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Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

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Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#161

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…

Everyone’s life affects other people by a measurable amount, this is why talk of freedom gets complicated.

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> keeps pushing the boundaries until the political change has happened ... so you made a conclusion that political change happened because of small changes? That conclusion is incorrect. The change happened because of underlying need for that change. In case of smoking, because smokers are much more likely to die from cancer. In case of sugary drinks, the need to change is not as strong. That is why restricting adver…

> ... so you made a conclusion that political change happened because of small changes? That conclusion is incorrect. The change happened because of underlying need for that change. But that's not true. We're talking about most cases of political change. A lot of it doesn't happen because it needs to happen, a lot of political change happens because it's beneficial (profitable?) for someone for it to happen. Do you r…

Do you really think that companies selling juice are unhappy with "sugary drinks" being demonized?

That’s not really accurate: “No soda or juice to be offered with kids meals in California under new law authored by Central Coast senator”

Restaurants will still be able to serve soda or juice with kids meals on request, but those sweetened drinks can no longer be advertised, or listed, as part of any combo meal intended for children.

even though the apple juice contains no added sugar, it would be banned as a standard choice starting in 2019.

https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2018/10/06/stc-l-nikidsmea...

Law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#163
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations are a centralization of power that has obligations to money above all else. Also if you give me the choice between being able to vote and being to to hire a lobbying firm, I know which would have more influence.

Would you admit the corporation one vote or as many votes as total number of shares divided by number of shares held by smallest shareholder?

Is this a serious question? Are you talking about voting for politicians? Anyone can start as many corporations as they want.

Also corporations have roughly 100 million shares and anyone can buy a single share, so your formula would give one corporation more votes than the number of people who participated in the 2016 US election.

Do you really think corporations are under represented in the political process?

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#164
post #21

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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#165
post #63

I had the pleasure of holding a talk at the same event as Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, a rockstar entrepreneur and chemist in Sweden, and one of the questions he got during his talk was how he could reconcile his drive to be an ethical businessman and supply stuff to the military. His response was pretty long but it made a comparison with the sugar industry (paraphrasing here, sorry Saeid if you're reading this and I got some…

That’s a pretty self-serving attitude.

He sells weapons used to kill people, but is disgusted with the sugar industry?

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#166

I'd go further than this. Here in Australia, cigarette packets are forced to use bland, non branded packaging. It should be the same for these drinks. They'll be less attractive if they all look the same.

Cigarette packets have graphic images of damage caused by smoking.

I think people would be upset if the equivalent were put for sugary drinks.

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I think your concerns are unfounded.

> cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large

It sounds to me the slippery slope has already started? Hate taxes on cigarettes are a thing everywhere, some places have a sugar tax already. It's not banned, but it is controlled already.

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#168
post #137
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a ‘slippery slope’ fallacy, and your example even demonstrates its unlikelihood. Cigarettes have been around for a very long time, and the act of smoking them long-term is basically terminal behavior (which we’ve also known about for quite a while). Many countries have banned advertising or limited it, but even in many ‘progressive’ countries (eg Germany) cigarette advertisement is still alive and well. And I…

> And I don’t know of a country where smoking is entirely banned. Bhutan, and the Holy See, not that the latter counts for much besides PR.

Making is allowed in Bhutan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Control_Act_of_Bhuta...

“Smoking areas are permitted in non-public areas of hotels (i.e., smoking floors or smoking rooms) at the discretion of the patron.”

The Holy See banned selling tobacco, but not smoking it. Considering the countries size it had minimal impact. The odd situation was prior to this it had much lower prices so people where buying them inside the Vatican for others. Which created something of a moral hazard.

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I think your concerns are unfounded. > cigarette ads are banned, in some places you’re not allowed to sell sugary drinks that are too large It sounds to me the slippery slope has already started? Hate taxes on cigarettes are a thing everywhere, some places have a sugar tax already. It's not banned, but it is controlled already.

I thought your concerns were that this is the end state of socialized healthcare? I’m simply saying that they’re uncorrelated.

Re: Singapore to become first country banning ads on sugary drinks

#170
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning all ads is wrong. Ads help promoting good products and services. If you ban all ads -- less people will be using good products and services, and that will make our economy less effective.

"If you ban all ads -- less people will be using good products and services, and that will make our economy less effective." That's a strange conclusion, since all products, including terrible ones are advertised. In fact ads are essentially content-free and don't help people decide if a product is good or not. They have zero correlation with the quality of a product. Some countries like France and Germany have indep…

but they also allow the advertisers to use the test results in their ads. and that's effective. if i see a test-result in an ad i do pay attention (if i am in the market for that kind of product)
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