[CanRay]

Not trying to bring the previous battle back up, but in the spirit of the heavy handed anti smoking laws, New York City has gone above and beyond and banned restaurants from selling sugary drinks larger that 16oz, in an effort to combat obesity. Never underestimate some peoples resolve to try to run your life for you....

And people say the stuff Shadowrun suggests is unrealistic. 

[Noble Drake]

Not trying to bring the previous battle back up, but in the spirit of the heavy handed anti smoking laws, New York City has gone above and beyond and banned restaurants from selling sugary drinks larger that 16oz, in an effort to combat obesity. Never underestimate some peoples resolve to try to run your life for you....

And people say the stuff Shadowrun suggests is unrealistic. 

They say it is unrealistic because they don't want to believe that is the way the world is going - which is very much where it seems to be headed in some ways.

There are all kinds of people that are asking, near to the point of begging, for others to run their life for them - everything from telling restaurants they have to provide the nutritional information on their offerings directly on the menu to strict gun control...

Its all just one giant refusal to accept any personal responsibility - "Oh, me? No, I'm not fat because I refuse to eat right and don't exercise at all. I'm fat because McDonald's is evil and didn't tell me how bad it is for me to eat a double quarter-pounder with extra cheese and a large fry and milkshake for every meal and finish off with a pair of hot apple pies."

...and the whole thing makes me crotchety.

[CanRay]

And folks wonder why "Sheeple" comes up so often in Cyberpunk Media...   

[Smileinbob]

on a fun side note, NYC has had a "stop and frisk" policy on the books since the 90's or so. Once the new mayor, who pushed the soda ban, got in office he also had the police doing these "stop and frisks" far more than they had been done in the past. Basically what happens is the cops go into a bad neighborhood and start stopping random people and the street and giving them pat downs. They even had a federal judge say it's not breaking the 4th amendment. That if they aren't doing anything wrong they they shouldn't mind being patted down by the police every once in a while...

"and now it is 1984, a knock knock at your front door... it's the suede denim secret police... they have come for your uncool niece...."

[Kat9]

"and now it is 1984, a knock knock at your front door... it's the suede denim secret police... they have come for your uncool niece...."

That's California.




On that note I feel really old right now.

[RHat]

They say it is unrealistic because they don't want to believe that is the way the world is going - which is very much where it seems to be headed in some ways.

Actually, they say it is unrealistic because the dystopian nature of classic cyberpunk rests on certain assumptions that simply have not borne out - it all comes straight off of the cynic's paradigm, which is about as inaccurate as but far more persistent than the idealist's paradigm.  Post-Cyberpunk (which personally I greatly prefer) relaxes from this a bit towards a more realistic standpoint that some things will get better, some things will get worse.  Some people will have good intentions and others malicious; ether sort of person can wind up creating either sort of change.  That isn't to say that all the dystopian elements should go, but they start to shift toward the absurd if they're the only elements - even the classic dystopian novels are meant to provide a greatly exaggerated idea of where society could hypothetically go in order to frame a particular argument.

Also, requiring food providers to list nutritional information isn't asking someone to run your life for you - it's providing people with the tools needed to make informed decisions; it is on their own head whether or not they make use of those tools.

As for stop and frisk, well, someone's gonna have to appeal that higher.  That sort of argument has a pretty heavy precedent of failing, as I recall, so it's really just a case of one judge screwing up/imposing his beliefs and biases upon the system.  That's why there are things like en banc reviews.

[Smileinbob]

Also, requiring food providers to list nutritional information isn't asking someone to run your life for you - it's providing people with the tools needed to make informed decisions; it is on their own head whether or not they make use of those tools.

I agree with you totally on that sir... packaged food in stores has all that information on it, and it makes life easier to live healthy, but what they have done is decided that sugary drinks (sodas, iced teas and what not) are at fault for making people fat, so they make them illegal. What they are doing is taking away with that is taking away personal responsibility, its not the overweight persons fault for eating to much, it is the sodas fault.
That sort of thinking has been going on for far to long in our country, note all the retarded lawsuits people have won such as suing a fast food joint because they burnt themselves on hot coffee, "oh i didn't know it was hot because the cup didn't say it was hot." Apparently the bulk of people don't know how to be responsible for themselves and these laws and politicians that produce these laws are just enablers.
It hurts my soul knowing that freedom of choice that America's forefathers fought for is being restricted because some people are cant take care of themselves, and law makers are more than happy to jump in a restrict everyone's freedom for the "good" of some people who can't/won't take responsibility for themselves.

As for stop and frisk, well, someone's gonna have to appeal that higher.  That sort of argument has a pretty heavy precedent of failing, as I recall, so it's really just a case of one judge screwing up/imposing his beliefs and biases upon the system.  That's why there are things like en banc reviews.

the sad thing is this kind of thing has been on their books for nearly 2 decades now, and while there are plenty of lawyers who fight individual cases of it, not very many people seem interested in getting rid of the policy overall because it mainly targets "bad" neighborhoods and "bad" (read youths and  minorities) people. Its a slippery slope these fellows are playing on. I may seem like I make more out of it that it should be but once you start giving a little bit, they will start taking as much as they want...  all you have to do to see that is look at history..

[JustADude]

Also, requiring food providers to list nutritional information isn't asking someone to run your life for you - it's providing people with the tools needed to make informed decisions; it is on their own head whether or not they make use of those tools.

I agree with you totally on that sir... packaged food in stores has all that information on it, and it makes life easier to live healthy, but what they have done is decided that sugary drinks (sodas, iced teas and what not) are at fault for making people fat, so they make them illegal. What they are doing is taking away with that is taking away personal responsibility, its not the overweight persons fault for eating to much, it is the sodas fault.
That sort of thinking has been going on for far to long in our country, note all the retarded lawsuits people have won such as suing a fast food joint because they burnt themselves on hot coffee, "oh i didn't know it was hot because the cup didn't say it was hot." Apparently the bulk of people don't know how to be responsible for themselves and these laws and politicians that produce these laws are just enablers.
It hurts my soul knowing that freedom of choice that America's forefathers fought for is being restricted because some people are cant take care of themselves, and law makers are more than happy to jump in a restrict everyone's freedom for the "good" of some people who can't/won't take responsibility for themselves.

As for stop and frisk, well, someone's gonna have to appeal that higher.  That sort of argument has a pretty heavy precedent of failing, as I recall, so it's really just a case of one judge screwing up/imposing his beliefs and biases upon the system.  That's why there are things like en banc reviews.

the sad thing is this kind of thing has been on their books for nearly 2 decades now, and while there are plenty of lawyers who fight individual cases of it, not very many people seem interested in getting rid of the policy overall because it mainly targets "bad" neighborhoods and "bad" (read youths and  minorities) people. Its a slippery slope these fellows are playing on. I may seem like I make more out of it that it should be but once you start giving a little bit, they will start taking as much as they want...  all you have to do to see that is look at history..

Totally agree on the first point. However, on the second point... well, frankly, there are bad neighborhoods, and demographic profiling is a real and legitimate tool when used correctly.

Young people are more likely to do something stupid in general, just because they lack the common sense to know better, and (setting aside the socioeconomic complexities of how it came about) there is also a predominance of certain ethnicities among those most likely to be in violation of contraband laws.

To put that in perspective, the same statistical gathering methods say that shoplifting is most commonly done by middle-aged white women who can afford to buy what they're stealing.

[FuelDrop]

That sort of thinking has been going on for far to long in our country, note all the retarded lawsuits people have won such as suing a fast food joint because they burnt themselves on hot coffee, "oh i didn't know it was hot because the cup didn't say it was hot." Apparently the bulk of people don't know how to be responsible for themselves and these laws and politicians that produce these laws are just enablers.
It hurts my soul knowing that freedom of choice that America's forefathers fought for is being restricted because some people are cant take care of themselves, and law makers are more than happy to jump in a restrict everyone's freedom for the "good" of some people who can't/won't take responsibility for themselves.

In my not-so-humble opinion we should consider a bunch of these things (Coffee is hot, do not use power drill to pick nose, ect) to be nature's way of killing off idiots. Call it natural selection, thinning the herd, or god's will, if you manage to earn yourself a darwin award by doing something that you really should know better about then it is no-one's fault but your own. Pampering to the terminally stupid WHO ARE NOT RETARDED OR OTHERWISE DISADVANTAGED and letting them live in spite of their efforts at self-termination is no good for anyone, as these idiots will just go out and do something else stupid that may endanger others.

[FastJack]

Okay, now this is so far off-topic, it's no longer even relevant to the original post. And, we're getting close to politics again in the discussion. So, I'm going to lock this down before tempers flare again. If you feel like starting a new thread, discussing the political situation in the Sixth World, be my guess. Let's leave our political landscape off the forums, though.