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Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

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Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#491

Post by vkou »

hp48fan wrote: post #478
vkou wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to look for it, I don't think there's a single country on Earth where I couldn't find a smorgasbord of social conformism that I strongly dislike. It's a social glue that holds every culture together, and it never has to make much sense.

But there are different amounts and different quality of conformism. The Nordic (as in Germany northward) one is particularly insistent on crushing deviations from the zeitgeist (German word).

Disagree. There is just nonsense conformism that you like, and nonsense conformism that you dislike. Every culture, including various subsets of American/Canadian/British/French has enough sacred cows that you will be in a world of crap for transgressing over.

What differs between them is not how much crap you'll be in, but the shape of the cow. You like it, I dislike it, and you'll feel like you aren't pressured to conform, while I'll feel like the world around me is utterly insane.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#492

Post by bjelkeman-again »

hp48fan wrote: post #477
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in the UK, US, Sweden, and worked extensively in the Netherlands and India, I can comfortably say that conformism exists everywhere. It doesn’t take the same shape everywhere, but it certainly colours the place and the culture. Scandinavia is not a bad place to live by any measure. I can list a host of reasons why either place would be uncomfortable to live in. But one of my key takeaways from my experie…

Of course there is some degree of conformity everywhere, but having lived in many different places myself, there are stark differences. The woman I mentioned speaks six languages because shes lived in as many countries, including the African and the European Mediterranean coast. Her's was a comparison. Also, all of the countries you listed are Nordic except for India. India, of course, is an extremely rich country, t…

For India, all of them listed.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#493

Post by st34m »

Auracle wrote: post #489
st34m wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never needed to turn around my health as a vegetarian. There's about a 99.999% chance that I'm stronger and faster than you, I wish I could demonstrate. You'd be embarrassed saying what you just said in front of me!

I believe vegetarians can be healthy. However, I’ve identified many people that were vegans just by their looks before they (inevitably) announced it. You’re supposed to be able to supplement your way in to what you need but either the majority don’t or they’re still missing something.

> I believe vegetarians can be healthy.

There's no need for belief, all over the world vegetarians live around a decade longer. There could be any number of confounding factors of course but the burden of proof concerning health and diet is definitely on the pseudo-carnivores consuming their packaged flesh.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#494

Post by dragonwriter »

st34m wrote: post #493
Auracle wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe vegetarians can be healthy. However, I’ve identified many people that were vegans just by their looks before they (inevitably) announced it. You’re supposed to be able to supplement your way in to what you need but either the majority don’t or they’re still missing something.

> I believe vegetarians can be healthy. There's no need for belief, all over the world vegetarians live around a decade longer. There could be any number of confounding factors of course but the burden of proof concerning health and diet is definitely on the pseudo-carnivores consuming their packaged flesh.

> There's no need for belief, all over the world vegetarians live around a decade longer.

Controlling for wealth, total calories consumed, and a number of other known and suspected positive and negative contributors to longevity, quantity of meat eaten seems to end up positively correlated with longevity across the board.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8881926/#!po=26...

The better conclusion might be that vegetarian is an elite affectation that is not as bad for you as the competing elite affectation of overeating.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#495

Post by tylerdurden91 »

giantg2 wrote: post #14

"SSB claims they want a less time-consuming way of collecting and analysing household consumption statistics in order to inform tax policy, social assistance and child allowance." Aka the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can create policies to control your behavior to our liking.

They state they're only interested in group level data, isnt there a way to collect data that is not able to link purchases to any individual.

Theoretically, it seems possible, if the data is never stored against the SSB, but only stored pre-aggregated against demographic markers such as location, age, etc.

If so, wouldn't it be a net win that the government has data to better plan import/export or anything else and maybe make this data public so people can use this data to come up with new businesses in the right locations without compromising individual privacy.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#496

Post by Fatnino »

wiz21c wrote: post #259
ceejayoz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep; societally, they've got a very different attitude towards privacy. Everyone's salary is publicly available online. (So's the fact that you looked!) https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

As said in the article, we already share our data with the supermarket, google, etc and whatever other systems that binds all of them together. In that situation, I'm happy that government has access to the same data because it gives it a way to balance the private sector power. Now what is needed is the ability to opt out.

We can opt out by not using store rewards programs. And some go even one step further by not using credit to buy items that might be detrimental should the wrong parties get that data.

So don't buy booze and cigarettes on credit if you don't want your health insurance company to buy that data from your credit processor.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#497

Post by rsolva »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #331
rsolva wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I have started to think we shouldn't sell any type of hard drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, in grocery stores. Why not sell these products in separate specialized stores, like we already do with Vinmonopolet?

> any type of hard drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, in grocery stores. I volunteered at an addiction and methadone clinic for awhile. I recommend you try it then come talk about what “hard drugs” are.

First, it is not the drug but a persons past experiences (usually some kind of trauma) that drives addictive and destructive behaviour. Opiates just happens to be one of the most effective tools to supress and temporarily deal with said trauma.

Secound, methadone is an awful drug primarily prescribed for it's much longer half-life (compared to diamorphine/heroin). This makes it more convenient for the ones who are tasked with controlling the traumatized persons intake of the medication. Diamorphine is less physically addictive than methadone and features considerably fewer side effects.

Alcohol is more damaging to the body and harder and more risky to quit than diamorphine. This fact is easily overlooked because the drug is so ubiquitous and socially accepted in our culture. The recreational and casual use that we observe in everyday life makes us believe that alcohol is a less dangerous drug.

Alcohol and tobacco are among the hardest drugs we have, it's just that we are so habituated to their use that we falsely believe they are safer, less addictive and easier to quit once physically dependent.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#498

Post by bbddg »

car_analogy wrote: post #399
bbddg wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just describing laws. Is the worry here that they could more effectively enforce laws because of this tracking? Is that a bad thing?

Yes! This is not a novel idea - it's how the US got its 4th amendment, prohibiting unreasonable search. Government power should not be unlimited, because it risks slipping into tyranny. Don't turn your country into a prison on the hope that the warden will remain benevolent. There's no shortage of past and present examples of that suddenly changing.

I'll take a prison like Norway over the lawless hellhole that the US is becoming.
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