From: steve (steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Thu Jun 20 2002 - 10:34:51 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anders Sandberg" <asa@nada.kth.se>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 9:25 AM
Subject: Re: Charging for obesity
> On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 08:05:18PM -0700, Max More wrote:
> >
> > So, someone has the guts to do this. Obesity is an out-of-control
epidemic
> > in the U.S.A.
>
> The problem here may be that there are forces working hard on creating a
> "war on obesity": it is a serious problem, but at the same time it ought
> to fall under morphological freedom, shouldn't it? If we accept
> cyborgization, new skin colors and extra brains, why not extra fat? The
> SA policy makes sense and is not really problematic (you pay for the
> seats you take up, and these are a discrete resource). But there are
> other ideas floating around that are really worrying, like fat taxes
> (!). The idea seems to be to "help" obese people by making fat food more
> expensive (and in Sweden, such ideas a phrased in terms of giving the
> health care system more money to deal with these "problem people").
Absolutely right! Sure SA are quite right to charge more - seating space is
a scarce commodity - but these health panics are a major way for general
busybodies to get support for an agenda of regulating everyone else's life.
If folk want to be fat, let 'em. Every time I visit the U.S. I come back
thinking I will have to take up smoking, just to piss off the puritans. (My
common sense and better judgement do reassert themselves after a while!)
Steve Davies
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