Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use. This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If…
It’s a “friendly authoritarian” surveillance state. It’s great if you obey the rules, but you sound like you lean toward libertarianism...Singapore is the complete opposite.
Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
41–50 of 197 posts
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#42Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use. This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If…
There's a point there that I don't think gets enough discussion: As healthcare becomes increasingly socialized, personal unhealthy choices become an attack on society at large. Why wouldn't we ban sugary drinks altogether? Motorcycle riding even with a helmet? Maybe get rid of pasta. It's not clear to me where we should stop, if medical costs to society are a valid justification for reducing personal freedom...
Personally I believe that this is the end state of socialized health care, and I'm afraid we'll see it implemented on a wide scale within the next 20 years. It'll likely start with a hate tax, which is already in affect in a handful of locations.
The only real question to me is which will be banned 'for the good of society' first: sugar, or meat? Meat has the extra argument going around of having an impact on the climate, and some studies say it can be bad for health. Sugar of course is bad for health in large quantities.
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#43"In addition to an ad ban, the ministry announced that sugary drinks would also be required to display a color-coded, front-of-pack nutrition label to list nutritional quality and sugar content."
I like Japanese/Taiwanese approach which list percentage of fruit juice (front-of-pack). And manufacturers can't cheat with substitutes like apple cause it doesn't count. This is way more useful for consumers to decide what they want. In countries like Malaysia I have no idea what i am buying (sugar water vs real fruit juice)
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#44Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use. This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If…
Society pays a high cost for eating meat. It takes a lot of resources to grow meat for consumption. Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of things pointing towards how meat consumption isn't good for our health. So, let's ban advertising for meat products. Next step we levy heavy taxes on meat products and for the final step we outright ban it. After all, it's for your own good. The state knows best.
All true. I guess the balance of power doesn’t support that, partly because:
1) there is no memetic equivalent of “sugar => calories => fat and ugly”, indeed rather the opposite because of its association with the Atkins diet.
2) farming is a job everyone seems to support even though it’s a small part of the economy, and meat is a cash crop (or am I misremembering?)
> The state knows best.
All true except that. We’ve all got our own examples, when I was at school the (UK) government’s poster-child for “drugs are bad” was a girl who actually overdosed on H2O, yet all the people who I should’ve been able to trust to be honest were blaming MDMA.
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#45I would agree with banning any ads for children under 18 years old, b/c they get bombarded with ads for junk food on all media channels. Plus I would agree with media campaigns teaching people that sugary drinks are a leading cause of obesity. But I disagree with banning ads on sugary drinks specifically because I am increasingly concerned about recommending, taxing or banning foods based on weak scientific evidence…
Food consumption is a leading cause of obesity so maybe all the food, beverages and restaurants ads should be banned.
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#46Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use. This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If…
> This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. Maybe this is a petty, pointless distinction, but I think they're quite different. Singapore banned the ads , not the actual consumption. Not wearing a helmet chiefly harms yourself, and it's hard to argue that it's immoral. Encouraging others not to wear a helmet, though... that seems pretty objectionable, just like ads for tobacco etc. (Of course there are…
People being injured or killed harms other people. Especially in countries with some form of universal healthcare (i.e most of the developed world).
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#47I would agree with banning any ads for children under 18 years old, b/c they get bombarded with ads for junk food on all media channels. Plus I would agree with media campaigns teaching people that sugary drinks are a leading cause of obesity. But I disagree with banning ads on sugary drinks specifically because I am increasingly concerned about recommending, taxing or banning foods based on weak scientific evidence…
Food consumption is a leading cause of obesity so maybe all the food, beverages and restaurants ads should be banned.
Why would food or drinks need advertisement? These are products that have literally infinite demand, nobody can live without them.
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#48Usually I am for freedom to do anything you want as long as it does not impact other people. I am OK though with banning ads for sugary drinks because society pays a high medical cost for damage due to excess sugar addiction/use. This is like forcing motor cycle riders to wear helmets. BTW, I worked in Singapore for a while in 2016. Wonderful place! People just seemed happy there, from business people to laborers. If…
Should we stop people from doing high risk activities in general? Mountain climbing? Sky diving? Those impact society as well, and my medicinal expenses are higher when they get hurt.
Skydiving medical costs are pretty small. But something with a big impact such as those new electric scooters get lawmakers to quickly act. Speed limits, restrictions on where they can drive, helmet requirement... all of it is being contemplated by regulators everywhere. Because they are widely used and pretty dangerous.
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Food consumption is a leading cause of obesity so maybe all the food, beverages and restaurants ads should be banned.
Why would food or drinks need advertisement? These are products that have literally infinite demand, nobody can live without them.
The concept of "food" doesn't need advertising.
Demand is not infinite. The demand is distributing among a wide range of available choices, advertising aims to change that distribution towards the advertisers products.
Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a point there that I don't think gets enough discussion: As healthcare becomes increasingly socialized, personal unhealthy choices become an attack on society at large. Why wouldn't we ban sugary drinks altogether? Motorcycle riding even with a helmet? Maybe get rid of pasta. It's not clear to me where we should stop, if medical costs to society are a valid justification for reducing personal freedom...
Personally I believe that this is the end state of socialized health care, and I'm afraid we'll see it implemented on a wide scale within the next 20 years. It'll likely start with a hate tax, which is already in affect in a handful of locations. The only real question to me is which will be banned 'for the good of society' first: sugar, or meat? Meat has the extra argument going around of having an impact on the cli…
The U.S. already has plenty such laws without socialized healthcare: cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large etc. Drug prohibition is probably the most prominent example, but we’re seeing efforts to decriminalize those concurrent with efforts to socialize healthcare. I think your concerns are unfounded.