Posted by Tomte 10/27/2024
I think the desire to simplify the model down to calorie in and calorie out is a way of putting all responsibility onto the unhealthy individual as an aversion to empathy. Our population has been intentionally misinformed and our food has been poisoned in a way that personal responsibility cannot always overcome, so while people may still deserve the brunt of the blame we must also understand that the food industry/medical/politics played a substantial part in creating the situation and as hard as it is to fight back against these profitable industries it is even more difficult to remodel people to have more willpower.
I compared Oreos to red meat because two medical students argued with me that Oreos, which are vegan, were equivalent or even better than red meat.
They believed this because the medical establishment had gone full tilt against red meat for the past 50 years.
And of course they used their authority on the subject as an excuse for believing something insane.
3500 calories of lean meat won't.
Even different sugars (glucose/fructose/sucrose) affect the satiety response differently.
I eat lots of healthy fats and no sugar or wheat. I'm borderline underweight. When you eat such a diet, your insulin levels stay low. High insulin is what causes your body to convert sugar to fat and store it. Low insulin causes your body to burn your fat reserves. I just got back from a 5 day, 50 mile backpacking trip where I averaged about 1000 calories a day. Not once was I hungry.
The arctic explorers weren't gaining body fat from the fats they ate, they were burning them almost immediately.
You may want to do some reading on the satiety response. You could also imagine whether you think you would gain or lose weight over the next month on a tallow-only diet.
Similarly, if you find a zero added sugar low saturated fats treat and eat too much of that, then you can still run into problems.
It seems more productive to me to not classify food as “bad” but to focus on balanced diets, including sugars and fats, in healthier proportions.
There has been much laudable and scientific progress in the past 50 years. Higgs Boston discovery and mRNA vaccines being two that come to mind.
And examples of progress that science helped start and then international and national institutions brought to the masses: Smallpox eradication, HIV treatment, lower childhood mortality, etc.
The problem with capitalism is that it destroys democracy. Money distributes to a small group of people who then have overwhelming influence over the government, available information, and so on.
We also see that as money flows away from the poor, and the affordability of essential goods like housing, food, and healthcare worsen, those who should gain from democracy rightfully grow to hate it, and vote to destroy it (e.g voting for Trump).
We need a new economics.
Many European countries are also capitalist, but don’t seem (at least from the outside) to have the same rampant corporate influence on government as the US.
Granted they are more open to socialist policy, most of which seem like good ideas.
We have some companies in the US that have been around for nearly as long as the country itself. These companies pre-dated regulation and had a hand in building it. As a legislator, you’d want input from experts before writing laws. IMO that’s why corporate involvement in politics is so normal in the US.
I’m not sure if that the case for many European countries.
It’d be great to find a new economic axis that can break us out of the planned economy/radical free market axis.
Here's one start:
https://jacobin.com/2019/03/sam-gindin-socialist-planning-mo...
Did I miss something?
That's too broad of a term to carry universal meaning without the context provided by the article.
The piece is more of a modern translation based on present conditions, and it isn't to be confused with "the Nordic model" or any other instance or attempt that readers might instinctively cling to when hearing the word.
We’ve known about this problem for a while and communism was the solution to it. But there’s an even bigger problem with communism is the lack of correct incentives.
Turns out capitalism is better than communism purely because it has the right incentives.
In most countries we have hybrid models.
> We need a new economics
Right now many parts of the US are dangerously close to extremist liberalist agendas. It’s as big of an issue (if not bigger) as the neoconservative issue back when bush jr was president.
Wouldn’t be surprised if liberalism took over and communism became the overarching thought process. We already redefined pronouns.
(Also, "liberalist" is a terrible term for the "extremist agendas" you appear to have in mind. I refuse to let them coopt the label.)
What he doesn't see is that the "fix" is liberal politics and communism. That's the most extreme end of the fix.
Also as much as you hate it, identity politics is not part of being liberal. I was a liberal back in the early 2000s. Things have changed, a liberal in the early 2000s is now a moderate and the moderates are the majority. But they are also the least active.
That was my point. These identity politicians are pretenders to the label. It is a difference in kind, not in degree.
It's pretty wild to put the "extremist agendas" of what pronouns people use anywhere near the significance of our economic and governmental systems.
Democracy does not conflict with capitalism. It's capitalism vs. communism. For democracy it's democracy vs. autocracy. Communism can still be a democracy.
Also I never said anything about neopronouns. What is even a neopronoun?
>It's pretty wild to put the "extremist agendas" of what pronouns people use anywhere near the significance of our economic and governmental systems.
It's associated. I use to be a liberal, but the definition changed and now I'm more moderate. I agree with distribution of wealth but I don't agree with pronouns which are also a liberal thing. These two things nowadays go hand in hand with the term "liberal".
Communism (per Marx) describes a stateless society. A society without a state cannot be a democracy. Communism is antidemocratic per definition.
The reason why communism describes both the economic and the political system of a society is because the two are intertwined.
> Democracy does not conflict with capitalism.
Capitalism offers various means to private entities to steer democratic vote. The two are intertwined just like all other political and economic systems.
> These two things nowadays go hand in hand with the term "liberal".
Perhaps. I don't know what your bubble currently considers to be liberal politics. I still don't see why you consider pronoun usage to be such a significant issue.
e.g. Why can’t someone hang up portraits of both John D. Rockefeller and Mao Zedong in their room, admire them both, and still get along fine in life, maybe even achieve great successes? Regardless of any specific set of words, definitions, arguments, etc…?
False, democracy does not require a state.
>Capitalism offers various means to private entities to steer democratic vote. The two are intertwined just like all other political and economic systems.
No capitalism only means this: an economic system where private individuals or corporations own and control the production and distribution of goods and services.
You can have a capitalism under a dictatorship OR a democracy.
>Perhaps. I don't know what your bubble currently considers to be liberal politics. I still don't see why you consider pronoun usage to be such a significant issue.
Bro. Liberalism nowdays means politically correct pronoun usage. If you don't know this, you're living in a bubble. Just google liberal and pronoun and you get articles like this:
https://amac.us/newsline/society/pronouns-gender-and-the-lef...
I think this caught the old liberals of the 2000-2010s off guard. In that time liberalism meant something else. Nowadays those people are moderate. But there's a good number of people on HN who are still in that bubble.
It could be argued that capitalism has played a significant part in the improvement in our living conditions and the technogical development of our species. Then again, it could also rather easily be argued that capitalism is a plague on society that will inevitably result in total domination by a handful of billionaires.
But what realistic alternatives are there? And even if such an alternative exists, why would those in control - who benefit the most from capitalism - relinquish their power?
The challenges you point out are massive, but if it’s true that a change is necessary, then the challenges must be overcome.
If a medical professional tells you that you shouldn't smoke and that it's bad for you, but are smokers themselves, are they wrong? Should you not follow them?
Calling someone a hypocrite (which is essentially what you are doing) is a specious reasoning:
In the case of a doctor that tells me smoking is bad even though they smoke, I’m more likely to believe them because they have first hand experience even if they don’t follow their own advice. I don’t think it’s hypocritical to not follow your own advice especially from the point of view that they would follow their own advice if they could and are open about that. In fact there have been numerous smokers in my life who have told me they’re addicted and recommended to me to never start and I did heed their advice.
But that’s not what happened in grade school so I’m not exactly sure what point you are making.
Do you view it as a failed promise that they would represent you and that that was something that should be expected given history?
Is it a moral failing of the government person?
I suppose the confusing thing to me is that people who rail about the government, are simply complaining about the power of companies to control it.
There are some elites that are self sacrificial and view other Americans as countrymen and not units to extract from but they are very few. As somebody who rails about the government, it's fundamentally an elite problem. You can propose any system you want, but if those running it are rotten it's not going to work.
This is a baseless assertion with no evidence, written in an emotionally manipulative manner ("the confusing thing", "I'm curious", etc).
The government is responsible for drafting laws and regulations, and for setting nutritional standards. Not companies. This is a fact.
If a government official decides to claim that sugar is ok and fat is bad, that's something they have to take responsibility for given that they are literally doing so as a representative of the government.
The sugar industry is not mind-controlling these government employees. They are being corrupted, yes, but ultimately they are making the decisions. The primary moral failing is with the individuals making the decisions. This is factual. If you make a decision, you are more responsible for that decision than someone else who did not make it, by definition.
None of this is to say that this bribery and corruption on the part of the companies is somehow excusable or doesn't make the problem worse, just that the primary responsibility lies with our elected officials and those they then nominate and hire in turn.
This is almost never actually stated in comments on HN. This is statement is just projection and/or inventing hypothetical strawman positions.
If those sugar companies now _are_ the government (after they've taken it over, as you say), the question becomes: do you like those sugar companies? Do you trust them?
These days I consider our governance to be oligopolistic corporatism where the government is a corrupted tool of the corporations that mainly exists to keep the peace between the corporations so they can more effectively extract monopolistic rents. I do like the idea of a hypothetical ideal of an uncorrupted government but I have no idea how such a government could be achieved and worry that attempts to achieve this could easily backfire and make things worse.
Edit: I consider the attempts to pin all ills on government to be the result of yet another successful public relations campaign by large corporations. Unfortunately society has been polarized to the point that I don’t have a political home with either the left or the right - and again I think this is an intentional conspiracy to undermine effective opposition.