tall cup of black coffee!  I don't eat em very
often, I know those are not healthy food.  Everybody does.

Think about that.  Sheesh.

spike



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