@Praab_NZ said:
@TheHT said:
@Brodehouse said:
So, @DoctorWelch: how does one person being fat affect others? How does a society with fat people affect the non-fat people in that society?
@TheHT: In my country it works through the taxes that everyone pays. Indirectly you are paying for the concequences of people being obese. This occurs on a greater scale in other, more social economies that are not America.
Also money you spend on insurance is affected by the prevalance of incidents involving obese people to some extent. But the affect that has is not easily measurable due to the general variance and other dodgy things that go on at an insurance company.
@Praab_NZ said:
@TheHT: Also you are missing the point, higher prices are bad for everyone. It pushes health insurance further away from people who already couldnt afford it, and out of the reach of people who spared enough for it before.
So peoples (obese) lifestyles, in most cases, are stopping the needy from protection from medical procedures. Get it?
People who genuinely cannot physically lose weight for some reason are obviously excluded from this equation.
Right, so that's literally all there is then? Insurance? Treat people like shit because the risk their bodies are at of needing healthcare means you need to pay higher premiums. That's reasonable to you?
@DoctorWelch said:
@TheHT: Are you kidding? So you don't think thousands upon thousands of people being overweight effects a society? It effects anything and everything. It effects the food in how much people are eating and what they are eating. Which then effects prices and production. For instance, if American's weren't so fat, fast food restaurants would not be nearly as profitable as they are. Their health will drastically impact medicine, and if you have socialized health care it will be even worse. Activity levels and efficiency of workers is drastically decreased because of the negative physical and mental impacts being overweight has on the body. What people wear, what's popular, what businesses succeed and fail, any number of things are impacted by a large overweight population.
Think about this. If we as a society refused to eat shit that is horrible for us. Companies wouldn't make shit that's unhealthy because it wouldn't be profitable.
Good of you to finally relay some examples. Unfortunately arguing that fat people make food more expensive and less abundant for others is a weak argument when you consider that a) there have been plenty of fat people for a long time and food prices increase for reasons other than 'fatties r eatin up teh foodz' and b) there is an overabundance of food in the world, enough to feed literally everyone, so if you're genuinely complaining that fat people are eating up too much food such that you can't get any, all you're complaining about is someone elses overindulgence affecting your overindulgence. I highly doubt a poor individual who can't afford to eat will blame fat people for their predicament.
What makes you think the fat people are what makes the fast food restaurants profitable? Could it be the fat people are fat because of the fast food restaurants? Because they're cheap, convenient, and relatively tasty? You're putting the horse before the cart here.
If an individual who can't physically perform well is hired for physically-intensive work, then the fault lies with the stupidity of the employer.
Fat people do not hold significant sway over fashion. Fat people do not hold significant sway over pop culture. Fat people do not hold significant sway of the general success of failure of overall business ventures. You're irrationally overextending this phantom influence fat people have over the world you live in.
@DoctorWelch said:
@TheHT said:
So healthcare is why we should emotionally hammer the fats?
It's an issue of overstepping your boundaries, pushing yourself into someone elses life and attempting to wrest control of it so you can what? Save some money on your insurance premiums? All this done with the time-tested and always successful method of being an asshole. No, that's not OK.
Well I say being a fat drag on society because of the unwillingness to respect oneself and take care of the body is not okay. If you want to simply start throwing out random judgement calls of "This is okay" "This is not okay" without any real reasons why other than "I think this so I'm right" than we will be here for the rest of our lives. Nothing I have said I'm saying simply because I think it. I'm simply stating the facts about negative impacts vs positive impacts, and then I choose to say I'd rather have positives than negatives. If you want to choose negatives instead of positives, then be my guest.
That treating others as less than a person is wrong is a moral proposition. If you're here justifying "fat shaming" then you're taking a stance opposite to that, saying it's OK to lower a persons self-esteem in such and such circumstances. There is no avoiding a discussion of ethics here.
@DFSVegas said:
@TheHT said:
@DFSVegas said:
@Brodehouse said:
@DoctorWelch said:
@Brodehouse said:
No, you see; crime affects others. Criminal acts victimize others by nature. You have to be insane to try and draw parallels between crime and lethargy. Especially lethargy in one's personal time. At a perhaps. Judging others based on their personal, private lives doesn't make you philosophical, it makes you a petty tyrant.
Also, the word 'laziness' is not 'inherently negative'. That's not how words work. Because 'action' is not inherently positive. You may have been raised to believe if the culture you live in believes that work for no reason but to do it is positive.
Laziness is a negative word, that in fact is how words work. There are these things we call definitions, and along with that there are these things we call connotations. Laziness: "unwilling to work or be active; doing as little as possible". This is a negative no matter how you spin it. Also, a great ignorance of our day is acting as if personal choices that you don't perceive as having an effect on those around you shouldn't matter one way or the other. If you can't see or understand how an obese society hurts the society and the people that live in it, then I can't help you. There are many crimes that are choices which involve directly impact others on purpose, but there are also crimes dealing with the lack of doing something. This is because you don't always have to have harmful intentions to commit a crime. I'm not saying that being fat should be a crime because it shouldn't be, but the fact is that it is a choice to be fat, and it's a choice that does negatively effect others, whether you choose to see that or not.
Quite simply, you're wrong. 'Being active' is not positive, thus failing to be active cannot by itself be negative. Atilla the Hun was 'active'. The failure to be active is not inherently negative. Attempting to enter your views of sociology into structural linguistics is a worthless endeavor. An obese society is really not the argument here, it's an obese person. An obese person, or a thin one, has absolutely no control or responsibility over society as a whole, just as you have no agency over the greater social groups to which you belong. You've clearly lost your rationality in your last rambling paragraph, and I would love to hear you bring a case in front of a judge that fat people are exhibiting criminal negligence (this is the only secular law on record your 'harmful intentions' tangent is appropriate to) by tolerating their own continued existence. You've dug your heels in despite the lack of footing in anything that approaches social justice. The problem is not 'choosing to see', it's that you're so committed to a bad cause that you're taking larger and larger strides into impracticality. It's nonsensical, pride shouldn't mean this much to anyone.
Well, that's the point. If you don't care about how you look, then the teasing shouldn't/wont affect you.
If it does, then one should recognize that, as the obese person, they are their own problem. I don't personally go around smacking ice scream cones out of fat people's hands, but if asked, I will tell you how I feel. I have definitely have less respect for somebody who has a weight problem, but wont take the required steps to fix it.
It's the same for anything. Pity helps nobody. Adversity always makes you stronger. It almost never feels good, but if you have the will, it will push you.
And, fact is, being over weight will always affect your quality of life. It's not a secret. My dad is only 55, and is basically an invalid due to his weight. He struggles to climb the 20 or so steps in his house.
By the way, people being fat DOES effect society. There's a reason health care is so expensive here. There's a load of problems obesity creates, and that increases doctor visits, and in turn, that raises everybody's insurance premium. Normal, healthy people have to pay for other people's healthcare, simply because they find a way to avoid emergency care.
The idea that people should be free to do as the please because "it doesn't effect me" is bullshit. If you improve the quality of the people in the society, you in turn, improve society. Quality of one's physical being included.
As has been said, being fat caries zero positives, and being healthy carries a myriad of positives. There's zero reason to be lenient regarding this issue.
This isn't an issue of aesthetics, this is an issue of maintaining a strong and functional society. You can't have a strong society with flabby, weak minded people.
So healthcare is why we should emotionally hammer the fats?
It's an issue of overstepping your boundaries, pushing yourself into someone elses life and attempting to wrest control of it so you can what? Save some money on your insurance premiums? All this done with the time-tested and always successful method of being an asshole. No, that's not OK.
Isn't fucking up the health care system overstepping your boundaries? That definitely affects others.
Also, when was I an asshole, and when did I say it was OK to be an asshole? My point was just that we shouldn't spread misinformation about obesity. Weight is something that you can control, and there are known ways to control it. I'm always for compassion when it pertains to issues that are beyond one's control, even when it comes to obesity.
But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people who just choose to be fucking slobs. You can't live like a fucking garbage disposal, and then ask for sympathy.
The health care system is there to take care of the individuals in a society. It's established and run by the government. The subjects of this system are not required to align their lifestyle to be in line with what is recommended for them. If you force someone to live a certain way, you are making a step on their autonomy. If you wish to extend a response blowing that statement out of proportion, saying something like "well laws force people to live a certain way" then we'll again have to look at the consequences of failing to follow that imperative.
Obesity/heathcare: higher premiums
lawlessness/government: collapse of responsibility and ultimately of a civilized society
Just a pre-emptive response to save myself some time.
And we're talking about "fat shaming" i.e. the title of this thread. It's not a question of sympathy or selective abuse. Treating someone like trash because of their weight is not OK.
Log in to comment