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Comment by calmbonsai | Hacker News Reader

"This logic doesn’t change just because the thing being financed is a burrito."

Yes, it absolutely _does_ change. One might as well go all the way and start offering Oxygen or Water bonds. The immorality masking as morality here is insulting--not related, mortgage-backed CDOs during the financial crisis and "Pay Day" loans.

There are many, many fundamental individual needs and items (economic "utility") that, while financialization of them makes sense at the large scale (flood insurance, natural commodities trading, municipal infrastructure), makes zero sense (and is even amoral) on the individual and small scales.

Put another way, many bulk-health statistics (BMI, Blood Lipids, Heart-Rate) are useful to track for populations, but make little sense (and is wrong-headed) to extrapolate-down to the individual.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

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BMI is an excellent metric for measuring your own body. Its fantastic. Its not perfect, but considering its two numbers, its amazingly useful and a super easy way to quantify how unhealthy you are. If you are not currently using Body fat percentage, and know what yours is at this exact instant, you should use BMI instead.

Here's a perfectly correct general statement: Any effort spent telling average people to not use BMI makes society less healthy. Average people are not getting BF% measured when you tell them not to use BMI. They are just ignoring all metrics and eating potato chips instead.

This is true of so many rules of thumb. The fact that something doesn’t work in all cases does not mean that those cases that it identifies as problematic can be ignored.

Spend less than you make is another one - sure there are edge cases where that is not appropriate. But in most cases, it is, but most people arguing that it doesn’t apply to them are they very people to whom it should apply most strongly.

I disagree with its use personally. There are many, many people whose BMI is in the 'Level 1 obese' category, but they're carrying around extra muscle not fat. Muscle is anywhere from 12-18% denser than fat. Also, DEXA scans are incredibly cheap (~$50) these days.

I do agree with your general statement about its use.

There's no reason NOT to use it, generally, just recognize that it has severe limitations when applied to the individual. Notably, effects of training and exercise on health using BMI as any sort of baseline or incremental figure of merit.

Water bonds have been a thing for centuries.

https://news.yale.edu/2015/09/22/living-artifact-dutch-golde...

These are municipal water bonds not individual water bonds. I wholeheartedly agree for the use of finance for municipal infrastructure.

"Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy"

You're right, financing a burrito is amoral. So what?

So we have enough immorality right now, please try again in the future.

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