Indeed it is often the case in debate that no resolution is possible because the parties cannot even agree on philosophical axioms or the meaning of common-language terms, and this seems to be, in part at least, what we have here. This is why democratic politics is such a ghastly mess. From this Babel governance must somehow emerge, and it is a marvel that things work as well as they do.

Blog-comment matches can get awfully feisty at times, but even in a spirited rumble like this, nobody gets hurt. You are obviously an intelligent and thoughtful person, Court, and I hope you will continue to read and comment here.

I confess to not having read every entry here. No doubt it would behoove me to do so. But certainly I have overstepped the bounds of etiquette as, as you say, a guest. Running your yap never did no one any good, as my grandfather used to say. Apologies, Malcolm. Rest assured I will consider well before doing so again.

Obese people with a live internet connection could form a lobby and force Gov. Paterson to adopt taxes on some surprising stuff if he tries to use obesity as justification. Likewise, the obese could force the State to adopt even more drastic healthcare cost rises because after all, “If you’re trying to get me slimmed down through social legislation, read here.”

We’re gonna have to go after those ear infections:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/apa-cei080808.php
We need tubing inserted into our intestines, again if we poop it out:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/mgh-sop112408.php
Let’s not forget a little brain surgery (no Court, nothing evolutionary here):
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/uoo-oa101308.php
Everybody needs Xanax:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/w-pml060208.php
And/or mushrooms:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/epr-nms081408.php
Does soda pop contain MSG?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/uonc-urf081308.php
Don’t plop that crying infant in front of the TV:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/hms-eum040408.php
No nanoparticles for you:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/tuot-n111308.php
And you can just forget about looking forward to the weekend:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/wuso-wsw070108.php

Don’t limit yourself Court, there’s a bunch of stuff you can target besides Madison Avenue. Oh, and to the citizenry of New York? A black helicopter just landed in my driveway and the pilot is insisting I move from Arkansas to Nova Scotia. He’s armed.

You may link to Wikipedia all you like, but history is replete with examples of gradual erosions of freedoms, and accelerating slides into various forms of perfidy. (Again you are obstinately misreading me, and getting my point backwards: I am not making a formal argument that government restrictions on soda must, as a matter of logical necessity, lead straight to Mussolini-style Fascism, but rather that we have ample historical evidence that when such systems do take root, this is how it begins.) The elementary fallacy you are guilty of, however, is your tacit assumption that the natural fact that we are predisposed to eat lots of sugar means that we ought to impose governmental restrictions to “right the ship”. This is not a scientific matter in any sense whatsoever — nobody is disputing that eating and drinking too much sugar will make people obese. It is a question of what we want to do about that perfectly obvious fact, a fact that you seem to relish presenting as some hitherto-unsuspected scientific “reality”. You write:

Science has everything to do with whether a luxury tax on unnecessary, unhealthy products should be brought in or not. Indeed, I can’t think of any other metric that could reasonably be brought to bear.

The central point here, to which you seem blithely and entirely oblivious, is that different people, given the same set of scientific facts, might have different opinions — and please, they are opinions, not objective moral truths, as if there even were such a thing — about what to do with them.

Above all, what vexes me here, Court — and what has moved me to the brink of intemperate language — is that having been welcomed aboard as a commenter, no sooner have you got to your seat than you have taken it upon yourself to offer instruction to us all, in the most condescending tone, about matters with which the community here are already intimately familiar. Do we really need to be reminded reiteratively by you that “reality is complex”? Do you think we are children? Has anyone here ever, as you imply, denied “that our evolutionary heritage has anything to do with our preference for sugary soft drinks and that Coke has visibly profited from this preference?” It is one thing to publicly miss the point; it is quite another to do it with such swagger and bluster. You condescendingly suggest that I ought to read Jared Diamond’s Collapse — presumably so as to bring my level of understanding of these “complex realities” somewhat closer to yours — when as it happens not only have I (along with many of our readers here) already read it, but also devoted a series of posts to it in these pages almost two years ago.

If you are going to inaugurate your membership in our little group by lecturing us on subjects with which we are already well acquainted, we might at least hope that you would give some care to expressing coherent sets of ideas. But with one breath you announce that you are “suspicious” of the very idea of human nature, while in the next, when it serves your shifting rhetorical purposes, you launch a tendentious and patronizing account of introductory concepts in human evolution, patiently explaining to everyone that we are utterly powerless to resist, in the absence of State-imposed penalties, our evolved preference for sugary foods. You sneer at a Jeffersonian attitude toward governance as a “fantasyland”, and then profess your pious respect for “the great man”. Please choose a viewpoint, and try to stick with it, at least for the duration of a single comment.

I am not admonishing anyone to behave himself, and certainly not “schoolmarmishly”; once again you appear not to have listened to anything I’ve been saying. People will behave as they will. What I am saying is that, in my opinion, people ought (please note the word “ought” here: I am afraid I must point out to you once again, however futile it may be, that this a normative remark about the sort of society I’d like to live in, and as such not amenable to rebuttal by any scientific data whatsoever, except in the context of other normative valuations) to be held responsible for the choices they make, and not seek instead to blame everyone around them but themselves for their being too fat. I have already made it quite clear in my comment above that responsibility implies being in possession of the relevant facts, and that I wholeheartedly support a robust governmental role — funded by our tax dollars, of course — in unearthing and disseminating such information, in order to have the best-informed, and therefore most responsible, citizenry possible. Your preferred solution, on the other hand, is that the State should simply coerce people into adopting the behavior it demands, on the assumption that they are too irremediably ignorant — or too much in thrall to the human nature you deny in one sentence and assert in the next — ever to assume meaningful responsibility for their own behavior.

In a strikingly unpersuasive paragraph, you make the bizarre assertion that “of course” advertising “affects our freedom”. I cannot imagine what sort of meaning you ascribe to the word “freedom”, but as I, and I think most people, understand the word, advertising does nothing of the sort. Advertising seeks to persuade; my choice, however, remains entirely my own. Is advertising effective? Of course. Does that mean that those affected aren’t making a free choice? Of course not. Once again you seem curiously, almost supinely, eager to surrender your virtue to any proximate suitor. You conclude, mockingly, with “well, bully for you”, as if by simply making up my own mind, as an autonomous adult, about what I shall drink, I am preening and showing off. (It may surprise you, but many of us do this sort of thing all the time.) You then jeer at the idea that freedom might consist of choosing between whatever options are actually available. If I drink a glass of water, how is that “score one for Madison Avenue”? I must confess I find all of this quite incomprehensible. (If any readers have kept awake long enough to follow along this far, and are able to make sense of this, please feel free to explain; if there is in fact a rational argument of some sort here, I should hate to have missed it.)

Returning to Jared Diamond’s book, his point about corporate environmental policies, if you actually read that far (it was rather late in the book, and judging by your remarks I suspect you may not have), was that ultimately it has been the power of public opinion, exercised through the free market in the form of non-governmental, independent environmental-certification agencies such as the Forest Stewardship Council, that has actually led to genuine and sustainable improvements in the way large corporations conserve environmental resources. These companies simply realized that it was in their own best interest to behave — how shall I put it? — more responsibly.

Toward the end, and to your credit, you acknowledge that a tax on soda pop may not be the right solution to the problem of rampant obesity. But it is no sooner said than you dismiss as “pious cant” the bedrock American idea that individual liberty is worth defending. A pity.

Finally, before dismissing class for the holidays, you suggest that our ponderous ignorance might be leavened slightly, and our philosophical horizon broadened, if we were to take an “oblique interest” in the evolutionary underpinnings of morality. I thank you for calling this field to our attention, for the sake of our improvement; it does indeed sound interesting (and the linked article is a very good overview of the subject). But as it happens, this is also a topic to which we have devoted the keenest attention for quite some time, and which has already been the subject of searching discussion in these pages. (And as it also happens, the article emphasizes, as I have tried to do here, that the philosophical move from is to ought, even in light of recent developments in evolutionary psychology, and despite your insistence to the contrary, has yet to be made. The choice of which political system we would like to live under is, I am afraid, still a matter of individual human preference, and no appeal to science is about to change that.)

I must say, and it saddens me, that our promising relationship, only a few weeks old and still green in the bud, seems to have wilted ever so slightly in the course of this thread. I’ve spoken harshly here, but I’m certainly not angry, and I do not hold grudges. Perhaps we might have more productive conversations on some other topic.

It is my habit, when I feel discussions have reached the point of diminishing returns, to offer guests with whom I have intractable disagreements the last word. Feel free to take it, if you like.

As stated earlier, I admit to occasional dim-wittedness.

I don’t participate in many of these sorts of discussions (which if you look back in the many posts) easily verified. I prefer specific types of topics. Somewhat frequently I leap before I really look. (Simply view the most recent post.) I’m a simple hillbilly.

I’ve gone through phases. When I was quite young, I thought all my problems and, by extension, everyone’s could be laid at the feet of Ho Chi Minh. Until I came to this conversation I thought most of my problems came from Washington DC, or perhaps Wall Street. Then I really went through some changes, first it was my DNA, then an unrealized thirst for sugar water, the uninsured, diabetics, next the Coca-Cola Corporation. Madison Avenue (I think) it turns out is who I should lay awake at night worrying about what conspiracies they’re insidiously formulating machinating ongoing efforts to deplete my precious bodily fluids.

A ten item list would be most helpful, definitely appreciated.

I took the quiz. Turns out I’m a Social Liberal. Who knew.

I think waiting for the science is a pretty good idea, I think I’ve read somewhere that at least one person agrees that a government funded study might be useful, and necessary. I would hope however that any included scientists would not, prior to the study say, “…as I think it already has…” that would seem to be a guarentee for an outcome.

Playing in the field of non sequitor you have no equal Court.

“And yes, advertising affects our freedom. Of course it does – that is its whole point. Look at how your frame your choice – I’m not going to do what they tell me to! I’m free! Well, bully for you. Meanwhile, you think your “freedom” comes down to being able to choose Coke or water. Score one for Madison Avenue.”

Run that by me once more, please feel free to go back and read your previous posts, then please collate, synthesize, distill. “Reality is complex.”

Indeed.

You’re welcome Kevin, I’d like to see the other test you mention as well. Hope you find it. The first time I took it, as I said, I was smack dab in the cross hairs. After I posted the link I was curious and so retook it. This time I came out “Moderate-freedom lover.”

I think it had something to do with subsequent bailouts and my related changing views on subsidies. I was happy to see that I am not so stalwartly rigid as ______ would have me. Rather than Ann Rynd I’m more like Pork Rind. In moderation.

But I remained close enough to the center of the graph that had the SWAT sniper been using a shotgun – well I’d no longer be visiting waka to revel in Court’s absence.

Just kidding Court, my children have all grown and moved away and I miss their innocence.

You’re denying that science has any role to play in this? Really? So we’ll just throw out any discovery of links between obesity and soda pop in the name of your political opinions? Look, that’s just ludicrous, I’m sorry to say. Science has everything to do with whether a luxury tax on unnecessary, unhealthy products should be brought in or not. Indeed, I can’t think of any other metric that could reasonably be brought to bear. Oh, I see in your next comment up there, you do agree that the science should be brought to bear. Whew. That’s a relief. I was afraid this discussion had just gone completely off the rails. Now the question is: once the science (as I think it already has) has established the links between obesity and soda pop, are you going to be willing to do anything besides some sort of “Just Say No”, or “Just Drink Less” campaign? (Look how well that’s worked for illicit drugs, as you are of course aware.) Or would you be willing to support some direct action – which I believe is the stage we are at now with the proposed tax.

The slippery slope is indeed a fallacy. You have not specified any of the steps from “18% tax on soda pop” to personal liberties being “flushed down the toilet”. Go on ahead and try. I suspect you’ll find it difficult.

I think we’re just going to have to part ways here. I’m not “abdicating” my responsibility or my freedom; I’m just taking a realistic view of it. Reality is complex. I’m not trying to explain it away.

I’m suspicious of all-encompassing terms like “human nature”. What does that even mean? I certainly don’t know. And certainly people have been producing and selling various unhealthy goods throughout history. What is different about Coke is the scale, cheapness, and easy availability of it. (Along with lots of other factors, of course, more sedentary lifestyles, etc.) That changes the game. I don’t see why this should be denied out-of-hand with some schoolmarmish admonition to just behave yourself. It’s what I keep saying, again and again: reality is complex. There are lots of factors to consider. In my view, we are better off considering as many as possible, in order to effect the best social policy. Yes, I said social policy. Unless you happen to live in, say, Somalia – you live in a country that has one. Or several. A fact of life.

Man – all the hyperbole. No one is telling you can’t enjoy a Coke. They’re talking about a tax on it. You can still get it. You might just have to pay a little more.

If readers out there deny that our evolutionary heritage has anything to do with our preference for sugary soft drinks and that Coke hasvisibly profited from this preference they are simply ignorant. I’m not saying it’s some vast consipiracy.

And yes, advertising affects our freedom. Of course it does – that is its whole point. Look at how your frame your choice – I’m not going to do what they tell me to! I’m free! Well, bully for you. Meanwhile, you think your “freedom” comes down to being able to choose Coke or water. Score one for Madison Avenue.

The notion that government is the only entity capable of influencing our political lives, our freedoms, is just so … well, so naive that I don’t quite know what so say. That all we have to do is keep government in check, while letting multinational corporations run amuck – in the name of freedom? Oh, my. Well, look. Read Collapse, by Jared Diamond, the chapter on mining companies in Montana. They took advantage of good, freedom-loving individualists such as yourselves, took their profits, and left one hell of a mess behind. There is a similar metric at work here: the soda companies are taking their profits, and leaving the mess behind. In the real world that we live in, not some pseudo-Jeffersonian fantasyland (no disrespect to the great man intended), you will pay for the obesity of your fellow citizens, one way or the other, whether you like it or not. Now, you can either try to recoup some of these costs at their source, or you can get hoppin’ mad about your individual freedoms (or any number of other free choices you are free to make). But until you secede and create some sort of agrarian republic in, I don’t know, Vermont or somewhere, you are going to pay. So, why not work to some sort of reasonable path of action? As I’ve said repeatedly, maybe the 18% tax isn’t the best idea. So what is? I know this for sure: pious cant about my rights and liberties and freedoms, etc etc etc., is not.

And I’m going on holiday break starting after today, so unless any other interesting comments are made in the next few hours, I’m done. Happy holidays and new year, everyone.

I need to dig around for the link to that quiz, though… if I find it, I’ll post it in this comment thread.

Kevin

As I recall, a great many of us were at least somewhat surprised by our results, Malcolm perhaps more than somewhat. I had alway considered myself located more in the conservative ranks. Taking the test however revealed I sat right in the nexus of the centrist crosshairs. Had the graph been rather a sniper’s scope than a simple online quiz, well. Suffice to say ‘ol JK wouldn’t be presenting a target for even the most inept SWAT team member.

http://www.quiz2d.com/

3.4 Free Trade and Migration

We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a threat to security, health or property.

I agree that the term “libertarian” is confusing, and I never describe myself as one without suitable disclaimer. I sharply disagree with the Libertarian Party on many issues.

Kevin

I rather expected your weighing in sooner, I for one am glad to see you. Your arguments seem to tip the scale (in the rational/irrational sense) toward the credible side.

Our own Legislature is mulling over the issue of helmet law just now but thus far seem to lean toward something similar to our vehicle licensing law. Here, we’ve enacted a requirement that in order to place a vehicle on the State’s highways, one must have liability insurance.

The viewpoint is that “Sure, if one is a rational adult who wishes to risk road rash and braincase damage, by all means, go for it. But in order for you to go for it, your driver’s license must also carry an endorsement stamp showing that you individually and passengererarily, are also carrying sufficient insurance to cover the costs incurred in peeling your spleen smeared self/passenger off the highway surface.”

As to whether Court’s insurance costs will rise in the case of some damfool Arky biker that isn’t carrying the policy but nevertheless manages to create an outline of himself and the deer he hit, I dunno. But I think I could support such legislative action.

Who knows? This could provide an opportunity for the Insurance industry to team up with Coca-Cola’s advertisers and produce 60 seconds of evolution-based flim-flam sure to make the biker (subconsciousnly of course) actually need the policy.

We need such things as building codes, because when buildings fall down, they injure innocent citizens. I’m all for the FDA making sure that the food supply is free of hidden poisons. A persuasive case can be made for mandatory vaccination. And so on.

In short, I think it is a justifiable function of government to safeguard its citizenry from concealed risks, and to minimize the extent to which innocent citizens can be harmed by the careless or maleficent actions of others. With that in mind, I am all for the government’s taking an active role in educating the public about risks that they may not be aware of. For example, using tax dollars for funding a study to establish a link between excessive consumption of sugary drinks and obesity, and between obesity and diabetes, and then getting the message out so that people can make informed and responsible decisions, is just fine with me.

To be clear about responsibility: the extent of our ascription of it regarding the choices people make depends on the information they had available. If you back your car over an infant who happens to have crawled from the neighbor’s house under the right rear wheel while you were parked in your driveway, we see this as nothing more than a horrible tragedy. If, instead, you knew that there was a baby crawling around out there in the yard somewhere, but didn’t bother to look, we hold you responsible for your carelessness. And if you see the baby there, but roll over it anyway, you are a murderer.

Where I draw the line, then, is punishing responsible adults by restricting their access to things that people may injure themselves with if they use them irresponsibly. Let’s instead hold informed individuals responsible for the harm they cause to themselves and to others, and do our best to see to it that all are sufficiently well-informed to assume that responsibility.

But there are those who wish to strike the balance far to the left of where I would place it, and this misbegotten proposal is an excellent instance. One telling point is that those on the left who would restrict freedoms to reduce the expense of the State take it as a tacit assumption that the cost of an irresponsible individual’s lack of self-control must be paid by the rest of us. Taking the view from the other extreme, one could fairly argue that as far as the U.S. Constitution is concerned, if you want to splatter your damfool brains on the highway, well, the rain and local fauna will take care of cleaning them up.

Regarding the arguments already put forward, a reader emails:

The mere notion that Coca-Cola has an International Conspiracies Division on Evolutionary Hoodwinking is… Well I don’t really know what it is.

On a bright note, I have recovered my eyeglasses.

I think Puravida’s point is that diabetes leads to health care costs which are ultimately born by society, and hence society has a legitimate interest in using taxes to discourage its spread.

The same conflict can be seen in a different context. There was a ballot issue here in California a few years ago regarding whether motorcyclists should be required to wear helmets. The cyclists claimed that they had an absolute right to feel the wind going through their hair, and any limitations on what their riding gear was an intolerable infringement of their personal liberty. Their opposition argued that they didn’t want to be responsible for the collective health care costs when the bikers’ brains were splattered throughout the Golden State.

Without taking sides in the soda tax — or, as the Times asked this morning, whether their should be a donut tax also — I think that there are instances when state power can reasonably be used to limit individual freedoms, with the helmet law (which passed) as an example.

Thank you for the stimulating comments. Time presses – and what is more troubling, I seem to have just left my glasses in a taxicab.

Court:

- “Slippery slopes” are not fallacies, they are very real. Just ask Franz Stangl. Or look at the history of fascism generally.

- People living in a free society create various “supply chains”, with the intention of making a living by selling desirable products to other people. I am in no way coerced into consuming soda pop; indeed, I make a free choice not to do so, my savanna-forged genes notwithstanding. I would prefer to make my own choices as to what I ingest, rather than ask David Paterson for permission.

- My free choice is, as you say, not the only factor involved here; of course some people are more susceptible to advertising than others. C’est la vie. The eternal truism that some people are stupider or more gullible than others does not confer upon the government the authority to limit the free choices of free men. I would rather be responsible for my own free choices regarding my diet, and my private life generally, than have the State make them for me. Wouldn’t you?

- Advertising agencies most certainly do not limit my freedom; it startles me, again and again, that you are so eager to abdicate your responsibility. If I don’t want what they are selling — and I usually don’t — I simply don’t buy it. Try it sometime. It’s empowering. You don’t have to do what they tell you to do.

- A “real assault on liberties”?? Nonsense. The agency that poses the real threat is a well-intentioned, progressivist government, which insists it knows better than I what is good for me, and is bloody well going to try as hard as it can to make sure I toe the line. Wake up.

- Yes, we have various genetic predispositions. (Readers of these pages will know that evolutionary psychology is a major theme here.) The soda companies haven’t “stumbled upon” anything — as if it is some dread secret that we like sweets, or lust for sex, or think little children are cute, or tend to be gregarious, or want to believe in God, or any of the millions of other wired-in features that make us tick. This is human nature. People have been making, selling, and enjoying sweets, and sex, and alcohol, and God, throughout human history. Get used to it, and take some responsibility for your own damn behavior. Learn to control yourself.

- You are in charge of your own decisions. Don’t snivel, and don’t blame others, or your DNA, for your choices. It’s unbecoming. It’s childish and pathetic. If you are obese from drinking too much soda, that is YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT. I’m not, and I don’t want to be told that I can’t enjoy a Coke now and then just because others are too weak to take charge of themselves.

Furthermore, I am sorry that you are going through some sort of painful Ayn Rand breakup here, but I have never even read any of her books, and am most certainly not engaged in mindless sloganeering. (Indeed, I find it rather offensive that you keep trivializing my defense of fundamental American political principles in this way.) You argue that the government’s interest in controlling the diets of its citizens trumps my freedom of individual choice, but you don’t stop there: rather more condescendingly — and, I should add, quite incoherently, as regards the distiction between natural facts and normative assertions — you attempt to seize the high ground of pragmatic science for your political opinions, dismissing any defense of personal autonomy as mere parroting from some “dictionary” I’ve never even read. Readers will know that I regard scientific inquiry as our preeminent tool for understanding our place in the cosmos, and unraveling its mysteries. This has nothing to do with that; it is a disagareement about what sort of government we want to live under, and where the boundary is to be drawn between the powers of the State and the liberty of the individual. You are welcome to sneer at the notion of individual freedom, if you like, and lobby for policies that flush it down the toilet: that is itself, after all, freedom in action. I, and like-minded others, will resist you.

Puravida:

- Yes, plow my street. That’s the sort of thing I want government to do. Don’t tell me what beverages I can drink.
- Polio vaccinations are fine. They prevent a contagious disease.
- Soda may cause diabetes in some people, if they refuse to control their intake of it. Why must all of the rest of us foot the bill?
- “Libertarians are rich”? Is this supposed to be a serious discussion?
- Pay my taxes and “shut up”? I think we are done, sir. Thanks for stopping by. Good day.

I’ll be back within a day or so. Till then, slug it out amongst yourselves.