Comment by sershe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sershe | Hacker News Reader

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Long time ago there was a moment when the best performing stocks in my individual-stock portfolio were PM or maybe MO (cigarettes), DPS (Dr Pepper, it was later acquired), MCD, and AAPL. I joked that it makes sense, the best business is selling good-feeling, harmful crap to the gullible ;)

However, there is another side to this... Who are you (not you personally, but anyone) to decide how others should live their lives? If someone wants to drink soda, smoke and eat fast food, why wouldn't they? If selling what people want is somehow bad, then I guess restricting it should be good, so we should just take all these people we have decided are too stupid to know what's good for them, and regiment their life until we are satisfied? As much as I dislike and disagree with their choices, this line of thinking seems abhorrent to me, at most I'd argue we have some say on what they are doing if they use taxpayer-funded healthcare and such, but for me that is an argument against the latter, not the former. And in any case it has no bearing on the morality of the seller - he didn't ask or force anyone other than the buyer to deal with the 2nd order effects.

Viewed from that perspective, there's nothing wrong with selling cigarettes.

What I gather from this comment is an attempt to distance from the attachment to clearly harmful things.

I think it would do good to just internalize what's happening - the desire for personal gain, and the indifference on the ways that are employed. There is no shame in not caring about other people on a societal level, I don't think most of us do, and I do think that many who say they do, don't really actually. Calling them names like stupid or gullible, just to defend contributing to the harm of them is not successful coping attempt however. It just says that these things do bother who's saying them, and that they feel something that's not desirable to them, like shame, or fear of retribution, or something else that's negative. There's no need to do any of this, it's okay to just not care.

I think you misread the comment.

What I'm saying is that the GP says "selling cigarettes is bad, because cigarettes are bad for the buyer". Who are you to decide that? You are implicitly saying "the buyer of cigarettes is stupid and doesn't know what's good for them [and therefore enabling them is bad; in which case the reverse, preventing them from acting, must be good]"

I say they make a choice to buy cigarettes, and while I personally think that's dumb, it's just, like, my opinion, man. Someone might judge my choices (like, mountaineering? That's dangerous and who pays for those rescues, why not just play golf? Wait, that destroys the planet and uses up so much urban land, why not just go for a walk? Frankly you could get hit by a car, just do weights at home. OTOH free weights by yourself are injury prone, nobody can have any exercise hobbies except for stairmaster)

I understand this point. And GP is a person, so they also have an opinion. I feel that you continued the pattern I outlined in my original comment.

Maybe that's just your opinion, but a lot of people battling addiction agree that "they shouldn't be able to but that shit". So what would you do taking into account these people, many of whom don't live a great life?

Selling an addictive substance through media carpet bombing without informed consent is absolutely a crime.

"But people want it" is not a valid argument.

There's a quote about propaganda which says that the goal is to make everyone feel that forced-fed choices are their own spontaneous decisions.

There are entire industries devoted to making sure that those choices - often self-harming - are not spontaneous. At all.

Get rid of those and you may have a point. While they still operate, you don't.

Hmm, but they did get rid of those. In fact even though I grew up in society where most people smoke and used to smoke myself, after living in the US for a while, when I see someone smoking for the first time I have to catch myself as I involuntarily assume they must be some sort of a hard-living fucked-up person :) Then I'm like oh no, they are just older and from Italy, everyone smokes in Italy too! The propaganda goes the opposite way.

Same for fast food and soda, to a lesser degree... they seem to be frowned upon - yet people like them anyway.

I find this argument to be hollow. The problem is not that people want to smoke. It’s that when they want to stop smoking, they are unable to.

The fact that they are unable to stop makes the decision to smoke involuntary, and that’s what makes tobacco sales bad.

I gave up smoking 15 years ago, after doing half pack to a pack a day for 3 years. Admittedly there's a degree here, not a bright line, but cigarettes are not THAT addictive. Plus GP mentioned Coca-Cola and DQ. Soda is not really addictive at all..

Cigarettes ARE that addictive. Heroin has a lower relapse rate. Something like 98% of attempts to quit smoking fail.

> cigarettes are not THAT addictive

I find the amount that this worldview extends in your country to lead to very dire consequences. For example, the personal freedom to own guns. There are tradeoffs in both systems.

The United States has always had the 2nd amendment but mass shootings are a pretty new phenomena so its wrong to suggest the 2nd amendment is the impetus for that change.

Very American mindset to assume the only problem one could have with an entire population owning guns is mass shootings. Regular old shootings outway mass shooting deaths by a long way.

> Who are you (not you personally, but anyone) to decide how others should live their lives?

Someone who wants to socialize your health.

What does that mean? If we want to save the money we collectively spend for their healthcare, should we also force people to do exercise? IIRC (cannot find the source right now) smokers who exercise are healthier than those doing neither, but in any case the effects are comparable.

You seem to be asking about the point to health insurance. Generally, the point of insurance is to guard against big but unlikely risks. Health insurance legitimately falls into that category. Saving money collectively pn health insurance involves incentivizing to live more healthy lives.

I was literally asking what GP meant: "> Who are you (not you personally, but anyone) to decide how others should live their lives? Someone who wants to socialize your health."

Does that mean that socialized medicine justifies restricting health choices? To me, that is an argument against socialized medicine, and also the point I was trying to make is, where do we stop? We could force people to exercise and monitor them via a little camera built into a device with a screen ;)

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