|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
|
 Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 9:09 pm Post subject: Quest to 1000 pounds |
 |
|
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/northeast/view.bg?articleid=1240069&srvc=home&position=emailed
| Quote: |
Donna Simpson, 42, of Old Bridge, N.J., already tips the scales at 600 pounds but says she won�t be satisfied until she�s porked herself up to 1,000 - to grab the title of world�s fattest woman, the London Dail Mail reported.
That�s why she�s gone on a junkfood jihad. But Simpson has given herself two years to hit the millennium mark. She earns her chow bucks - a whopping 750 clams a week - with a Web site where men pay her to watch her eat fast food. |
Not sure why anyone would pay to see a 600 pound woman stuff herself. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 9:30 pm Post subject: Re: Quest to 1000 pounds |
|
|
| pkang0202 wrote: |
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/northeast/view.bg?articleid=1240069&srvc=home&position=emailed
| Quote: |
Donna Simpson, 42, of Old Bridge, N.J., already tips the scales at 600 pounds but says she won�t be satisfied until she�s porked herself up to 1,000 - to grab the title of world�s fattest woman, the London Dail Mail reported.
That�s why she�s gone on a junkfood jihad. But Simpson has given herself two years to hit the millennium mark. She earns her chow bucks - a whopping 750 clams a week - with a Web site where men pay her to watch her eat fast food. |
Not sure why anyone would pay to see a 600 pound woman stuff herself. |
This seems more degrading and damaging to me than stripping or prostitution could ever be, and yet for some reason those things are illegalized while this is just fine. If it's okay for a woman to gorge herself into obesity for the entertainment of others for money, I don't see why a woman engaging in sexual intercourse for money is somehow worthy of illegalization. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
geldedgoat
Joined: 05 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:19 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| People like this woman exemplify one of the only real problems I see with a public health-care system: How do we deal with people who intentionally inflict upon themselves diseases requiring expensive treatments and aftercare? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:37 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| geldedgoat wrote: |
| People like this woman exemplify one of the only real problems I see with a public health-care system: How do we deal with people who intentionally inflict upon themselves diseases requiring expensive treatments and aftercare? |
It's a big problem in Canada. Basically the government taxes the crap out of things that cause health problems. The price of liquor and smokes is completely outrageous there these days. There has been quite a bit of talk about taxing junk and fast food too. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Well, you could argue...it's a problem with her education - this person doesn't understand the affect this'll have on their body, she is making an irrational decision; or it's a psychological problem resulting from her fantasies, fetishes; or it's an economic problem, this person has been forced into this 'job'.
Either way you could argue problems like this (someone apparently conciously choosing to hurt themselves for money) are a result and therefore the problem and responsiblity of society. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:40 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| geldedgoat wrote: |
| People like this woman exemplify one of the only real problems I see with a public health-care system: How do we deal with people who intentionally inflict upon themselves diseases requiring expensive treatments and aftercare? |
One possibility is by taxing the means of self-inflicted harm and using them to recoup losses. I remember things like a soda tax being talked about with scorn, but really, is it so bad? We all ready do it with cigarettes, and honestly I don't have much of a problem with it. Some people might gripe that they have the right to drink as much soda as they want, or eat as much junk food as they want, and they do! Nothing about a tax changes that.
Another possibility would be tax credits for meeting certain health benchmarks, meaning that people who engaged in unhealthy behavior would end up paying more than people who engaged in healthy behavior.
Last edited by Fox on Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| RufusW wrote: |
Well, you could argue...it's a problem with her education - this person doesn't understand the affect this'll have on their body, she is making an irrational decision; or it's a psychological problem resulting from her fantasies, fetishes; or it's an economic problem, this person has been forced into this 'job'.
Either way you could argue problems like this (someone apparently conciously choosing to hurt themselves for money) are a result and therefore the problem and responsiblity of society. |
Then why don't you make this argument? I say aliens made her do it but I'm not going to back it up with any of my personal reasoning or evidence. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:52 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Fine, I will. Through a mix of factors this person has been forced into a bad personal option and should be looked after better by society. This could involve therapy to overcome this self-harm, but I suppose she should have had more support getting a meaningful job earlier in life. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:52 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Fox wrote: |
| geldedgoat wrote: |
| People like this woman exemplify one of the only real problems I see with a public health-care system: How do we deal with people who intentionally inflict upon themselves diseases requiring expensive treatments and aftercare? |
One possibility is by taxing the means of self-inflicted harm and using them to recoup losses. I remember things like a soda tax being talked about with scorn, but really, is it so bad? We all ready do it with cigarettes, and honestly I don't have much of a problem with it. Some people might gripe that they have the right to drink as much soda as they want, or eat as much junk food as they want, and they do! Nothing about a tax changes that.
Another possibility would be tax credits for meeting certain health benchmarks, meaning that people who engaged in unhealthy behavior would end up paying more than people who engaged in healthy behavior. |
Yes, taxes are bad. Smokes you can rationalize. You use them as directed and they still kill you. Alcohol and junk food if used as directed have zero health side effects. People have the right to over indulge in these things if they want, but obviously it shouldn't be the responsibility of society to pick up the tab. Which is why massive public health care entitlements are such a non-starter for so many.
Why should the acts of a minority of the population drastically curtail the freedoms of the majority? It's no different to bailing out the banks; Socializing an externality, so that a few individual don't have to feel a little pain, from the consequences of their actions. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| RufusW wrote: |
| Fine, I will. Through a mix of factors this person has been forced into a bad personal option and should be looked after better by society. This could involve therapy to overcome this self-harm, but I suppose she should have had more support getting a meaningful job earlier in life. |
What factors? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 10:58 pm Post subject: |
|
|
�It makes people happy, and I�m not harming anyone.�... She says boyfriend Philippe, 49, eggs her on. �I think he�d like it if I was bigger. He�s a real belly man.�
I can guess.... it seems she wants to please others and possibly retain a boyfriend regardless of the consequences for herself. It seems she doesn't realise how it will affect her. She is already overweight. She is in a relationship with someone who likes obese women.
So primarily maybe it's an issue of self-worth, but I don't think she has a true understanding of the health affects and she has already become overweight so it is easier for her to rationalize gaining more weight. On top of that, she is irrationally trying to become famous for getting her name in a book.
Fundamentally, I don't think a well-educated person with a fulfilling job and no psychological issues would do something like this. It's not very common. Taxing something that is harmful is probably acceptable, but denying rights to those who make poor decisions is not good for society. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Senior wrote: |
| Yes, taxes are bad. |
I don't agree. I know you hate the government. That's fine.
| Senior wrote: |
| Smokes you can rationalize. You use them as directed and they still kill you. Alcohol and junk food if used as directed have zero health side effects. |
Cigarettes in moderation will not kill you. But most people don't smoke cigarettes in moderation, do they? Because they're addictive. Just like alcohol. Just like junk food. And that makes people not use these products as directed. Which causes social problems.
Further, I know you don't realize this, but your libertarian fantasyland isn't a reality. Even in a purely private market, other people's actions can negatively affect me. If you eat a box of doughnuts a day and need more health care as a result, that means less of a limited resource for everyone else, which affects both availibility and price. Even if I live healthily, if everyone else is obese and unhealthy, health care will be more expensive for me. I'm going to pay for your fat ass whether it's a private system or a public system. At least in a public system, I can rest assured that I won't get kicked off my plan by a greedy insurer.
We are a society. Our actions affect each other no matter what. It's not a question about whether I have to pay for your stupid mistakes, just a question of how I will pay for them. People making bad health care decisions affects the health care market. People making bad mortgage decisions affects the mortgage market. People's driving habits affect the price of gasoline. You talk about how markets determine prices, but people's behaviors determine markets, and as such, I am affected by them no matter what.
| Senior wrote: |
| Why should the acts of a minority of the population drastically curtail the freedoms of the majority? |
They don't. Drink as much soda as you want. Smoke as many cigarettes as you want. You're going to pay more as a result of it. Whether you pay more in the form of taxes, or more in the form of private health care payments, you're going to pay more (and, if enough people behave in such a way, so am I). I know you see these as somehow fundamentally different. But that's because you're religion tells you they are different. As far as I'm concerned, payment is payment, and I don't care whether it's in the form of taxes or in the form of health insurance itself costing more. All I care about is the results. I'd rather have nearly any modern nation's health care than the United States.
I'm not part of your religion. I don't share your a priori, dataless assumptions. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Fox wrote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| Yes, taxes are bad. |
I don't agree. I know you hate the government. That's fine. |
I was referring to so called "sin taxes".
| Quote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| Why should the acts of a minority of the population drastically curtail the freedoms of the majority? |
They don't. Drink as much soda as you want. Smoke as many cigarettes as you want. You're going to pay more as a result of it. Whether you pay more in the form of taxes, or more in the form of private health care payments, you're going to pay more. I know you see these as somehow fundamentally different. But that's because you're religion tells you they are different. As far as I'm concerned, payment is payment, and I don't care whether it's in the form of taxes or in the form of health insurance costing more. All I care about is the results. I'd rather have nearly any modern nation's health care than the United States.
I'm not part of your religion. I don't share your a priori, dataless assumptions. |
Writing off what you disagree with (don't understand) as "religious" is pretty weak.
I'm not advocating people consume as much as they like. MOST people don't do that. A few do, and they expect to be baled out.
So, you would advocate ANY change over the status quo even if it meant costing more for no guarantee of any improvement in the quality and quantity of the care? That is the situation we have with Obamacare. A guaranteed increase in cost, for no definable benefit.
EDIT:I'm not going to address your edit, except to say, you mention incentives nary once in your whole screed. That is the important thing about markets. They perfectly align incentives. If I know I'm going to have to pay for the heart bypass from the eating a box of donuts a day, I might just scale back my donut consumption.
A public system skews incentives and leads to externalities down the track. Which is far more expensive for society then letting the losses lie where they fall. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2010 11:49 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Senior wrote: |
| Writing off what you disagree with (don't understand) as "religious" is pretty weak. |
I understand it just fine, Senior. There's nothing mystically incomprehensible about the libertarian sentiment you express here. I call it a religion because your faith in it is total and blind. You genuinely believe it when you say things like, "Governments are incapable of creating value," even though it's inherently ludicrious. Yeah I believed that too, when I was in high school. Then I grew the Hell up and realized anything a corporation could do, a government could do. I realized that governments are in competition with one another just like corporations are. I realized citizens who didn't like their government could immigrate. In short, I realized Libertarianism was a faerie tale from people who prize ideology over real-world results; a sort of bizarro communism which would ultimately be just as dangerous if we ever stupidly trusted our society to it.
| Senior wrote: |
| I'm not advocating people consume as much as they like. MOST people don't do that. |
What does this even mean? Of course most eople consume as much as they like. They after all have total choice over their own consumption.
| Senior wrote: |
| A few do, and they expect to be baled out. |
We're going to pay for them no matter what. They're part of our society.
| Senior wrote: |
| So, you would advocate ANY change over the status quo even if it meant costing more for no guarantee of any improvement in the quality and quantity of the care? |
No. For example, in response to your following comment:
| Senior wrote: |
| That is the situation we have with Obamacare. A guaranteed increase in cost, for no definable benefit. |
I don't support the health care bill in its current position.
| Senior wrote: |
| EDIT:I'm not going to address your edit, except to say, you mention incentives nary once in your whole screed. |
Senior, what the Hell? I mentioned several things in this thread that are clearly related to incentives. Taxation on unhealthy goods is in part an incentive: higher prices operate as an incentive to avoid a certain type of purchase. Likewise, tax credits for healthy behavior operate as an incentive to engage in such behavior. In a private system, higher potential health care prices act as a deterrant and lower ones act as an incentive. In a potential public system, those deterrants and incentives can be replaced with taxation.
This isn't Fox News. I'm not going to use buzz words just to excite the crowd. There is more than enough in my post that relates to the concept of incentives to show that I'm taking them into account. The fact that I didn't say the word is because I didn't need to say it to get my point across.
| Senior wrote: |
| That is the important thing about markets. They perfectly align incentives. If I know I'm going to have to pay for the heart bypass from the eating a box of donuts a day, I might just scale back my donut consumption. |
This is just more religious talk as far as I'm concerned. America is a total hell-hole when it comes to health care costs. Any unhealthy behavior is a huge risk. You get diabetes from gorging on corn syrup products? You could well get kicked off your health care plan and never be able to find another one again. That doesn't stop our population from doing it. Incentives exist, but they aren't the mythical, all-righting force you make them out to be. By your logic, citizens in countries which practice socialized medicine should be engaging in substantially less healthy behavior than United States citizens, but they don't seem to be. I see no reason to believe in your holy gospel.
| Senior wrote: |
| A public system skews incentives and leads to externalities down the track. Which is far more expensive for society then letting the losses lie where they fall. |
I love it when people like you talk about human lives in terms like "losses lying where they fall." It always reminds me why I rejected Libertarianism a long, long time ago. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
geldedgoat
Joined: 05 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Fox wrote: |
| One possibility is by taxing the means of self-inflicted harm and using them to recoup losses. I remember things like a soda tax being talked about with scorn, but really, is it so bad? We all ready do it with cigarettes, and honestly I don't have much of a problem with it. Some people might gripe that they have the right to drink as much soda as they want, or eat as much junk food as they want, and they do! Nothing about a tax changes that. |
I've never agreed with the punitive tax on cigarettes and alcohol. I try my best not to invoke the following very often, but such taxes seem so un-American. I realize the freedom of choice is still technically there... But the tax, by its very nature, is designed to do its best to limit that choice.
Now, that having been said, realizing that engaging in this behavior (like you mentioned in a response to Senior) inevitably negatively impacts the rest of society, something obviously must be done. However, rather than limiting the behavior at the use stage...
| Quote: |
| Another possibility would be tax credits for meeting certain health benchmarks, meaning that people who engaged in unhealthy behavior would end up paying more than people who engaged in healthy behavior. |
...forcing the users to pay more for the consequences of their actions like this makes much more "American" sense. However, I'm leery of this approach as well, particularly in regards to where to draw the line between healthy and unhealthy behavior.
It seems even less "un-American" to penalize gluttinous human filth like the woman in the OP the same as an overworked (whether at the workplace, at home tending to children, or both) individual who may not have time to excercise and research the healthiest food choices.
And we still have to consider the uniqueness of our modern society, that being that the poorest and most malnourished (and thus the least able to pay more for the increased health costs they would surely incure) tend to be some of the most overweight. How do we penalize them (both economically and ethically)? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
