Ban the Stupids
The culture Nazis are at it again, promising to save you from your fat selves, and NYC is leading the pack.
Last week alone, New York City banned the use of trans fats in restaurant meals, and an Ohio law passed in November that bans smoking in virtually all business establishments (even in company-owned vehicles such as trailer-truck cabs) went into effect. However different the actions may seem on the surface, they share something all too common in today’s America: They rob us of the right to make decisions–however stupid, unwise or repugnant to refined sensibilities–about how we want to live, work and eat.
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Most important, these bans reduce all of us to the status of children, incapable of making informed choices. Is it quaint to suggest that there’s something wrong with that in a country founded on the idea of the individual’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Now if we can come together as collective buffoons and “ban” supposedly legal items or actions, what’s the distinction between legal and illegal in the first place? The ways we deceptively suppress freedom and individual choice in a country that was founded to protect these things never ceases to amaze me.
I’ve got an idea. Let’s ban stupidity. No more stupids, stupid thoughts, stupid words, anywhere, ever. Ok? Ah, I can breath freer already….
December 14th, 2006 at 4:44 am
Yeah! Unban Asbestos, too!
Did you notice that they weren’t banning deep fat frying, just a hidden component of deep fat frying that is very very bad. When they banned Asbestos, you’ll notice that they didn’t try to ban insulating things, just the component that is very very bad.
Y’know- the government imposes standards on how much Rat Shit can be in your Ding-Dongs (probably raises the price a bit), and therefore it’s just another example of the government trying to tell you what you can eat. Bastards. Where are my freedoms?
C’mon, man. I know you’re up for the David T Lindsay “I See Conspiracies Everywhere” award for 2006 and you’re trying to get a few final shots in before the 31st, but relax. You can still get a Snickers, wrapped in Cookie Dough, and deep fried in Bacon lard (just don’t try to smoke it in a bar in Manhattan).
So here’s a question for you, Stress: Is it okay to ban anything, ever?
December 14th, 2006 at 11:30 am
Not fair…trans fats compared to asbestos. I’m not even going to touch that, you know the answer. Of course asbestos, arsenic, plutonium, etc. are dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed. Yummy fats are in another class of evil, with alcohol, smoking, the sun, etc.
“Hydrogenated vegetable oils” as they are more commonly known as since 1900, and exist in all sorts of processed food, yeah, they are bad for you. But so is everything else. Should we ban “high fructose corn syrup” next? I think Coke and their customers would be pretty upset. I know! Let’s ban the sun because it causes cancer. No more sun, NYC!
This is just another example of government sticking it’s prick where it doesn’t belong. Consumers have a responsibility for their own health, and if it’s important enough to them they will shop around until they find places that VOLUNTARILY don’t use trans fats, and that’s the beauty of the free market. Forcing businesses to comply does nothing but hurt small businesses. Protecting people from themselves does nothing but make them more stupid, vulnerable and susceptible to government buggering.
How can one relax about this? They are banning smoking everywhere.. Now they are banning fat. They tell us when and where we can drink alcohol. The problem is that these culture puritans don’t want to stop here…they want to keep going until perhaps restaurants are outlawed and everyone has to eat government rationed algae pills.
Let them eat trans fats, I say…
December 15th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Government rationed algae pills? I saw that movie with Charleton Heston. Government rationed algae pills is people! It’s people!!!!!!!!!
December 17th, 2006 at 1:02 am
Outlaws do whatever they want to, slick ones don’t get busted. Maybe I’m some Peter Pan fuck, but I remember the days when young people said ”fuck the rules - this is what I want to do”.
Existentialism is more powerful than any political ideology to me: you are responsible for yourself and your actions. Karma will bring the smackdown on wrong action. Fuck all govt.! But black market cheesecake might be a wise investment. Confectionary Mafia, Raise Up, take your shirt off, twist it round your head, spin it like a hellacoppa!
December 17th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Black market cheesecake…that’s just beautiful. Conjures images of epicurian hoodlums.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:14 am
In Italy it’s considered bizarre behavior to order a capuccino after midday. Italians think warm milk is too ‘heavy’ and makes you sluggish. I used to feel like an uncouth americano bumpkin every time I’d get one (or two) capuccinos during the afternoon, but now, screw that ex-pat self-loathing, I’m gonna live it as an act of existential rebellion!
December 20th, 2006 at 5:03 am
(Aside: Black Market Cheescake would be a KILLER brand name.)
Wait, why is the comparison to Asbestos unfair? Because you say so??? I think it works just fine. If anything is unfair, it’s the compairson to Corn Syrup. The damage trans fats do isn’t anything you can see externally relative to use of other fats in the same situation, but it’s significant internally, and increases public costs tremendously. Corn Syrup vs Cane Sugar doesn’t have the same differences.
(What I would love to see banned is government subsidy to the Corn Syrup making corporations. I think it’s obscene that our tax dollars go to helping make the corn syrup so cheap that a Big Gulp is a profit maker at 49 cents. The reason fast food wins out over other paradigms is because those 99 cent McNuggest are subsidised by our tax dollars from the get-go. the chickens are fed corn, the binders are corn, the coating is corn, and I’d betcha the deep fryer is loaded with a corn oil… )
But lets go with Alcohol for a similar argument. There’s more than one type of Alcohol- When you distill, you can make Ethyl alcohol and if you’re not careful you can make Methyl alcohol. We have laws in place limiting the amount of Methyl to teensy amounts because significant amounts either ruin your liver or kill you dead quickly. Distillers have to spend extra to keep up the standard. If the laws weren’t in place, we’d have greater public health costs, but the corporations making hooch would save money. You’d save a few nickels on that bottle of Makers Mark in the immediate sense, but your liver might just be getting royally fucked, and it’s nobodys problem but your own (and your family’s when they have to shell out mucho dinero for your medical costs).
That’s one of the realities that queers me off libertarianism, there’s so much chatter back and forth about free man vs opressive government, but the big winner when there is less government is the privately held power that corporations wield.
Are you really more free if you are being slowly killed by entities that couldn’t care less?
December 20th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
….or at least not as much as they do about next quarter’s stock report, and justifiable CEO bonus’.
Word!
And not to get all ‘Matrix’ on ya, but to the word ‘killed’ we can also add ‘controlled’, while you are still ‘alive’. I’ll never get enough of indie, DIY, anti-corporate propaganda - I see it as very much needed in the modern era.
December 20th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
At least you don’t agree with subsidies that keep corporations from having to compete fairly in the global marketplace. That makes you much more of a libertarian than you think! It’s not all black and white …
Trans fats are not poison! Asbestos is poison! That is the difference! It is absolutely fair to compare trans fats with high fructose corn syrup, but perhaps it would make even more sense to compare them with their sista-fats, the saturated ones. Trans got the edge on causing heart disease but not by all that much. Where are you getting your information? Here’s what the FDA says:
As you can also see on that FDA page, the government ALREADY has a regulation requiring trans fats to be listed on the nutritional label, right along with all the other fat content. If you want to be health avoid trans fats, just as you would avoid saturated fats, high fructose corn syrup, etc.
Point here is that those concerned about health check the labels of the food they buy, or ask the waiter if they cook with saturated or trans fats. There is absolutely no need for regulation here. Regulation is a game of cost/benefit, and often has unforeseen negative consequences down the road (screwing up the economy, etc.), even when it is so insidiously “well intentioned.” Regulations are rarely repealed so we end up with a vast and complicated body of law that, guess what, takes more bureaucrats to interpret and administer, hence more cost to the public. So it makes perfect common sense to NOT implement them where we can avoid them. This is clearly one of those cases.
March 13th, 2007 at 1:50 am
[...] Here at manunderstress global media watchdog sports center, we object to all forms of cultural Nanny Statism, most especially trendy authoritarian legislation designed to keep us from getting fat, having too much fun, or just being as stupid as we want to be. We think nannies are better kept out of government. [...]