The Politics of Fat [Archive]

Causa Mortis

02-17-2010, 07:12 PM

Since you're citing the Kevin Smith incident as an example, I'd be quite interested to know what you consider "spilling over into adjacent air plane seats" given that Smith could lower both armrests and buckle his seatbelt without the use of an extender (which is the standard cited by Southwest). At 5'7" and 135 pounds, it is very difficult for me to remain wholly within the space allotted for the duration of a flight, and it would be physically impossible for my father to do so at any weight due to his height and bone structure.

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If that not too fat to sit in one seat, I'm not sure what is. I've sat next to these people on long flights and had to feel their fat rolls on my elbows and had to constantly press down on the armrest to keep it from coming up constantly. Its not pleasant, and a reasonable assumption of comfort is something included in the purchase of a ticket.

The airlines have shaved every possible fraction of an inch off of individual seating space, and while I can't entirely begrudge them that because of the cost issues involved, I do think that they need to deal with the natural consequences of the action they chose in a respectful and fair way. Which -- as is made quite clear by observing the experiences of Smith among others -- they are not always managing to do.

They haven't decreased seat widths noticeably for as long as I've been flying. They repeatedly decreased legroom, and people have gotten a lot fatter.

They may have been disrespectful. I don't know, and I don't think there's a terribly diplomatic way to state "You're so fat that you're spilling into the seats others have paid for, you'll have to deplane".

---------- Post added 02-17-2010 at 06:17 PM ----------

Like I said, some cases of obesity are caused by factors unrelated to diet and exercise.

Yeah and they're a) very rare compared to the number of extremely obese people and b) typically very easy to treat and c) rarely cause more than 20-30 pounds of excess weight. There's, what, thyroid disorders and low t levels?

Deliberator

02-17-2010, 07:21 PM

There are many things that complicate this debate.

1) Being fat sometimes truly isn't the person's fault. There is some evidence that those who are =morbidly obese are suffering from severe hormonal imbalance.

2) Once you get fat, getting it off is not easy. Many people work and take care of families and just don't have the time.

3) Some fat people are perfectly healthy because, although they remain overweight, they exercise routinely and eat well.

4) BMI is usually used as an indicator for overweight even though it is incredibly inaccurate. If this were used for health insurance a lot of muscular and big-boned people would get screwed over.

So, let's assume that obesity is considered a pre-existing condition similar to diabetes, and not necessarily a lifestyle choice like cigarette smoking. Should people with diabetes have to pay more? What about people with multiple sclerosis?

In the other direction, let's say obesity is a lifestyle choice. Well then, if we know that type II diabetes is caused by poor diet, overweight, and a sedentary lifestyle, should we NOT consider it a pre-existing condition and charge people a higher premium if they develop it? Shouldn't they get incentives if they learn to manage it well, just as a smoker should get a premium reduction if they quit?

Tough questions.

plotthickens

02-17-2010, 08:56 PM

The reason people diet, lose weight, and then gain it all back later is because they stop dieting and keep eating 15 cheeseburgers (or whatever) a day.

Ah, Argument from Common Knowledge. Since all the medical knowledge labels this argument as fallacious, please [produce citation].

"Dieters" rarely employ "good diet and exercise" as a normal part of their life. When they return to what they always do, the weight comes back.

90 - 95% of all people who have ever been on a diet rarely diet&exercise? Really? Not according to existing medical knowledge, so please [produce citation].

...a reasonable assumption of comfort is something included in the purchase of a ticket.

I'm pretty sure the TSA and the airlines themselves would disagree with you there. ;)

They haven't decreased seat widths noticeably for as long as I've been flying. They repeatedly decreased legroom, and people have gotten a lot fatter.

Then you must be sitting in the large section. Seats are narrower in narrower sections of the plane, and the seats have been shrinking. Feel free to support your Argument from Common Knowledge.

The Shrinking Airline Seat (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

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Yeah and they're a) very rare compared to the number of extremely obese people and b) typically very easy to treat and c) rarely cause more than 20-30 pounds of excess weight. There's, what, thyroid disorders and low t levels?

And genetic disorders... and a few dozen other things. But feel free to produce the backup to... well, you see where I'm going.

Causa Mortis

02-17-2010, 11:50 PM

Then you must be sitting in the large section. Seats are narrower in narrower sections of the plane, and the seats have been shrinking. Feel free to support your Argument from Common Knowledge.

The Shrinking Airline Seat (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

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Thanks to some nifty engineering, certain Southwest Airlines flights now have more room for wide-bodied passengers.

Seats in some of the airline's newest jets are equipped with a special armrest that hangs down half as far as a regular model. The "HDK armrest," named for Southwest chairman Herbert D. Kelleher, provides extra room for hips to spread across the seat cushion.

During the development of the 777 family of planes, Boeing took their findings and decided to add 5 inches to the width of the plane. It permitted them to put in wider, 18.5" seats without diminishing the overall capacity.

The standard airline seat is 17.2" wide, while seat pitch ranges from 28" on some short-haul, down-and-dirty charters, to 33-34" on some planes.

From your own sources...they're trying to expand the seats to accomodate people who disavow personal responsibility for their weight.

firebee

02-17-2010, 11:55 PM

From your own sources...they're trying to expand the seats to accomodate people who disavow personal responsibility for their weight.

Actually, nothing is said about the attitudes of the people potentially being accommodated towards their weight. But why does that matter to you, anyway?

rahdam

02-18-2010, 12:05 AM

Let's discuss.
It seems that we are unable or unwilling to hold people responsible for physical health.
Case in point: People are fat for reasons that are beyond their control. Ergo, they are not responsible.
Thought: This seems rooted in mind-body dualism; the mind is willing, but the body unable. We must not hold the mind responsible for the failings of the body. But if we remove this artificial imposition, that is, if we consider the human body and mind to be one entity spawned of many biochemical reactions, the problems of the body are problems of the self. Ergo, regardless of biochemical abnormalities, if one is fat, one is responsible. You are your chemical reactions, and your chemical reactions are responsible.

Food for thought anyway.

firebee

02-18-2010, 12:08 AM

They may have been disrespectful. I don't know, and I don't think there's a terribly diplomatic way to state "You're so fat that you're spilling into the seats others have paid for, you'll have to deplane".

My main concern is actually fairness -- the other one is largely a matter of training rather than policy. Requiring a fat person to purchase an extra ticket substantially increases the cost of their trip, and if it is done on the spot may cause the passenger to become stranded; there are cases that are coming to light of passengers successfully taking trips out only to be refused boarding on the return flight.

Given the stakes involved, there needs to be a repeatable standard -- and the one you propose seems to be putting up a page-breaking picture largely of a person's face and handwaving about fat rolls.

As for the "respectful" bit, having just listened to podcast #2 on the subject, I'd venture to say that there is at the very least a more diplomatic way of approaching the matter than doing so while giggling and smirking at the passenger, as was apparently the experience of Smith's row-mate on the flight that he ultimately took.

yoginimama

02-18-2010, 08:27 AM

there is a difference between having difficulty and needing an extender on an already generous lap belt. ...People large enough to legitimately be in a situation where they should buy two seats are very rare and Kevin Smith certainly isn't one of them. I'm pretty willing to bet that your husband isn't one either.

You'd lose. My husband uses a belt extender. For the record, I'm perfectly comfortable sitting next to him. HE, on the other hand, is miserable and in physical pain every time we fly, because of those ridiculous Spanish-Inquisition-style Non-Comfy Chairs.

To wit:

it is only fair that the person creating the discomfort bear the burden of paying for that discomfort.

I 100% agree with you. The engineers who designed airline seating should have the costs of extra seats for people of size taken out of their salaries.

My husband, a 6'3" Polynesian man with a HUGE frame, tons of muscle AND considerable fat, is NOT RESPONSIBLE for the fact that airline seats were designed to fit half an Olsen twin. The airlines are.

[HIDE="Giant picture of Kevin Smith."]I've sat next to these people on long flights and had to feel their fat rolls on my elbows and had to constantly press down on the armrest to keep it from coming up constantly. Its not pleasant, and a reasonable assumption of comfort is something included in the purchase of a ticket.

I would ask you to please look again at your choice of words. "These people," as you call them, are beloved sons, brothers, sisters, daughters, husbands, wives. And I would respectfully suggest that, as "unpleasant" as it is for you to "feel their fat rolls on [your] elbows," it is equally unpleasant FOR THEM (if not more so) to feel your elbow in their side.

people who disavow personal responsibility for their weight.

if we consider the human body and mind to be one entity spawned of many biochemical reactions, the problems of the body are problems of the self. Ergo, regardless of biochemical abnormalities, if one is fat, one is responsible. You are your chemical reactions, and your chemical reactions are responsible.

Those words are deeply unhelpful and even hurtful to anyone suffering from a chronic condition. Plus, they don't even describe reality accurately as most people experience it.

Tell you what. I'll tell my "chemical reactions" to stop making me depressed, and my (distance-running, can-kick-your-ass-at-75) dad will tell HIS "chemical reactions" to stop making his lipids go haywire, and firebee will tell her "chemical reactions" to quit causing the chronic condition from which she suffers (to which she has referred in other posts), and all the oncologists will go to the cancer ward and tell their patients to tell THEIR "chemical reactions" to quit giving them cancer. And when we all do this with enough conviction, our "chemical reactions" will listen, because, of course, the fact that "we are our chemical reactions" only cuts one way. It means our chemicals (which are us) are OUR bitch, instead of the other way around. Because if consciousness/will is a result rather than a cause, well, that's just upsetting.

And we humans prefer to point fingers rather than accept fear, uncertainty and even a little bit of helplessness.

Therefore, people with chronic conditions like obesity, depression, etc threaten the security of those who are not so burdened. Because if we really can't help it (at least without medicines), then...wow, that's scary. So, instead, we get blamed, so that non-chronically-affected people can feel better.

In general, we tend not to appreciate this.

TheLastMohican

02-18-2010, 08:57 AM

The engineers who designed airline seating should have the costs of extra seats for people of size taken out of their salaries.

My husband, a 6'3" Polynesian man with a HUGE frame, tons of muscle AND considerable fat, is NOT RESPONSIBLE for the fact that airline seats were designed to fit half an Olsen twin. The airlines are.
Airlines sell seats. They do not sell guarantees of comfortable transport. It is not their job to make bigger seats to fit you any more than it is their job to see that you get to the airport in time for the flight. What they are doing is selling you an amount of space in a metal tube for the duration of travel, and it is yours to either fit into or not fit into (in which case you should just buy more space).

plotthickens

02-18-2010, 09:08 AM

Ergo, regardless of biochemical abnormalities, if one is fat, one is responsible. You are your chemical reactions, and your chemical reactions are responsible.

Food for thought anyway.

Citation needed. Please. This sounds interesting, in a "faith healing" quack-argument kind of way. It'd be great if it worked.

Airlines sell seats. They do not sell guarantees of comfortable transport. It is not their job to make bigger seats to fit you any more than it is their job to see that you get to the airport in time for the flight.

Then why do fat folks get to fly out... but not back? And are stranded? Kevin Smith got to Oakland somehow. Let me think how that happened. Hmmmmmmmmm. And did you know that he flew back on the same airline WITHOUT being kicked off? Wow! Amazing!

Heavyweight filmmaker KEVIN SMITH has challenged bosses of a top U.S. airline to prove he was “too fat” for a flight at the weekend (13Feb10) – and vowed to donate $10,000 (£6,250) to charity if they succeed.
The star and director of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines plane from Oakland to Burbank, California on Saturday after the captain became concerned his weight would be a safety risk.
Smith was offered a $100 (£62.50) airline voucher as compensation, but rejected the money – and is still fuming about the way he was treated.
The moviemaker is adamant he is a regular passenger with the airline and has never experienced any problems before – and has challenged executives at the company to prove he is too large for their seats.
In a series of posts on his Twitter.com page, Smith writes, “I don’t want their $ (money); just want to call attention to their policy so large folks think twice before buying.
“Contrary to their claim that I regularly purchase two seats, I wasn’t a regular 2-seat buyer until just this week. They SEIZED on that. In their ‘apology’ blog, they implied (or flat-out wrote) that I regularly purchase 2 seats. Writing that buttresses their lie: 2 Fat 2 Fly.
“But, by their own guidelines, I was not, in fact, 2 Fat 2 Fly: the arm rests went down & I could buckle my seat belt w/o an extender. So…? Hey @SouthwestAir: you bring that same row of seats to the DailyShow, and I’ll sit in ‘em for all to see on TV.
“If I don’t fit, I’ll donate $10k to charity of your choice. But when I do (& buckle the belt as well)? 1) You admit you lied. 2) Change your policy, or at least re-train your staff to be a lot more human and a lot less corporate.”

Question: if a bodybuilder gets on a plane, and her butt fits comfortably in her seat but her shoulders are too big to fit comfortably (and she certainly weighs more than Jane Doe), should the airline kick her off? More interestingly, will they?

pip

02-18-2010, 09:11 AM

Actually if you actually read the adverts for pretty much any non 'no frills' airline they make quite a thing over how they offer the best in comfort and efficient service - so much better in fact than anyone else.

So by thier own claims it is very much thier job to offer reasonable levels of comfort to their customers.
That is unless they want to start adding nonsense like 'No Blacks, Irish and Fatties' to thier ads - that would go down quite well. :p

TheLastMohican

02-18-2010, 09:17 AM

Then why do fat folks get to fly out... but not back? And are stranded? Kevin Smith got to Oakland somehow. Let me think how that happened. Hmmmmmmmmm. And did you know that he flew back on the same airline WITHOUT being kicked off? Wow! Amazing!

I don't understand what any of this has to do with my comment.

Question: if a bodybuilder gets on a plane, and her butt fits comfortably in her seat but her shoulders are too big to fit comfortably (and she certainly weighs more than Jane Doe), should the airline kick her off? More interestingly, will they?

If she is encroaching upon her neighbors' space and they complain about it, then it would be reasonable for the airline to kick her off (with a full refund). They probably would hesitate to do that, though, because popular opinion holds that "the customer is always right."

plotthickens

02-18-2010, 09:34 AM

I don't understand what any of this has to do with my comment.

What they are doing is selling you an amount of space in a metal tube for the duration of travel, and it is yours to either fit into or not fit into (in which case you should just buy more space).

He fit on the flight out, he fit on the next flight in, therefore he was kicked off his middle flight for reasons that were not as stated. So it's not a hard-and-fast standard but instead something applied at will, which is obviously not applied fairly nor consistantly. Let us know how your argument could be applied in such a case... or any case, really.

If she is encroaching upon her neighbors' space and they complain about it, then it would be reasonable for the airline to kick her off (with a full refund). They probably would hesitate to do that, though, because popular opinion holds that "the customer is always right."

So compliants are the reason airlines should kick people off? Like, if I don't like the way your fragrance makes my nose itch, I should complain and they'll kick you off? Or if your shoulderpads are poking me? Or if your long legs are getting in my way?

TheLastMohican

02-18-2010, 09:50 AM

He fit on the flight out, he fit on the next flight in, therefore he was kicked off his middle flight for reasons that were not as stated. So it's not a hard-and-fast standard but instead something applied at will, which is obviously not applied fairly nor consistantly. Let us know how your argument could be applied in such a case... or any case, really.
I didn't claim that airlines always act fairly or adhere to well-defined standards. I don't know what measurements they use to determine whether people are too large to fit in the seats, nor do I think that they necessarily should have any such measurements established.

So compliants are the reason airlines should kick people off??
Not just any complaint. You have a valid complaint if the person next to you is taking up a significant portion of your seat, such that you are uncomfortably cramped. You payed for that space, and you should be able to have it to yourself if you so desire. Other complaints, like those about perfume, might not be valid. You don't own the air quality in the cabin.

plotthickens

02-18-2010, 10:14 AM

Great. I have a complaint. Airline seats are so small that even a carseat won't fit in them. Now may we please have them design seats which are sized for 2/3 the population?

AaronSheffield

02-18-2010, 10:14 AM

HE, on the other hand, is miserable and in physical pain every time we fly, because of those ridiculous Spanish-Inquisition-style Non-Comfy Chairs.

Which are designed to (and do) fit an 85th percentile person in reasonable comfort.

The engineers who designed airline seating should have the costs of extra seats for people of size taken out of their salaries.

My husband, a 6'3" Polynesian man with a HUGE frame, tons of muscle AND considerable fat, is NOT RESPONSIBLE for the fact that airline seats were designed to fit half an Olsen twin. The airlines are.

It is simply poor planning to design any product for 99th percentile users like your husband. A 95th percentile person is 6'2" and 223 pounds and while airline seats are not ideal for such people, even they are not "miserable and in pain" from flying. The simple fact is that people like your husband represent fewer than 1% of all airline travelers and it's unreasonable to expect any business to plan around the 99th percentile. It's just plain not cost effective to do so.

As I stated, I fly over 100,000 miles a year. Your husband (based on your description) is larger than 99% of the people who fly, based both on my own observations and on published height/weight percentile charts, and it's irrational to think that it's good business for airlines to design their planes and seating around 1% or less of the population.

If your husband needs a larger seat, he can purchase a first-class ticket. And before you go complaining about cost, stop and realise that if airlines used coach seats large enough to be comfortable for your 99th percentile husband, the cost of coach seats would be about what the cost of first class seats are now because airlines would have to make up significant amounts of lost revenue due to the reduced seating capacity of their planes. Designing airplanes to accommodate 99th percentile passengers would increase ticket prices significantly for everyone, not just the 99th percentile passengers.

---------- Post added 02-18-2010 at 09:18 AM ----------

Great. I have a complaint. Airline seats are so small that even a carseat won't fit in them. Now may we please have them design seats which are sized for 2/3 the population?

They are. In fact, they are designed to (and do, comfortably) fit 85th percentile persons. That's more than 2/3 of the population in case you were wondering.

Thrasymachus

02-18-2010, 10:20 AM

So compliants are the reason airlines should kick people off? Like, if I don't like the way your fragrance makes my nose itch, I should complain and they'll kick you off? Or if your shoulderpads are poking me? Or if your long legs are getting in my way?

Absolutely, if someone is wearing a perfume that is offensive to the senses, someone complains , and the airline who owns the plane and is selling the service agrees that this is offensive enough to make the passenger leave then yes.

If your shoulder pads are poking me, be unnatural or natural and I complain and again the airline agrees that this inconvenience is something that they wish their other passengers not to deal with then yes.

If your legs are so long that they encroach upon my leg space then yes indeed I do.

And if your fat enough that it encroaches upon my space making my tin can seat even smaller than you should buy enough space so that you can fit your entire self inside.

If you find these restrictions uneasy, feel free to fund an airline with whatever seats you believe would be profitable yet unobtrusive.

However in those airlines which own airplanes in which people deviate significantly from the design model of the seat, in such a way in which it lessens the experience of the passengers around them have the right and I dare say the business sense to alleviate there customers.

TheLastMohican

02-18-2010, 10:23 AM

Airline seats are so small that even a carseat won't fit in them.
Are you sure this is true? I looked up the measurements: the standard for an airline seat is 17.2" in width, and infant car seats range from 16-19" in width. If you keep the armrests up, shouldn't most car seats fit in a standard airline seat (especially those in First Class)?

AaronSheffield

02-18-2010, 10:35 AM

Are you sure this is true? I looked up the measurements: the standard for an airline seat is 17.2" in width, and infant car seats range from 16-19" in width. If you keep the armrests up, shouldn't most car seats fit in a standard airline seat (especially those in First Class)?

Infant seats used in airplanes must be FAA-approved. This is the reason that most car seats cannot be used on airlines. It's an FAA regulation issue and not necessarily a seat design issue. FAA regulations prohibit "booster seat" types of car seats and FAA regulations do not require airlines to allow even approved car seats (though they prohibit the use of non-approved seats). Some airlines may exclude even FAA-approved seats for potential liability reasons (e.g. a parent fastening a seat improperly and suing the airline should the seat come loose). In any case, seat width is not the driving factor.

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 11:23 AM

My main concern is actually fairness -- the other one is largely a matter of training rather than policy. Requiring a fat person to purchase an extra ticket substantially increases the cost of their trip, and if it is done on the spot may cause the passenger to become stranded; there are cases that are coming to light of passengers successfully taking trips out only to be refused boarding on the return flight.

Given the stakes involved, there needs to be a repeatable standard -- and the one you propose seems to be putting up a page-breaking picture largely of a person's face and handwaving about fat rolls.

I think a universal standard would be swell. Widest body point over X has to buy another seat, if the airline doesn't enforce on outbound can't enforce on inbound.

The picture size was intended to communicate just how huge Smith really is.

As for the "respectful" bit, having just listened to podcast #2 on the subject, I'd venture to say that there is at the very least a more diplomatic way of approaching the matter than doing so while giggling and smirking at the passenger, as was apparently the experience of Smith's row-mate on the flight that he ultimately took.

Well my guess is that its already an uncomfortable interaction, and they got that "WTF its my thyroid I'm not fat (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)" face in response. Which is full of lulz.

---------- Post added 02-18-2010 at 10:24 AM ----------

\

Question: if a bodybuilder gets on a plane, and her butt fits comfortably in her seat but her shoulders are too big to fit comfortably (and she certainly weighs more than Jane Doe), should the airline kick her off? More interestingly, will they?

Although it wouldn't be as disgusting sitting next to a body builder, same standards. Widest body point over X has to buy another seat.

plotthickens

02-18-2010, 11:28 AM

Well my guess is that its already an uncomfortable interaction, and they got that "WTF its my thyroid I'm not fat (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)" face in response. Which is full of lulz.

Citation needed.

Although it wouldn't be as disgusting sitting next to a body builder, same standards. Widest body point over X has to buy another seat.

Thank you for finally getting to the truth. Fat is the new smoker, the new black, the new irish. Disgusting. We don't want your kind here, fatty fatass. Can't you go somewhere else and do that?

freeeekyyy

02-18-2010, 11:34 AM

Citation needed.

Citation needed.

Thank you for finally getting to the truth. Fat is the new smoker, the new black, the new irish. Disgusting. We don't want your kind here, fatty fatass. Can't you go somewhere else and do that?

Would you suggest that airlines need to allow smoking on their planes? And no, it's not the same as being black. You aren't born fat, and you aren't born with a cigarette in your mouth. You want citation? I'll use myself as an example. I used to be 240 lbs, I'm 5'10". I was definitely obese. I didn't want to acknowledge it. I'm now down to 209. Much, much healthier, by exercising and eating right. Most fat people don't want to do that. I'm still fat myself, but I'm getting closer to being not fat. Tell me, what condition do you have preventing you from losing weight, besides a lack of will?

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 11:34 AM

Citation needed.

For saying that something is funny? The fat rage face is pure hilarity.

Thank you for finally getting to the truth. Fat is the new smoker, the new black, the new irish. Disgusting. We don't want your kind here, fatty fatass. Can't you go somewhere else and do that?

Yeah people treat fatties like shit. More at 11.

---------- Post added 02-18-2010 at 10:36 AM ----------

I'll use myself as an example. I used to be 240 lbs, I'm 5'10". I was definitely obese. I didn't want to acknowledge it. I'm now down to 209. Much, much healthier, by exercising and eating right. Most fat people don't want to do that.

Same story here. Its been an ungodly amount of work, but I look and feel exponentially better. I was huge for a few years and fluffed it off as thyroid. Then I blamed my testeserone. ANd then my parents. And then my job. Only when I took responsibility for it did my weight actually get to a healthy level.

firebee

02-18-2010, 11:38 AM

Well my guess is that its already an uncomfortable interaction, and they got that "WTF its my thyroid I'm not fat (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)" face in response. Which is full of lulz.

And which person in the interaction is an employee of the airline acting in their official capacity, to whom the personal medical issues or philosophical attitudes of the other party (i.e. the customer) that relate to their weight is extremely much none of their business?

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 11:43 AM

And which person in the interaction is an employee of the airline acting in their official capacity, to whom the personal medical issues or philosophical attitudes of the other party (i.e. the customer) that relate to their weight is extremely much none of their business?

Except its a human being on the other end of the interaction, and hilarity is hilarity.

A snicker is pretty easy to forgive for most people, unless you're Kevin Smith and need to launch WW3 to convince yourself that it was just the evil airline that's the problem, not the fact that the man is huge.

plotthickens

02-18-2010, 11:48 AM

firebee

02-18-2010, 11:50 AM

Except its a human being on the other end of the interaction, and hilarity is hilarity.

Colors: being shown. It's a human being on the other other end too, remember?

Mullanaphy

02-18-2010, 11:58 AM

As for Kevin Smith, he lives relatively close to me and goes to some restaurants. He is a man that eats, and I don't mean eat, I mean really, really, really eats. The amount of food I've seen him eat is ridiculous...

So, Americans live in a nation of processed foods (or eat "low fat") and a sedentary lifestyle yet they're not at fault for being fat. It's a shame that so many people claim genetics, thyroids, etc when all that does is hide their own faults for being fat and hurts the people that truly have a thyroid condition.

My younger sister's immune system destroyed her thyroids when she was a child, so now she'll never be "skinny". However she still works her butt off, eats right, competes in swimming, and while she is still overweight she isn't obese and she is healthy.

On the other hand my older sister that claimed she had thyroid problems. Her problem wasn't her thyroid, it was snacks, laziness, and excuses. She finally changed her eating habits (she went paleo (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)), become more serious about exercising, and stop making excuses. The results are just astounding. She still has some more to go but her health is greatly improved as well as her Air Force physical tests.

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Also, genetics can stop\hinder weight lose however that shouldn't be an excuse to not take care of yourself.

Want to get healthier\leaner? Seriously check out a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gym, or boxing. Those two are the best workouts you'll find plus you'll learn some great self-defense techniques as well. From personal observation, I don't think I've seen a new practitioner in BJJ that hasn't lost a good chunk of weight after sticking to it.

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 12:04 PM

Colors: being shown. It's a human being on the other other end too, remember?

Someone chortling over a fat rage face you make should be something you laugh off. People are people and make mistakes. Not fly into a week-long melodrama over AFTER executives have called to apologize.

freeeekyyy

02-18-2010, 12:06 PM

CM, F,

All your comments have already been addressed. Feel free to use any or a few (or even all) of the links provided. Your arguments have not been similarly supported.

Put up or... um... find another line of reasoning.

You haven't sourced anything either, friend. At least I provided anecdotal evidence.

And so did CM. We've both been fat, and come out healthy. It's true that some people have more difficulty losing fat than others, for genetic or hormonal reasons, etc. But they are few. And even fewer that can't lose weight at all.

firebee

02-18-2010, 12:12 PM

Re: thyroid issues, I come at it from the opposite end. My weight, per above, is well within the 'good' BMI range for my height, and as someone or another upthread alluded to, I've got genuine no-fooling serious thyroid trouble...

... which has been successfully treated, with the result that, having been treated, I am a metabolically normal person.

Not everyone comes out that lucky. Not even everybody with the same condition I have. So in addition to my general distaste for cruel, juvenile, and unprofessional (where applicable) behavior, I also don't have the necessary comfortable illusion that the targets are people-who-are-not-me.

plotthickens

02-18-2010, 12:23 PM

You haven't sourced anything either, friend. At least I provided anecdotal evidence.

ContradictoryCDC Contradicts (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) itself. And there's this study (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). And this one (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). There are lots more than that, but these will do for now.
Oh, nevermind. If you're interested, here; (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) to those who are not, enjoy your smug superiority. Us fatties will outlive you anyway. :)
I'm going to repeat what's already been said. Doctors do not know what causes obesity. (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

If "Good diet and exercise" worked, then why do 90 - 95% of dieters gain all their weight back and then some? The only thing that works is calorie restriction, usually at a level that the Geneva convention defined as torture.

Heavyweight filmmaker KEVIN SMITH has challenged bosses of a top U.S. airline to prove he was “too fat” for a flight at the weekend (13Feb10) – and vowed to donate $10,000 (£6,250) to charity if they succeed.
The star and director of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines plane from Oakland to Burbank, California on Saturday after the captain became concerned his weight would be a safety risk.
Smith was offered a $100 (£62.50) airline voucher as compensation, but rejected the money – and is still fuming about the way he was treated.
The moviemaker is adamant he is a regular passenger with the airline and has never experienced any problems before – and has challenged executives at the company to prove he is too large for their seats.
In a series of posts on his Twitter.com page, Smith writes, “I don’t want their $ (money); just want to call attention to their policy so large folks think twice before buying.
“Contrary to their claim that I regularly purchase two seats, I wasn’t a regular 2-seat buyer until just this week. They SEIZED on that. In their ‘apology’ blog, they implied (or flat-out wrote) that I regularly purchase 2 seats. Writing that buttresses their lie: 2 Fat 2 Fly.
“But, by their own guidelines, I was not, in fact, 2 Fat 2 Fly: the arm rests went down & I could buckle my seat belt w/o an extender. So…? Hey @SouthwestAir: you bring that same row of seats to the DailyShow, and I’ll sit in ‘em for all to see on TV.
“If I don’t fit, I’ll donate $10k to charity of your choice. But when I do (& buckle the belt as well)? 1) You admit you lied. 2) Change your policy, or at least re-train your staff to be a lot more human and a lot less corporate.”

And so did CM. We've both been fat, and come out healthy. It's true that some people have more difficulty losing fat than others, for genetic or hormonal reasons, etc. But they are few. And even fewer that can't lose weight at all.

Citation needed.

Which are designed to (and do) fit an 85th percentile person in reasonable comfort.

2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). Please reconcile the study and your number.

Are you sure this is true? I looked up the measurements: the standard for an airline seat is 17.2" in width, and infant car seats range from 16-19" in width. If you keep the armrests up, shouldn't most car seats fit in a standard airline seat (especially those in First Class)?

Very. A co-worker has a child who requires constant head support. They fly to medical centers across the US regularly. They must buy an extra seat because their standard carseat with altered headrest is too wide to fit into seat width - headrests.

firebee

02-18-2010, 12:24 PM

And so did CM. We've both been fat, and come out healthy. It's true that some people have more difficulty losing fat than others, for genetic or hormonal reasons, etc. But they are few. And even fewer that can't lose weight at all.

Like, say, the 99th percentile and above of the flying population, perchance?

And, y'know, about that...

I am on 250 mcgs of Levothyroxine...

They'd have to peel me off the ceiling, dude. If you came by that without ever having experienced a fairly profound disruption to your regulation of energy levels, you're a much luckier duck than I am.

freeeekyyy

02-18-2010, 12:29 PM

Citation needed.

2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). Please reconcile the study and your number.

Very. A co-worker has a child who requires constant head support. They fly to medical centers across the US regularly. They must buy an extra seat because their standard carseat with altered headrest is too wide to fit into seat width - headrests.

Yes, 2/3 of americans are overweight or obese. Of those 2/3, 1/2 is only overweight, and not obese. Even within the category of obesity, there are varying levels. Many obese individuals are not morbidly obese, and can still fit in an airline seat.

AaronSheffield

02-18-2010, 12:55 PM

2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). Please reconcile the study and your number.

There is no conflict to reconcile. Perhaps you simply unfamiliar with the concept of percentiles and thereby ignorant of the fact that it's entirely possible that an 85th percentile person is considered "overweight" or even "obese" by the criteria used in the CDC study?

A 50th percentile individual stands 5'10" and weighs 170 pounds. This equates to a BMI of 24.4 which is only just barely avoiding an "overweight" categorization.

A 95th percentile individual is 6'2" and 223 pounds. This yields a BMI of 28.6; well into the realm of "overweight" and bordering on "obese".

An 85th percentile adult is 6'0" and around 210 pounds. This yields a BMI of 28.5; again, well into the realm of "overweight" according to BMI.

Now, 85th percentile is someone who is 85th percentile in both height and weight. It is entirely possible for a person to be 50th percentile in height and 85th percentile in weight. In that case, such a person would be 5'10" and 210 pounds with a BMI of 30.1; that is to say, obese according to BMI.

As this analysis clearly illustrates, there is absolutely no inherent contradiction between the fact that airline seats are designed for 85th percentile individuals and the fact that BMI categorizes 2/3 of Americans as "overweight" or "obese". Therefore, no reconciliation is necessary unless one has no conception of how percentiles work.

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 01:11 PM

They'd have to peel me off the ceiling, dude. If you came by that without ever having experienced a fairly profound disruption to your regulation of energy levels, you're a much luckier duck than I am.

On the contrary. After college my weight spiked. I tried to lose weight, no avail. So I went to a clinic, said I was way under. People treated me like shit - women especially, but people generally. Even the folks at work did.

Did I start a fucking twitter tantrum? No - I joined a gym, changed my diet, and have been tweaking both ever since. My thyroid still tests low, but I don't give a fuck - I'm going to keep cutting until I meet my goals, it just changes the calories I can consume by -20% or so.

If Kevin Smith doesn't want to do all this, I'm fine with that. But he shouldn't complain about the inevitable consequences of choosing to be uber fat.

IrishGuy

02-18-2010, 01:14 PM

It seems to me that everyone is going about this the wrong way. The variable cost of a flight is very much dependent on how much weight is added to the plane in the form of people and luggage (fuel is fixed for a given route and is a fixed cost). However, the revenue is a result of how many people are added to the plane. Thus, highest profit occurs when lots of skinny low luggage people are on the plane.

Fat people, heavy people, and people with lots of luggage should pay more to ride the plane simply because they cost more. One way to do that is to charge them for 2 seats. This is fair assuming that AaronSheffield's citation that seats will fit an 85th percentile person is true. Another way would be to charge people by the pound. The airlines would have each person stand on the luggage scale and charge them a fixed rate per pound (or kilogram w/e). However, this latter option would probably offend the sensibilities of most people and would be very time consuming. It is much easier and less offensive just to have people who cannot fit in seats pay for two. You pay more for first class (and a bigger seat) so why not pay more if you can't fit in the coach seat?

plotthickens

02-18-2010, 01:23 PM

You pay more for first class (and a bigger seat) so why not pay more if you can't fit in the coach seat?

Because they want to retain their customers, not drive them away.

Because Anorexia is not a happy fun disease.

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yoginimama

02-18-2010, 01:27 PM

It is simply poor planning to design any product for 99th percentile users like your husband. A 95th percentile person is 6'2" and 223 pounds and while airline seats are not ideal for such people, even they are not "miserable and in pain" from flying. The simple fact is that people like your husband represent fewer than 1% of all airline travelers and it's unreasonable to expect any business to plan around the 99th percentile. It's just plain not cost effective to do so.

But making people buy two seats, or one first class seat, because they're a 99th percentile user, amounts to economic discrimination. Since 99th-percentile users are so rare, why can't the airline buy the second seat (or half the first class ticket, or whatever is deemed necessary)?

Although it wouldn't be as disgusting sitting next to a body builder [as it would next to a fat person]...

Wow. Not sure what to say here, except "Please look at that choice of words."

A snicker is pretty easy to forgive for most people, unless you're Kevin Smith and need to launch WW3 to convince yourself that it was just the evil airline that's the problem, not the fact that the man is huge....Someone chortling over a fat rage face you make should be something you laugh off. People are people and make mistakes. Not fly into a week-long melodrama over AFTER executives have called to apologize.

Again. Are you seriously suggesting that a paying customer should tolerate being ridiculed for ANY aspect of his or her appearance by an airline professional? For any reason?

As for Kevin Smith, he lives relatively close to me and goes to some restaurants. He is a man that eats, and I don't mean eat, I mean really, really, really eats. The amount of food I've seen him eat is ridiculous...

So, you seem to be saying that you watch Kevin Smith eat when he's in the same restaurant as you. I would encourage you to stop and think about that for a minute. Have you really been seated close enough to him, and at the right time, to track his entire intake from start to finish, more than once? I.e., do you REALLY know how much he eats? Or have you, in reality, caught a few glimpses of him taking a couple of big exuberant bites and concluded on that basis that he must be eating the entire agricultural GDP of Lesotho? If the former--if you really have been seated closely enough to him, for enough time, on enough occasions, and paid enough attention to his plate, to KNOW how much he eats, how do you feel about that? How do you feel about the fact that you apparently choose to watch Kevin Smith eat whenever you get the chance? How do your dining companions feel about this pastime? Do they share in it?

ArtistTyrant

02-18-2010, 01:28 PM

LOL plotthickens, so it's either being obese (which you seem to claim isn't usually an issue with self discipline) or anorexia? binary thinking much?

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 01:30 PM

Again. Are you seriously suggesting that a paying customer should tolerate being ridiculed for ANY aspect of his or her appearance by an airline professional? For any reason?

I'm suggesting that if you don't take care of basic personal issues, don't be amazed when the reactions are negative. If you don't shower, don't be amazed that people sometimes stand a few feet away from you. If you don't brush your teeth, people will reel. If you let yourself get Kevin Smith fat, people will chortle at you.

AaronSheffield

02-18-2010, 01:31 PM

This is fair assuming that AaronSheffield's citation that seats will fit an 85th percentile person is true.

Weight/height tables put 85th percentile at about 6'0" and 210 pounds. (85th percentile height and 85th percentile weight.) A colleague of mine is 6'1" and about 250 pounds. He fits in an airline seat just fine. It's not La-Z-Boy level comfort, but he's not by any stretch in pain or encroaching on other people's space when we fly for business. If he fits without issue despite being above the 85th percentile in both height and weight, it's safe to assume that the 85th percentile standard is a reasonable assumption.

The 85th percentile is a fairly standard practice and represents slightly more than 1 standard deviation above the mean of a normal distribution and it's a relatively common "back of the envelope" estimation that allows the vast majority of a population to be accommodated economically. It's effectively a minor variation on the Pareto Principle.

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 01:32 PM

Weight/height tables put 85th percentile at about 6'0" and 210 pounds. (85th percentile height and 85th percentile weight.) A colleague of mine is 6'1" and about 250 pounds. He fits in an airline seat just fine. It's not La-Z-Boy level comfort, but he's not by any stretch in pain or encroaching on other people's space when we fly for business. If he fits without issue despite being above the 85th percentile in both height and weight, it's safe to assume that the 85th percentile standard is a reasonable assumption.

The 85th percentile is a fairly standard practice and represents slightly more than 1 standard deviation above the mean of a normal distribution and it's a relatively common "back of the envelope" estimation that allows the vast majority of a population to be accommodated economically. It's effectively a minor variation on the Pareto Principle.

Right. At 6'4" 280, it was a very real squeeze. At 250, it was tight-comfortable. Its fine at 235.

Seriously

02-18-2010, 01:33 PM

Mullanaphy

02-18-2010, 01:34 PM

So, you seem to be saying that you watch Kevin Smith eat when he's in the same restaurant as you. I would encourage you to stop and think about that for a minute. Have you really been seated close enough to him, and at the right time, to track his entire intake from start to finish, more than once? I.e., do you REALLY know how much he eats? Or have you, in reality, caught a few glimpses of him taking a couple of big exuberant bites and concluded on that basis that he must be eating the entire agricultural GDP of Lesotho? If the former--if you really have been seated closely enough to him, for enough time, on enough occasions, and paid enough attention to his plate, to KNOW how much he eats, how do you feel about that? How do you feel about the fact that you apparently choose to watch Kevin Smith eat whenever you get the chance? How do your dining companions feel about this pastime? Do they share in it?
I didn't have dining companions at the time. This was when I worked at a cart right next to the Ruby Tuesdays he'd down wings at. Really down them. And yes, it was a hell of a lot. For reference my friends who worked there also noticed the amount that was consumed on multiple occasions. Try and make up excuses if you want or dismiss all you want, it won't change reality.

Edit: Also for the record, he's a cool guy so I personally have no qualms with him eating as much as he does. Just want people to realize that it's his choices that sent him down that road.

rahdam

02-18-2010, 01:36 PM

Those words are deeply unhelpful and even hurtful to anyone suffering from a chronic condition. Plus, they don't even describe reality accurately as most people experience it.

Tell you what. I'll tell my "chemical reactions" to stop making me depressed, and my (distance-running, can-kick-your-ass-at-75) dad will tell HIS "chemical reactions" to stop making his lipids go haywire, and firebee will tell her "chemical reactions" to quit causing the chronic condition from which she suffers (to which she has referred in other posts), and all the oncologists will go to the cancer ward and tell their patients to tell THEIR "chemical reactions" to quit giving them cancer. And when we all do this with enough conviction, our "chemical reactions" will listen, because, of course, the fact that "we are our chemical reactions" only cuts one way. It means our chemicals (which are us) are OUR bitch, instead of the other way around. Because if consciousness/will is a result rather than a cause, well, that's just upsetting.

And we humans prefer to point fingers rather than accept fear, uncertainty and even a little bit of helplessness.

Therefore, people with chronic conditions like obesity, depression, etc threaten the security of those who are not so burdened. Because if we really can't help it (at least without medicines), then...wow, that's scary. So, instead, we get blamed, so that non-chronically-affected people can feel better.

In general, we tend not to appreciate this.

Remember, this is not about so and so telling their chemical reactions to do such and such; this is about so and so being their chemical reactions. There is no division of mind and body for the sake of thought experiment, as they are both rooted in a common chemical soup.

Citation needed. Please. This sounds interesting, in a "faith healing" quack-argument kind of way. It'd be great if it worked.

Citation for what? What on earth are you talking about? I never made any claims to anything remotely resembling "faith healing," or healing of any kind. Your body is storing the adipose, your body is you, ergo you are storing adipose; you are responsible. Remember, mind-body duality is absent for our thought experiment, your body and your mind are one and the same.

This all leads to questions of determinism and personal freedom...

AaronSheffield

02-18-2010, 01:37 PM

But making people buy two seats, or one first class seat, because they're a 99th percentile user, amounts to economic discrimination.

No, it doesn't. Persons who use more resources have to pay more to do so. I pay more to license my car than I do to license my motorcycle because the car weighs more (causes more wear and tear on the road) and creates more traffic congestion. I am not being economically discriminated against, I am simply being made to pay more because I am consuming more.

Space and weight capacity are the chief resources on an airplane. A person who consumes more of those resources, whether or not they are directly "at fault" for whatever necessitates the increased consumption, have to pay more because they consume more. If they need to purchase the second set, they are consuming twice as much space and it is absolutely appropriate that they pay twice as much.

Since 99th-percentile users are so rare, why can't the airline buy the second seat (or half the first class ticket, or whatever is deemed necessary)?

Because airlines are a business, not a charity.

yoginimama

02-18-2010, 01:37 PM

I'm suggesting that if you don't take care of basic personal issues, don't be amazed when the reactions are negative. If you don't shower, don't be amazed that people sometimes stand a few feet away from you. If you let yourself get Kevin Smith fat, people will chortle at you.

STILL with the "if you're fat it's your fault" meme. This is where we differ. Very, very, very few obese people can lose weight and keep it off.

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"An average maintained weight loss of more than 3 kg (6.6 lb) or 3% of total body mass could be sustained for five years."

Woo, three whole percent!! For five whole years!!

That is the reality at this time. I'm sure that as research continues, we will eventually figure out how to treat obesity effectively. We're not there yet.

AaronSheffield

02-18-2010, 01:38 PM

freeeekyyy

02-18-2010, 01:46 PM

STILL with the "if you're fat it's your fault" meme. This is where we differ. Very, very, very few obese people can lose weight and keep it off.

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"An average maintained weight loss of more than 3 kg (6.6 lb) or 3% of total body mass could be sustained for five years."

Woo, three whole percent!! For five whole years!!

That is the reality at this time. I'm sure that as research continues, we will eventually figure out how to treat obesity effectively. We're not there yet.

This has more to do with the rate of fat removal. If you take it off too quickly, you'll put it back on, it's the body's way of bringing balance. If you remove it at a slow, steady, healthy rate, you'll be much more likely to keep it off. Note this line in the wikipedia article: "keeping this weight off can be a problem and often requires making exercise and a lower calorie diet a permanent part of a person's lifestyle.(Footnotes 124 and 125)" So it's not that it can't be kept off, it's that it can't be kept off while still eating way too much food. What this says is that people can control their weight. It's not all hormones. It may be more difficult for some, I don't think anybody is saying otherwise. But it can be done.

IrishGuy

02-18-2010, 02:01 PM

Because they want to retain their customers, not drive them away.

Because Anorexia is not a happy fun disease.

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How many people have anorexia compared to the number of people who are obese? Many more obese people. Also, the airlines won't drive people away in any great numbers as flying is the fastest way to get somewhere far away.

Mullanaphy

02-18-2010, 02:11 PM

Also, I'd like to point this out: What does anorexia have to do with anything?

This isn't a two choice question. Your choices aren't be obese or be anorexic. Everyone should try to go towards their optimum weight, whether that involves gaining or losing weight.

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 02:16 PM

Seriously

02-18-2010, 02:18 PM

Gum smackers, snoring, and babies are all killed with headphones. I can even remove the effects of an annoying Jersey Shore appearance by CLOSING MY EYES. But having to feel fat rolls on my elbows? Can't get rid of that.

Sure you can. You just need to try harder. Pull your elbows in and go to your special place inside your head.

TheLastMohican

02-18-2010, 02:43 PM

Very. A co-worker has a child who requires constant head support. They fly to medical centers across the US regularly. They must buy an extra seat because their standard carseat with altered headrest is too wide to fit into seat width - headrests.
That's one special case, and from the way you describe it, it doesn't even indicate anything about airline seats being "too small for car seats." The headrest is an unusual part of a car seat to be oversized.
Aaron seems to have his facts in order. I'm inclined to believe his explanation.

Causa Mortis

02-18-2010, 02:51 PM

Sure you can. You just need to try harder. Pull your elbows in and go to your special place inside your head.

Its in my physical space. Its fundamentally different from gum smacking. And its disgusting to let yourself stay that way.

Seriously

02-18-2010, 02:58 PM

Its in my physical space. Its fundamentally different from gum smacking. And its disgusting to let yourself stay that way.

Wow judgmental much? You don't know these people. You have no idea what has gone on or goes on in their lives. You don't know their physical or mental issues. But you want to sit there and call them names and judge them because for a few hours you might have to sit next to them on an airplane.

I find your attitude disgusting.

True Rune

02-18-2010, 03:27 PM

I think it'd be pretty simple to replace that theory everyone calls wrong by adding in other factors. I only see complaints rather than improvement.

This is a pretty funny debate though. I'm one of those "unfairly skinny" people..I have a disadvantage in combat, they have to pay more since they take up more room.

plotthickens

02-18-2010, 04:41 PM

rahdam

02-18-2010, 05:58 PM

The naked loathing and unwavering insistence I see exhibited through the arguments here is appalling. None of you naysayers has yet to provide any support for any of your arguments. If this were another subject, the lack of logical followthrough and general research would be called out. Instead, despite the complete lack of any kind of evidence, you've already made up your minds and are validating your prejudice between yourselves. This smacks of deciding based on emotion, not facts.

There is no scientific evidence of a soul as it were. Ergo, a monist view of the self is the only view supported by current science. In a broad context, the self is responsible for the self; the mind cannot blame the body, because they are one and the same.

AaronSheffield

02-18-2010, 06:29 PM

This smacks of deciding based on emotion, not facts.

Yeah. There aren't any facts at all involved in weight/height percentile charts. Those are 100% emotion. Scientists just make those tables up. And you caught me. There's no such agency as the FAA and even if there was they certainly wouldn't have any regulations about child seats. And even if this mythical FAA did exist and regulate child seats on airplanes, they certainly wouldn't have a photo of a child seat fitting in an airplane seat on their website (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).

The only obvious thing in this thread is that you don't understand how percentiles work nor do you understand that it's impractical and illogical to expect businesses to cater to less than 1% of the population.

Regardless of the underlying reason for it, people who consume more bear the burden for their own increased consumption. It's not prejudicial, and it's not insulting, it's just the way the world works. People who are significantly different from the mean values in any measure have difficulty because the world is simply not designed for them. This is simply due to the fact that there is a negative rate of return when mass-market products are designed for persons above the 95th percentile in any measure.

firebee

02-18-2010, 06:42 PM

Yeah. There aren't any facts at all involved in weight/height percentile charts. Those are 100% emotion.

Remind me again of where "disgusting fat rolls" is listed on those charts? Is that the unit of weight they use or something?

ArtistTyrant

02-18-2010, 06:52 PM

firebee, the majority of people that weigh over 220 lbs, for example, don't weigh that much because they're healthy/muscular, they weigh that much because they eat more calories than they need, and probably don't exercise anywhere near as much as a human body should

ctclough

02-18-2010, 07:18 PM

I've been fat and I've been lean, and leaner feels healthier and more energetic than fat. The extra weight was hard on my knees, which aren't great to begin with. I also couldn't dream of running, skiing, or sprinting for more than a couple minutes when I was fat. In countries that eat junky food, diabetes rates are sky rocketing. I don't think that it's wise to defend obesity as the ideal. I think that most obese persons would like to be of normal weight. The trouble is getting there by overcoming a lifetime of bad habits, unlucky genetics, emotional eating due to depression, etc. This is NOT EASY.

I've yet to know an overweight person who doesn't consume more calories than she needs. The body doesn't lie. On the other hand, we all have issues, addictions and troubles. Can the perfect human being please stand up? My goodness, have some compassion.

The difference between food addicts and others is that that their problem is visible for all to see and judge. I have been able to help two other people with this, and we are working on learning to cook healthy, staying within our calorie ranges, and getting exercise together. I can't imagine how condemning people is productive.

rahdam

02-18-2010, 07:26 PM

AaronSheffield

02-18-2010, 07:28 PM

Remind me again of where "disgusting fat rolls" is listed on those charts? Is that the unit of weight they use or something?

I am not asking you to defend the statements that you have not made. Please do not ask me to defend statements that I have not made.

I am the only person who speaks for me and I have said nothing even close to that quote.

Plotthickens' response appeared to be directed at everyone, so I defended my statements. I don't pretend to support or defend statements made by anyone else.

Lucid

02-18-2010, 07:49 PM

Good grief. I've sat between two people who encroached on my seat before and while it wasn't optimal I managed to survive it. I've also sat next to gum smackers, people who snore and babies crying and managed to survive that as well. It's a freakin plane ride not the rest of your life. Suck it up.

This too. :) As I've said, people who are truly an inconvenience are rare as hen's teeth.

Quite so. I'd say that babies crying are much more of an issue for me than sitting next to a fat person.

How about this? What if the fat people promise to lose some weight and we thin airline passengers promise to be a bit more tolerant and a bit less ridiculous? Fair? Good.

Why is this even so much of an issue? Life is full of inconveniences, uncomfortable experiences and annoyances. Get a freaking helmet.

Thrasymachus

02-20-2010, 07:52 AM

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People who negatively impact the flying experience of others within reason are mitigated. Like I said before, business sense.

Antares

02-20-2010, 08:18 AM

Fat people aren't the problem. In seats nowadays, it's uncomfortable sitting next to anyone. Wiggle a bit, you hit them. My bag clutters around my feet, you can barely move with table out if the guy in front of you leans back, etc. Forget that. It's uncomfortable even sitting in those tiny economy class seats. Especially for long flights (which I tend to take often. One in March, one in April, one in May, one in June, one in July/August), I don't even have any wiggle room, damn it. My legs feel like they haven't moved in a hundred years. Chinese airlines are known for their small business class seats, but they're perfect for economy class, and don't take up much room. Enlarge those tortuously microscopic cubicles. Problem solved.

phej

02-20-2010, 08:39 AM

Enlarge those tortuously microscopic cubicles. Problem solved.

As what's been repeated in this thread, space and weight are the constraints on an airplane. You can get a larger seat, but you have to pay for it. The alternative is to increase the space of every seat at the cost of increasing the price of the ticket for everybody (or keep prices the same, but the airlines goes under because it is taking a loss). Airline transportation is not a god-given entitlement, but a luxury.

Seriously

02-20-2010, 08:49 AM

BlackOp

02-20-2010, 09:45 AM

I don't think it's a god-given entitlement not to have someone intrude on your space a bit in public transportation either. People are made of all different shapes and sizes. It happens. Deal with it.

Well, last time I flew, I had very large people on both sides. Literally, their shoulders were in my seat area a good 4 inches from both directions and using all four armrests. I had to keep my shoulders pinned in and my hands between my legs. Couldn't read a book or use my arms.. I had to move mid-flight. I dont care how people want to live their lives but when it becomes MY issue, then I have a right to voice an opinion. I was forced to the very last row and my seat couldnt recline....luckily it wasnt a totally full flight. One row in front of me was a HUGE man in an aisle seat...350lbs big. Nobody would/could sit in that row..essentially he took 3 seats.

So...if the flight had been totally booked, somebody would have to sit next to this guy. It wouldnt have been physically possible. You could tell he was conscious about it..but still.

phej

02-20-2010, 09:54 AM

Well, last time I flew, I had very large people on both sides. Literally, their shoulders were in my seat area a good 4 inches from both directions and using all four armrests. I had to keep my shoulders pinned in and my hands between my legs. Couldn't read a book or use my arms.. I had to move. I dont care how people want to live their lives but when it becomes MY issue, then I have a right to voice an opinion. I was forced to the very last row and my seat couldnt recline....luckily it wasnt a totally full flight. One row in front of me was a HUGE man in an aisle seat...350lbs big. Nobody would/could sit in that row..essentially he took 3 seats.

So...if the flight had been totally booked, somebody would have to sit next to this guy. It wouldnt have been physically possible. You could tell he was conscious about it..but still.

So, I'd say in this case, the huge gentleman got lucky in that no one wanted to sit next to him and that there was extra seating available. The fairest thing to say is that if an individual "spills" over, said individual should have to pay for a larger seat (first class or business class) or pay for the adjacent seat. This is consistent with a ticket representing space on the airplane.

Seriously

02-20-2010, 10:24 AM

I've been trapped between two heavy people myself. Not optimal but neither is a crying baby or a person with BO or the international flight where I was next to an elderly woman who needed help and her family was half way up the plane. Now I generally book aisle seats and try for bulkhead but sometimes you get stuck and that is life.

Grimstad

02-20-2010, 11:00 AM

If I go into a restaurant for a meal, I have a reasonable expectation that I will have a table to myself.
If I take public transit I have no expectation of getting a seat at all.
If I pay a couple hundred dollars or more for an airline seat, I have a reasonable expectation of a seat to myself.
If you are going to “overflow” into my space then you should pay for a percentage of my space.

jm123

02-20-2010, 02:41 PM

The only obvious thing in this thread is that you don't understand how percentiles work nor do you understand that it's impractical and illogical to expect businesses to cater to less than 1% of the population.

Regardless of the underlying reason for it, people who consume more bear the burden for their own increased consumption. It's not prejudicial, and it's not insulting, it's just the way the world works. People who are significantly different from the mean values in any measure have difficulty because the world is simply not designed for them. This is simply due to the fact that there is a negative rate of return when mass-market products are designed for persons above the 95th percentile in any measure.

Obviously you do not understand how percentiles work. If the seats are created for the 85th percentile, that means 15% of the population are larger than the seats were designed for, not 1%. I am 6'4" with the trunk of a 6'11" person, how is that due to over-consumption? While I probably could fit in a seat (never flown) with moderate/major discomfort. I am still in the 97th plus percentile for weight and height.

I assume you have no issues with accommodations for handicapped individuals. However, you still apparently feel that the wide spread discrimination of people of size is acceptable?

I find it funny that you think my health problems are solely my fault. My back issues are the direct result of not being able to purchase products that accommodate my body frame at any reasonable price. How would you like to go through life slouched and bent over because everything is 6" to short? Would you recommend I have my legs amputated? Don't take this as a complaint, I am use to it and it is life. However, it is pretty ignorant to say that I have a choice in being so large.

I feel the public should absorb some of the expense for people of size needing the extra accommodations such as flights. Your savings are a direct result of discrimination against people of size. Our taxes/money pay for services, products, and buildings that are not designed to be utilized by us, comfortably. Therefore, some of the added costs of unusual circumstances such as flights by the "1%" (as you said) should be bore by the other "99%". It is my opinion that airlines should be required to upgrade people of size to business or first class with only a surcharge for extra fuel. They should be doing this before upgrading repeat customers for free. Lastly, I will say if someone is too large for a single first class seat they should not be flying, or they should have to pay for a second seat.

AaronSheffield

02-20-2010, 08:30 PM

Obviously you do not understand how percentiles work. If the seats are created for the 85th percentile, that means 15% of the population are larger than the seats were designed for, not 1%.

A seat designed to be comfortable for someone who is both 85th percentile height and 85th percentile weight will be adequate for many people who fall outside those bounds.

Had you actually read my posts instead of simply gleaning numbers, you'd have noticed where I specifically said,

A colleague of mine is 6'1" and about 250 pounds. He fits in an airline seat just fine. It's not La-Z-Boy level comfort, but he's not by any stretch in pain or encroaching on other people's space when we fly for business. If he fits without issue despite being above the 85th percentile in both height and weight, it's safe to assume that the 85th percentile standard is a reasonable assumption.

This was to indicate that persons above the 85th percentile can, and do, fit in airline seats without major discomfort.

I am 6'4" with the trunk of a 6'11" person, how is that due to over-consumption?

Once again, we come back to your need to actually read my posts and not merely skim them. I said that greater than normal size and weight cause the consumption of additional amounts of an airplane's two chief resources, space, and carrying capacity. I said nothing about what caused a person to be above the normative values.

I stand by what I actually wrote. I do not stand by your wholly erroneous misinterpretation.

While I probably could fit in a seat (never flown) with moderate/major discomfort. I am still in the 97th plus percentile for weight and height.

And this does not dispute anything I've actually said. A seat designed with an 85th percentile individual in mind will still accommodate individuals of higher percentiles, it's just that comfort diminishes.

The entire point of bringing the 85th percentile reference into play was to refute the claim made by another poster that airline seats were "too small for 2/3 of the population". Had you actually read and not skimmed, you'd know this.

I assume you have no issues with accommodations for handicapped individuals. However, you still apparently feel that the wide spread discrimination of people of size is acceptable?

There is accommodation, you can buy a second seat. It's not discrimination if something that costs more to provide also costs more to purchase.

I find it funny that you think my health problems are solely my fault. My back issues are the direct result of not being able to purchase products that accommodate my body frame at any reasonable price. How would you like to go through life slouched and bent over because everything is 6" to short? Would you recommend I have my legs amputated? Don't take this as a complaint, I am use to it and it is life. However, it is pretty ignorant to say that I have a choice in being so large.

Please see my previous response to firebee. I'm not in the business of defending things I have neither said nor supported.

I feel the public should absorb some of the expense for people of size needing the extra accommodations such as flights. Your savings are a direct result of discrimination against people of size.

Again, it is NOT discrimination if a service which costs more to provide is sold for more money.

Our taxes/money pay for services, products, and buildings that are not designed to be utilized by us, comfortably. Therefore, some of the added costs of unusual circumstances such as flights by the "1%" (as you said) should be bore by the other "99%".

Where does it end? Should everything be designed to accommodate people like Robert Waldow (8'11" tall) just because he "might" use it someday? What about the inconvenience that would cause to the vast majority of the population? And what about people like He Pingping (2'5" tall)? They exist too. How do you reconcile designing something to accommodate both ends of the distribution?

Is it inconvenient for people who fall outside the norm? Yes. But the cold, hard reality is that it is not, and never will be, cost effective to design mass-market products around statistical outliers. It's a recipe for failure and fiscal inefficiencies.

It is my opinion that airlines should be required to upgrade people of size to business or first class with only a surcharge for extra fuel.

As long as the person enjoys none of the other perks of 1st class (e.g. cannot use the 1st class bathroom, does not get free alcoholic drinks, does not get a free meal, no pre-take-off drink, no blanket, no pillow etc), then this would be reasonable as a voluntary policy. If the upgrade includes the additional perks, it is only fair that they have to pay the full 1st class fare.

Also, it should require notification from a medical professional presented at least a week prior to the flight as it is not reasonable to expect airlines to move paying passengers to accommodate a last-minute request.

They should be doing this before upgrading repeat customers for free.

Assuming that none of the other 1st class perks are also given out and the other criteria I mentioned are met, it seems reasonable as a voluntary policy.

Lastly, I will say if someone is too large for a single first class seat they should not be flying, or they should have to pay for a second seat.

So, basically, you have limits as well and beyond them it is OK for you to engage in the sort of behaviour that you call "discrimination" when others do it. Interesting, but unsurprising.

jm123

02-21-2010, 03:27 AM

Is it inconvenient for people who fall outside the norm? Yes. But the cold, hard reality is that it is not, and never will be, cost effective to design mass-market products around statistical outliers. It's a recipe for failure and fiscal inefficiencies.

As long as the person enjoys none of the other perks of 1st class (e.g. cannot use the 1st class bathroom, does not get free alcoholic drinks, does not get a free meal, no pre-take-off drink, no blanket, no pillow etc), then this would be reasonable as a voluntary policy. If the upgrade includes the additional perks, it is only fair that they have to pay the full 1st class fare.

Also, it should require notification from a medical professional presented at least a week prior to the flight as it is not reasonable to expect airlines to move paying passengers to accommodate a last-minute request.

Assuming that none of the other 1st class perks are also given out and the other criteria I mentioned are met, it seems reasonable as a voluntary policy.

So, basically, you have limits as well and beyond them it is OK for you to engage in the sort of behaviour that you call "discrimination" when others do it. Interesting, but unsurprising.

Well the cold hard reality is that people of size do exist. They pay taxes for services, and have a right to expect those services to serve them. It does not matter that the government/companies decides to cut a corner, to save a dollar. Those services should be available to anyone within reasonable limits. Those are the current laws for employer of disabled individuals, and those should be the laws for the airlines*, and the government. What is logical is logical. Your argument boils down to the fact that you feel normal people should not subsidize people of size since it would be unfair; yet people of size should subsidize everyone else, since they cannot use the services they are taxed for.:speechless: That is illogical from any view.

It is unsurprising that you would draw the conclusions you have. A reasonable accommodation is different than a person requiring double the standard individuals space. However, I understand an apparent lack of knowledge on basic discrimination laws is to be expected, and will not discriminate against anyone for it.

*The fact is the airlines have benefited from government money, research, tax credits, FAA, and bailouts. They lost the privilege of saying they were "private" companies at the point when they started business.

phej

02-21-2010, 07:59 AM

[..]Those services should be available to anyone within reasonable limits.[..]

Yes, according to AS, the airlines design coach for 85% of the population: how is that unreasonable? A "normal" fit would be if they designed for 50% of the population (assuming that the median == the average) and the seating would be even smaller.

[The] argument boils down to the fact that you feel normal people should not subsidize people of size since it would be unfair; yet people of size should subsidize everyone else, since they cannot use the services they are taxed for.

How is this different from, for example, a progressive tax structure or having young healthy individuals in a medical insurance pool? Many individuals subsidize other individuals for many things. It happens, especially where mass production is involved because of the high non-recurring costs (e.g. a 757 costs 65-80 million per unit. the development costs for the 787 are in the hundreds of millions.) With the same argument structure, I could claim that southpaws are subsidizing northpaws: I don't see an uprising of lefties.

Remember, a plane ride is not an entitlement (nor government service); it's a luxury item, so there are no "rights" to complain about. It's a business, so you vote with your dollars.

jm123

02-21-2010, 11:39 AM

Remember, a plane ride is not an entitlement (nor government service); it's a luxury item, so there are no "rights" to complain about. It's a business, so you vote with your dollars.

The FAA costs 14.6 billion dollars per year to operate. Homeland security spends billions of dollars every year on airport security most likely in the neighborhood 15-20 billion (could not find the actual percent of their 50 billion dollar budget). Most of the developments in aerospace have come from military spending which is in the trillions. I am not sure how you think people do not have a right to fly? The government probably spends the same amount on foods stamps (about 35-40 billion annually), as they do keeping the air safe. At a cost of 30+ billion annually I would say that those "businesses" should follow federal discrimination laws for employers, and thus make reasonable accommodations for passengers of size.

By the way, last time I had heard, most of the airlines do make accommodations if possible for passengers of size. However, my feeling is that since flying costs as much as an entitlement program that a lot of people complain about; the airlines should be forced to maintain a much higher standard.

How is this different from, for example, a progressive tax structure or having young healthy individuals in a medical insurance pool?

This is pretty easy to explain.The young healthy individual still has 100% access to their benefits. The same can be said for a progressive tax structure. The wealthy have the ability to qualify for any of the entitlement programs if they meet the income/asset qualifications in the future. Also, many people utilize estate laws, and business laws to circumvent bankruptcy laws and remain wealthy after going bankrupt.

By the way I was not the one complaining about the subsidization of flying. Aaron's original argument was that it is not right for average people to be forced to subsidize people of size, but he felt it was ok that they were subsidizing him.

Night Runner

02-21-2010, 01:38 PM

The FAA costs 14.6 billion dollars per year to operate. Homeland security spends billions of dollars every year on airport security most likely in the neighborhood 15-20 billion (could not find the actual percent of their 50 billion dollar budget). [...] At a cost of 30+ billion annually I would say that those "businesses" should follow federal discrimination laws for employers, and thus make reasonable accommodations for passengers of size.
Using the same logic, you can demand every business in the United States to accommodate everybody, from 2'6" people to 7-foot-tall giants. Why? Because the business is located in the United States, which is protected by the U.S. military, which spends countless billions of dollars to do so. Like others have said before, air travel is not a right, it's a privilege. If and when the government takes over the industry entirely or starts its own airline, your arguments will be valid. Until then, a business can impost their rules in a reasonable way. (And the 85th percentile rule seems more than reasonable.)

Grimstad stated this far better and more laconically:
If I go into a restaurant for a meal, I have a reasonable expectation that I will have a table to myself.
If I take public transit I have no expectation of getting a seat at all.
If I pay a couple hundred dollars or more for an airline seat, I have a reasonable expectation of a seat to myself.
If you are going to “overflow” into my space then you should pay for a percentage of my space.

jm123

02-21-2010, 01:56 PM

Using the same logic, you can demand every business in the United States to accommodate everybody, from 2'6" people to 7-foot-tall giants. Why? Because the business is located in the United States, which is protected by the U.S. military, which spends countless billions of dollars to do so. :

Faulty logic:confused:. The FAA monitors and controls every single flight that a commercial airline in the US makes. Now if the military monitored and watched every single business in the US, your argument might hold water, but..... The government also spends money to have security personal directly located at the place they execute their business, and even on individual flights. So yes, if the military placed armed guards at a business, that business should be expected to make reasonable accommodations for anyone.

In addition it would appear you have a complete misunderstanding of discrimination laws. Please tell me how upgrading people of size to the first larger EMPTY seat available is an unreasonable burden on the airline. The laws basically dictate businesses must make reasonable accommodations, and not EXTRAORDINARY accommodations. Upgrading someone to a larger empty seat, and imposing a fuel surcharge is not an undue burden on the airline. It would just make narrow minded individuals jealous, over the "special" treatment people of size would get. Cry me a river.

Night Runner

02-21-2010, 02:25 PM

Faulty logic:confused:. The FAA monitors and controls every single flight that a commercial airline in the US makes. Now if the military monitored and watched every single business in the US, your argument might hold water, but..... The government also spends money to have security personal directly located at the place they execute their business, and even on individual flights. So yes, if the military placed armed guards at a business, that business should be expected to make reasonable accommodations for anyone.
Ah, but there are many other government agencies that facilitate and regulate business in other industries. In a typical restaurant, the quality of food ingredients is monitored (at least in theory, hopefully) by the FDA. The overall quality of service is indirectly monitored by the BBB. Various other agencies conduct health and safety inspections. Every business deals with a variety of alphabet agencies one way or the other.

Please tell me how upgrading people of size to the first larger EMPTY seat available is an unreasonable burden on the airline. The laws basically dictate businesses must make reasonable accommodations, and not EXTRAORDINARY accommodations. Upgrading someone to a larger empty seat, and imposing a fuel surcharge is not an undue burden on the airline.
from the article:
"when he [Kevin Smith] decided to fly standby on an earlier flight, only one seat remained. Although he had been seated, he was asked to leave." (Emphasis added.)
There were three options:

leave him where he was and make his neighbor suffer because of Kevin Smith's body rolling over into his seat

throw out a random passenger so Mr.Smith would get a second seat

throw Mr.Smith out

The third option seems to make the most sense.

It would just make narrow minded individuals jealous, over the "special" treatment people of size would get. Cry me a river.
Just because I want what I paid for, and I don't want other people's body parts in my space, does not make me narrow-minded. Nor is it jealousy. It's quite simple, really - if I go to a restaurant and make a table reservation in advance, I don't want anybody else sitting at my table.

jm123

02-21-2010, 03:15 PM

Night Runner, those agencies are not even close to the FAA and Homeland Security. Maintaining a safe air zone is a major public concern. The airlines benefit from that concern in ways other businesses will never experience, and in return they ARE among the most regulated businesses in the US.

Also, I completely agree with you that your space should not be encroached upon. I am not advocating that airlines should make unreasonable adjustments. I think the person of size should have to wait for that "free" upgrade if they cannot afford it, or buy two seats as Mr. Smith does. If that means they are on standby for a few days so be it. My issue is that if there is an open seat, the airlines should be required to accommodate people of size.

Night Runner

02-21-2010, 03:19 PM

My issue is that if there is an open seat, the airlines should be required to accommodate people of size.
Woot. This means we agree that the airline was correct in its decision to throw out Mr.Smith, since there were no open seats available.

jm123

02-21-2010, 04:04 PM

Woot. This means we agree that the airline was correct in its decision to throw out Mr.Smith, since there were no open seats available.

That would be correct, if he in-fact was too large for the seat.

I do not feel that a person of size has rights that are greater than anyone else's. I feel that they should be the ones making the scheduling compromises, while the airlines should have to make class upgrade compromises, at a heavily discounted rate. Essentially just a fuel surcharge for the extra weight and services the charge would honestly add up to less than $100 dollars on most flights. This would mean most people of size would have to fly on stand-by, or purchase two seats. Pretty simple, eh?

Megalomania

02-21-2010, 09:19 PM

If people don't fit into airline seats, it's not their fault. It's the airline's. There would not be a problem with persons of size "spilling over" if the 3-seat rows became 2-seat rows with realistically-sized, comfortable seats.

My husband is a man of size. I have, let's say, limited patience for fat-shaming, fat-blaming, etc etc. There are different reasons why people are overweight, it is NOT simple to fix, and basic courtesy in public spaces means making sure there are seats/spaces that EVERYONE can fit into.

As plotthickens' links say--we do not understand why some people are obese. So we're blaming THEM, just like we used to blame people with depression, bipolarity, schizophrenia, tuberculosis, and everything else we didn't understand.

One day, when we do at last understand the medical causes of obesity, we will look back on our history of fat-blaming and be very ashamed.

You're suggesting we make special seats for the 500 pound man on TLC? I think that's a tad unreasonable. I would also argue that being obese is simple to fix if you don't have a medical problem. I lost 30 pounds like it was nothing just by realizing I don't need to eat when I'm not hungry and by running. It's not complex. You eat less calories than you burn and you lose weight. No fancy diets. It wasn't some immense struggle to lose weight either. The pounds fell off rather easily. I'm not trying to say it is that simple for everyone, but I find it hard to believe that it is extremely difficult for an obese person who has no medical conditions to lose weight.

AaronSheffield

02-21-2010, 11:25 PM

My issue is that if there is an open seat, the airlines should be required to accommodate people of size.

Then you have no issue, because airlines already do precisely that. Though it does raise the question of why you're so upset about the fact that airlines already do what you suggest they should.

jm123

02-22-2010, 01:25 AM

Then you have no issue, because airlines already do precisely that. Though it does raise the question of why you're so upset about the fact that airlines already do what you suggest they should.

I am not upset, I just found your logical inconsistencies to be annoying. As to why I am advocating extra regulation it would be because of this To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Airlines are attempting to push the boundaries of discrimination. They are forcing people to purchase two seats prior to flying, instead of allowing them to fly on standby. All I am advocating is that the government step in and make a regulation, since the airlines are already heavily regulated to begin with.

However, since I answered your question, I have one for you. Why are you so upset, at the thought of making reasonable accommodations for people of size?

alphawolf

02-22-2010, 04:39 AM

The politics of fat? Surely not political correctness from INTJs. Fat people are not "people of size", they are "fat people".

Pandemonium

02-22-2010, 05:37 AM

Wait a minute! I have a B.M.I. of 17.5 I should be able to pay less because I take up less space. Hell, a large person and I can share two seat, no problem at all.

zibber

02-22-2010, 08:14 AM

You're suggesting we make special seats for the 500 pound man on TLC? I think that's a tad unreasonable.

What's unreasonable is you reaching for the most extreme example you can think of to attack a perfectly reasonable suggestion.

The politics of fat? Surely not political correctness from INTJs. Fat people are not "people of size", they are "fat people".

There is a middle ground between being "politically correct" and being an (intentionally) abrasive Jakoff Smirnoff.

yoginimama

02-22-2010, 08:15 AM

The politics of fat? Surely not political correctness from INTJs. Fat people are not "people of size", they are "fat people".

You call it political correctness, I call it courtesy.

Wait a minute! I have a B.M.I. of 17.5 I should be able to pay less because I take up less space. Hell, a large person and I can share two seat, no problem at all.

Yeah! And how about kids? Why don't airlines give kids between 4'-5' and 40-100 pounds a break? They don't take up a whole seat--why should their parents pay for one?

There should be bulk discounts for double-seat purchases. People of any size could ensure their comfort and personal space by buying a double seat for the price of one and a half.

The truth is, people (perceive that they) NEED to fly. Right now, airlines are the only way to do it, so we play by the rules. But if we had the individual flying cars that people in the 1930s thought we'd have by the year 2000, things would be a whole lot different.

phej

02-22-2010, 08:24 AM

There should be bulk discounts for double-seat purchases. People of any size could ensure their comfort and personal space by buying a double seat for the price of one and a half.

Southwest will refund the cost of the extra seat if the flight isn't fully booked.

The truth is, people (perceive that they) NEED to fly.

The perception of a need is not equivalent to an actual need.

Megalomania

02-22-2010, 08:44 AM

What's unreasonable is you reaching for the most extreme example you can think of to attack a perfectly reasonable suggestion.

There is a middle ground between being "politically correct" and being an (intentionally) abrasive Jakoff Smirnoff.

Right, because a 500 pound man doesn't fall under the category of everyone.

alphawolf

02-22-2010, 10:39 AM

Right, because a 500 pound man doesn't fall under the category of everyone.

99 times out of 100, obesity is a moral failure. Thyroid disease is extremely rare.

Seriously

02-22-2010, 10:42 AM

A moral failure? Seriously? :rolleyes:

Megalomania

02-22-2010, 10:54 AM

99 times out of 100, obesity is a moral failure. Thyroid disease is extremely rare.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a moral failure (unless you want to call it gluttony) - perhaps a lack of will power. I understand how people get stuck eating exorbitant amounts of food everyday because they are used to it. The more you do it the harder it gets to stop, but will power works wonders. I would also add that thyroid disease isn't the only thing that can cause obesity. Certain medications can make you gain weight as well.

alphawolf

02-22-2010, 11:07 AM

I would also add that thyroid disease isn't the only thing that can cause obesity. Certain medications can make you gain weight as well.

I agree, but these are the corner cases representing less than 5% (being very generous here) of the obese population. ~60% of the USA population is clinically overweight, and ~25% of the USA population is clinically obese.

Seriously

02-22-2010, 12:08 PM

Wonders where the pregnant women would fit (pun intended) in the equation. Oh wait maybe that falls under moral failure fatatude.

alphawolf

02-22-2010, 12:16 PM

Wonders where the pregnant women would fit (pun intended) in the equation. Oh wait maybe that falls under moral failure fatatude.

Pregnant women are very beautiful. However, being pregnant is not an excuse to gain 97 lbs.

Seriously

02-22-2010, 12:18 PM

Ah so how much weight is a pregnant woman allowed to gain before she is eligible to be called a fatty and shoved off the plane?

AaronSheffield

02-22-2010, 12:29 PM

I am not upset, I just found your logical inconsistencies to be annoying. As to why I am advocating extra regulation it would be because of this To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Which "inconsistencies" would these be? You haven't listed a single one which wasn't attributable to misunderstanding on your part.

jm123

02-22-2010, 12:40 PM

By clinical definition (BMI) I am morbidly obese. If you ever saw me you would think twice of saying that to me. Just as every health-care worker that has seen me has said to me. I am a little over weight according to body fat percentage; the BMI charts are made for average people. I am not even close to the "average" 6'4" person, I wear 30-32" inseam in pants for your reference.

Also it is a substantially more than 1% of the population that has medical reasons to be obese. However, if your point is that America is getting fatter, and no one wants to take responsibility for it. I would agree.

---------- Post added 02-22-2010 at 02:41 PM ----------

Which "inconsistencies" would these be? You haven't listed a single one which wasn't attributable to misunderstanding on your part.

If you had not just skimmed my posts, and actually responded to them, you would know which ones.

Megalomania

02-22-2010, 12:59 PM

By clinical definition (BMI) I am morbidly obese. If you ever saw me you would think twice of saying that to me. Just as every health-care worker that has seen me has said to me. I am a little over weight according to body fat percentage; the BMI charts are made for average people. I am not even close to the "average" 6'4" person, I wear 30-32" inseam in pants for your reference.
---------- Post added 02-22-2010 at 02:41 PM ----------

You do realize that the criteria used for BMI in a doctor's office is just an vague indicator of your body fat percentage. The person using a BMI should make it clear that it doesn't apply to certain individuals such as yourself, whom I assume lifts weights. If you want your real BMI you need to go through more vigorous testing. So by clinical definition you are not obese.

AaronSheffield

02-22-2010, 01:37 PM

If you had not just skimmed my posts, and actually responded to them, you would know which ones.

Cute. Devoid of any logic and clearly indicative that you don't have a legitimate response, but cute.

---------- Post added 02-22-2010 at 12:46 PM ----------

However, since I answered your question, I have one for you. Why are you so upset, at the thought of making reasonable accommodations for people of size?

Please show one post where I have said anything to support this assertion.

Here, I'll get you started on what I have said.

Regarding no-cost upgrades for individuals who fall outside the normative values for size (emphasis added):

Assuming that none of the other 1st class perks are also given out and the other criteria I mentioned are met, it seems reasonable as a voluntary policy.

Furthermore, I support the current policy for most (possibly all) airlines, which is to only charge for the second seat if the flight is full. If there is an open seat, they refund the cost of the larger individual's second seat.

Now, I do have a problem with almost anything government-mandated, which explains why I think such policies should be voluntary, but that is unrelated to the issue at hand and represents a core worldview differentiation that would be substantially off-topic for the current thread and will therefore be avoided here.

Essentially, you have entered parrot mode, where, having no remaining legitimate arguments, you are seeking cute points by reflecting statements back to me despite having no logical basis for doing so.

jm123

02-22-2010, 01:53 PM

You do realize that the criteria used for BMI in a doctor's office is just an vague indicator of your body fat percentage. The person using a BMI should make it clear that it doesn't apply to certain individuals such as yourself, whom I assume lifts weights. If you want your real BMI you need to go through more vigorous testing. So by clinical definition you are not obese.

That would be ideal. However, I am still held to BMI for life insurance purposes. BMI is currently the de facto standard for obesity in almost all instances, wrongfully so. Also, yes I used to lift weights until some medical issues forced me to stop many years ago. I now am getting those issues under control, and will pick back up on my old exercise patterns shortly. Yet I was only once within my "appropriate" weight by BMI of 210lbs, when I worked out; I was right around 6-8% body fat. Currently I am 290lbs and 21-23%. By the way to look at me you would not call me a body builder, you would just say I was a big guy.

Megalomania

02-22-2010, 06:32 PM

That would be ideal. However, I am still held to BMI for life insurance purposes. BMI is currently the de facto standard for obesity in almost all instances, wrongfully so. Also, yes I used to lift weights until some medical issues forced me to stop many years ago. I now am getting those issues under control, and will pick back up on my old exercise patterns shortly. Yet I was only once within my "appropriate" weight by BMI of 210lbs, when I worked out; I was right around 6-8% body fat. Currently I am 290lbs and 21-23%. By the way to look at me you would not call me a body builder, you would just say I was a big guy.

I don't see how your insurance company could reasonably charge you more for being obese if you showed them that your body fat percentage wasn't in the obese range. Then again I know absolutely nothing about life insurance.

Wittshell

02-25-2010, 05:04 PM

freeeekyyy

02-25-2010, 05:34 PM

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I laughed while reading this article. As a European I wonder if this is a common subject to talk about in the US? ;)

Just so you know, most western european countries are also very high on the list of fattest countries on the planet. Germany for instance, while it may not match the US, is pretty close.

Wittshell

02-26-2010, 05:52 AM

Just so you know, most western european countries are also very high on the list of fattest countries on the planet. Germany for instance, while it may not match the US, is pretty close.

I just thought it was a funny coincidence that while this thread was topical the biggest newspaper in the US had an article about it. ;)

Hamburglar

02-26-2010, 11:12 AM

I'm 6'4, long legged. I have an impossible time sitting in airplane seats, and I'm sure it's worse for people who are taller. Using your logic I should have to buy the seat in front of me to prevent the inconvenience of my knees jamming into their back. This is preposterous. As far as insurance goes. Any activity carries risk. If we were concerned about overweight people we would be discussing reforming the scope of FDA regulations on unhealthy foods which have clearly triggered the rise in obesity. But that kills the economy and "freedom"- so that will never happen. So in the mean time lets have a distracting conversation that blames fat people for being overweight instead of the society they live in. And let's not forget there are different kinds of fat:
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People seem to say that it's a moral (internal) problem, but it seems like an external problem to me.

elsdfr

02-26-2010, 11:32 AM

These days there needs to be "fat section" on planes. Oh how un PC... well don't be hogging my arm space with your "love handles".

Apparently some people are naturally fat. Generally I think its a bunch of hippy nonsense and they should learn some self control.

pasdriz

02-26-2010, 11:40 AM

Agreed. Ahh, the clash between politically correct and reality/fairness. Its creates an illusion for the fat man and justifies their existence. Did not mean any harm with that statement (ive been fat on and off for years). My mind just churns like a broken blender and this is where I come to spew my half ass milkshakes. Cheers

plotthickens

02-26-2010, 12:07 PM

And those stupid bastards that drink themselves into liver failure. We shouldn't have to pay for health care costs for lung cancer patients that smoked, either. They create an illusion for the cancer patient and justify their existence.

elsdfr

02-26-2010, 12:27 PM

Since when do those in the US pay for other peoples health care? If so then what was the recent kerfuffle about?

yoginimama

02-26-2010, 12:34 PM

Since when do those in the US pay for other peoples health care? If so then what was the recent kerfuffle about?

That's how insurance works. A pool of employers and individuals pay in to create general funds from which the insurance company draws as needed.

The kerfuffle was about whether that system would continue to be privately managed or would instead become publicly managed, and, if so, to what extent, and how many additional people would be covered.

elsdfr

02-26-2010, 10:52 PM

Not sure how many do but I see BMI is often factored in calculating insurance premiums, so I don't see how we are paying for it in that respect.

Those alcoholics and druggies that end up in hospital have probably paid their fair share in the form of cigarette and alcohol taxes. Where I live the Government does offer health care to these people. I'm happy to assume their consumption of these products could be paying for their eventual treatment.

I think obesity is a form of visual pollution. I'm not compensated for that.

jm123

02-26-2010, 11:07 PM

Cute. Devoid of any logic and clearly indicative that you don't have a legitimate response, but cute.

---------- Post added 02-22-2010 at 12:46 PM ----------

Please show one post where I have said anything to support this assertion.

Here, I'll get you started on what I have said.

Regarding no-cost upgrades for individuals who fall outside the normative values for size (emphasis added):

Furthermore, I support the current policy for most (possibly all) airlines, which is to only charge for the second seat if the flight is full. If there is an open seat, they refund the cost of the larger individual's second seat.

Now, I do have a problem with almost anything government-mandated, which explains why I think such policies should be voluntary, but that is unrelated to the issue at hand and represents a core worldview differentiation that would be substantially off-topic for the current thread and will therefore be avoided here.

Essentially, you have entered parrot mode, where, having no remaining legitimate arguments, you are seeking cute points by reflecting statements back to me despite having no logical basis for doing so.

I will remind you that you said that obese people should have to pay three times, prior to myself entering this thread. Then you changed positions; to it being ok for them not to pay. You also discussed off-topic items such as child seats, and FAA regulations. However, now you are worried about going "off topic".

So to end this, I cannot discuss something with someone who substantially alters their position, and than conveniently forgets their original position. Then decides that some fringe discussions are ok, but not ones that conflict with their moral views. So, don't worry I am done parroting your snide, cute, and devoid of logic comments back at you. You have proven to be illogical by going off topic and then refusing to discuss something that is completely relevant to this discussion. The thread is called "The politics of fat" and public policy, and regulations would fall under that. However, child seats in airplanes are not really material to that discussion, now are they?

Elfrun

02-27-2010, 12:14 AM

I would also argue that being obese is simple to fix if you don't have a medical problem. I lost 30 pounds like it was nothing just by realizing I don't need to eat when I'm not hungry and by running. It's not complex. You eat less calories than you burn and you lose weight. No fancy diets. It wasn't some immense struggle to lose weight either. The pounds fell off rather easily. I'm not trying to say it is that simple for everyone, but I find it hard to believe that it is extremely difficult for an obese person who has no medical conditions to lose weight.

You are making the mistake of thinking your experience means you have insight into weight problems, that you somehow understand why other people are obese and unable to 'fix' themselves. Yes there are simple tips people can do that may help them loose weight however there is no one-size-fits-all healthy approach to weight loss, our bodies are different, our makeup is different, a specific lifestyle may be fantastic for one person but terrible for another. Your experience appears to mean you judge everyone by your personal standards now, they don't have your body or makeup.

I don't support removing personal responsibility however the social stigma that is attached to weight loss is that someone who is overweight must be lazy and eat unhealthy, I've met plenty of people for whom that categorisation would be unfair and wrong.

Frankly I'd rather not sit next to anyone on a plane, the seats are so small that even an average sized guy will likely encroach on my space unless he makes an effort not too. I just don't have an expectation that I will be comfortable on a plane, the expectation I have is that I'll get from destination A to destination B in one piece.

Mogura

03-23-2010, 06:33 PM

Jesus: "Supersize Me!"

The food portions depicted in paintings of the Last Supper have grown larger - in line with our own super-sizing of meals, say obesity experts.

The Cornell University team studied 52 of the most famous paintings of the Biblical scene over the millennium and scrutinised the size of the feast.

They found the main courses, bread and plates put before Jesus and his disciples have progressively grown by up to two-thirds.

This, they say, is art imitating life.

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Next thing you know, Jesus will be protesting having to purchase 2 airline seats...

Warrior

03-23-2010, 06:38 PM

I saw another article about this earlier today. Somewhat amusing. I'm not sure it really means as much as some are reading into it.

Ray9

04-24-2010, 06:23 PM

There is more food available in the world today than at any time in recorded history. Favorable climate, giant factory farms and ultra modern agricultural technology have created a perfect storm of plenty for America as well as the rest of the world. It seems almost unimaginable that just a few generations ago in the United states jobless men drifted from state to state looking for any work, soup kitchens were a fixture in most large cities and the hopeless poverty of the dust bowl was king. Well, that reality exists today only in history books read by obese middle school students already in the advanced stages of heart disease from chronic overeating and lack of excercise. The parents of these children spend their home time eating hot buttered popcorn, watching television and playing video games. It's little wonder that the American healthcare system is broken because it's literally overrun with fat, lazy slobs.

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Now our government is attacking the healthcare issue by forcing healthy, responsible people to foot the bill for the sloth of their portly fellow citizens. This is a dangerous practice and it will lead to the destruction of our constitution as forcing one citizen to pay for the health practices of another citizen is already unconstitutional. Our constitution will have to be bent and twisted into something unrecognizable to make this work.

Yhor

04-24-2010, 07:16 PM

Have any of you watched Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC?
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I think it's a great idea, even though it goes against a few of my principles regarding freedom. I don't think children have the right to choose what they eat in regards to nutritional value and this TV show gives us plenty of reasons why. I'm on the fence with how parents should be treated for feeding garbage to their kids, although I really wish they'd just use some goddamned common sense.

Edit: And if any of you are Americans with kids in the public school system, I really hope you watch this show, because it's an eye opener at what kids are eating in public schools.

Trevor Black

04-24-2010, 07:21 PM

Okie dokie. I'll buy two tickets for seats if you can prove that being fat is bad for your health. Just one study that's not contradicted by another, from an unbiased source. I'll wait.

He's saying pay the cost of being fat. Who cares for your health. If you don't care for it, I certainly could give less than a rat's ass about it. The point is, if you're fat, pay the extra cost. Whether healthily fat or unhealthily fat, fat. It has nothing to do with your health as a fat person, it has to do with people being able to sit down without a huge mass next to them crushing their bones. This is the 'politics and current events' subforum, not the 'science and health' one.

LoquaciousNinja

04-25-2010, 12:00 AM

I concur with AaronSheffield. It's perfectly reasonable to request that people who consume more resources pay for that extra consumption. Despite any federal support or regulations airlines receive, they are still private businesses. They have the right to charge customers for services rendered and resources consumed. And frankly, in my opinion, it's up to the airline to discern when that is necessary. For the most part, as evidenced by earlier mentions of airline policies, they will try to be accommodating, but they don't have to be. I very much doubt airlines want to piss off their customers more than they have to, but business is business, and the bottom line is fiscal. A person that weighs more and takes up more space is ultimately more expensive to transport, and therefore should absorb the extra cost as businesses are not, as was mentioned, charities.

As for obesity, I'm with the boat with the folks saying it's voluntary and the person in question is responsible for their own body. Sure, there are other pressuring factors, and of course I'm not referring to the few who have genuine medical difficulties with controlling their weight, but the facts have been pointed out. If the daily intake of calories exceeds the daily output of energy, the body puts on weight. If the daily intake of calories is less than the daily output of energy, the body loses weight. If the two are equal, there is no loss or gain. It's a matter of math, planning, and implementation. To imply that one's fat is someone else's problem is quite selfish and self-aggrandizing.

And those stupid bastards that drink themselves into liver failure. We shouldn't have to pay for health care costs for lung cancer patients that smoked, either. They create an illusion for the cancer patient and justify their existence.

I would just like to point out that, contrary to your previous position of stating that obesity is not precisely voluntary, in using a sarcastic remark to demolish an unsupported opinion, you have just linked obesity to voluntary damaging behaviors. This would seem to indicate that you are saying the causes of obesity are no different in nature than the well-known and documented health risks of smoking and alcoholism. As I doubt there are many cases of involuntary lifelong smoking and drinking (the difficulties of addiction are not the issue here; I'm referring to the voluntary inception of the habits), one could infer from this that you view the end result of whatever you believe the causes of obesity to be as preventable by choice.

blueback

04-25-2010, 12:35 AM

I'm not sure I buy the idea that fat people have the right to take up space they didn't pay for just because the culture they live in made them fat.

If I buy an airline seat I'm already expecting it to be only adequately comfortable. But if the space I paid for is then encroached upon by someone else, I have every right to refuse to allow them to take up my space. I paid for that space, they didn't.

Claiming that a fat person has a right to spill over into someone else's seat is like claiming a person who talks a lot has a right to use up someone else's phone minutes. If you paid for a certain amount of space, you're going to have to make due with that amount of space. If you can't fit into a space of 1 unit because you need 1.1 units of space, you still have to pay for 2 units. Any exception granted by the person who owns the adjacent 1 unit is purely up to the softness of their heart, and is in no way enforceable.

And I don't think this applies only to people with too much body fat. If you have too much of anything you're in the same boat. Too tall? Tough. Beg someone to make you more comfortable or buy more space. If you feel put-upon, you can have a conversation with a midget and compare estimates of how much you think the world owes you. I mean, if you can't fit into a new car the car salesman doesn't have to give you a bigger car for the same price. If you're a body builder with no fat, but you take up two seats with your shoulders, you get to buy two seats just like the fat people.

Just because you really really want to world to be more accomodating for free doesn't mean it has to be. If you're an outlyer, your life is going to be different. That's just the way the world works. You can probably get through most situations with nothing more than empathy, but sometimes you're going to have to pay.

LaoTzu

04-25-2010, 12:38 AM

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Anyone see some correlation between this graph and the graph that Hamburglar posted?

You can say that we produce more food, and so there is more food consumption; but I think that is ignoring some pretty major changes in how food is produced/made.

Processed Foods are simply higher in calorie count. It's not necessarily that people are gorging...it's that foods are more rich in calories than they used to be, and lacking in other nutritious elements.

When the results of this study are coupled with earlier studies, we can clearly see the pronounced shift in the world's diet toward increased consumption of caloric sweetener and away from higher-fiber foods. Thus, we are increasingly consuming foods that provide energy but few other nutrients. (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

elsdfr

04-25-2010, 01:47 AM

People who consume more should be taxed more. They're all essentially, inefficient.

(Bluebacks 1.1 = 2 example)

blueback

04-25-2010, 02:33 AM

That's not what I was going for. I was just saying that if you're driving a truck that takes up even an inch more than one lane you are taking up two lanes. I didn't mean that we should start actively punishing fat people simply for being fat.

zibber

04-25-2010, 04:56 AM

There is more food available in the world today than at any time in recorded history. Favorable climate, giant factory farms and ultra modern agricultural technology have created a perfect storm of plenty for America as well as the rest of the world. It seems almost unimaginable that just a few generations ago in the United states jobless men drifted from state to state looking for any work, soup kitchens were a fixture in most large cities and the hopeless poverty of the dust bowl was king. Well, that reality exists today only in history books read by obese middle school students already in the advanced stages of heart disease from chronic overeating and lack of excercise. The parents of these children spend their home time eating hot buttered popcorn, watching television and playing video games. It's little wonder that the American healthcare system is broken because it's literally overrun with fat, lazy slobs.

This is painful and merciless. There is more poverty than ever and the people at the bottom, who have very little means to make ends meet each month, are forced to eat cheap fast food.

(I hope you find something interesting to copypaste in response to this.)

I think it's a great idea, even though it goes against a few of my principles regarding freedom. I don't think children have the right to choose what they eat in regards to nutritional value and this TV show gives us plenty of reasons why. I'm on the fence with how parents should be treated for feeding garbage to their kids, although I really wish they'd just use some goddamned common sense.

You are speaking from the position of someone privileged enough to be able to choose what you eat; never forget that.

yoginimama

04-25-2010, 05:50 AM

I'm not sure I buy the idea that fat people have the right to take up space they didn't pay for just because the culture they live in made them fat.

Yeahbut, as with airplane seats, they can't help what size those seats are. Why should they be financially punished for an engineering decision?

If fat people have to buy two seats, then people under 5'3" and 110 lbs should only have to buy 1/2 a seat.

elsdfr

04-25-2010, 08:25 AM

You are speaking from the position of someone privileged enough to be able to choose what you eat; never forget that.

Privileged in the fact that some people aren't capable of seeing past the marketing and ease of fast food?

Primarily I think its a lack of nutritional education, a failure of Government.

LaoTzu

04-25-2010, 08:35 AM

Privileged in the fact that some people aren't capable of seeing past the marketing and ease of fast food?

Primarily I think its a lack of nutritional education, a failure of Government.

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residents in low-income urban areas are more likely to report greater neighborhood barriers to physical activity, such as limited opportunities for daily walking or physical activity and reduced access to stores that sell healthy foods, especially large supermarkets.

Just sayin....

mormeguil

04-25-2010, 08:59 AM

I have been living on a very tight budget for the last few months and have managed to eat healthily enought...

But, I took me quite some time. Shopping for some almost overdue fruits and vegetables almost daily. Getting everything at different stores just to lower the cost. Meat and fish are almost out of the question because of cost. Lets juste say I hate a lot of tofu and other beans.

After eating these things for weeks, those cheap prepacked pizza looked damn good. So did this 1$ bag of chip, etc. etc. A few times I fell for it and pretty much only managed to keep it up since I knew that starting this summer I could start affording something better.

Ray9

04-25-2010, 10:57 AM

This is painful and merciless. There is more poverty than ever and the people at the bottom, who have very little means to make ends meet each month, are forced to eat cheap fast food.

Do you have anything to offer other than canned left wing rhetoric? First of all there is absolutely no evidence that poverty forces people to go to fast food restaurants and adopt a sedantary lifestyle. There is also no proof that only the poor are overwieight and lethargic. The healthcare issues facing this nation are deeply rooted in the culture of sloth that dominates all demographics. This along with excessive alcohol use, tobacco and drug abuse creates a doomsday scenario for our system of healthcare. Arresting healthy people for not participating in a doomed system is not the answer.

Yhor

04-25-2010, 11:05 AM

You are speaking from the position of someone privileged enough to be able to choose what you eat; never forget that.

I'm dirt poor dude. I may have grown up as privileged, but everything I have I got from working for it without any handouts. You don't know me, so don't make assumptions that you do.

My post that you quoted is about American school systems and the amount of garbage that gets fed to children. That has shit to do with privilege.

Warrior

04-25-2010, 11:09 AM

This is painful and merciless. There is more poverty than ever and the people at the bottom, who have very little means to make ends meet each month, are forced to eat cheap fast food.

Maybe I can send my kids with some of those people at the bottom to McDonald's, because I certainly can't afford to feed them there! :)

Seriously, though, fast food isn't as cheap as it seems, despite the popularity of dollar menus and value menus. My family can eat cheaper at higher quality restaurants and cheaper still if we don't eat out.

Katarrah

04-25-2010, 11:58 AM

MUAHAHAHHA! Be proud of me! I decided to get rid of all fat on me and did it! Hey, its really easy with all the Lean Cuisine dinners an such today. Just count those calories folks and eat only 800 - 900 a day till you get the job done. Eat at 9 am, 12, 3 pm and 6pm.
110 calorie yogurts, apples, Yoplait Delights (lemon ones), heck I even ate 3 cases of Russel Stover Vanilla cream eggs this Easter and still lost the weight so don't say cant. =)

---------- Post added 04-25-2010 at 02:01 PM ----------

OH! I'd qualify for that half a seat on the airplane now. =)

LaoTzu

04-25-2010, 01:56 PM

Do you have anything to offer other than canned left wing rhetoric? First of all there is absolutely no evidence that poverty forces people to go to fast food restaurants and adopt a sedantary lifestyle. There is also no proof that only the poor are overwieight and lethargic. The healthcare issues facing this nation are deeply rooted in the culture of sloth that dominates all demographics. This along with excessive alcohol use, tobacco and drug abuse creates a doomsday scenario for our system of healthcare. Arresting healthy people for not participating in a doomed system is not the answer.

Sure.... ignore what I just posted...

Tunnel vision dude. Look it up.

Feral

04-25-2010, 02:10 PM

Yeahbut, as with airplane seats, they can't help what size those seats are. Why should they be financially punished for an engineering decision?

If fat people have to buy two seats, then people under 5'3" and 110 lbs should only have to buy 1/2 a seat.

Larger seats mean less seats, means less money per flight coming in (fewer seats=fewer passengers, means higher ticket prices to cover it.

Why should I have to pay more because people can't fit into their seats and want bigger ones? I'm a normal size, I fit in an airplane seat with plenty of room. My husband is 6", and a pretty normal 180lbs, and he also fits. Why should our ticket price go up?

---------- Post added 04-25-2010 at 01:25 PM ----------

And I don't think that obesity is caused at all by fast food, or that poor people are forced to eat fast food.

'Cause really, newsflash, fast food is expensive! Unless you live off of the dollar menu...

I don't think that can be it at all. So what's the correlation between fat people, poor people, and fast food? Laziness!

People get fast food because they either don't know how to cook (which is a poor excuse), or they're too lazy to cook.

Small breakdown (going from my own experiences here):
As a family of 3, if we go get fast food (not on the dollar menu) it is not uncommon to end up paying $15-18. You get some burgers, some fries, some drinks.

My husband and I usually make meals together. Last night we calculated our meal out to cost about $7, between the 2 of us. BBQ chicken (about $2.50 for some drumsticks), corn on the cob (like a buck?) and baked red potatoes ($3.50 a bag, only used a few). We eat out either when we're too lazy to cook or go to the store, or the very occasional craving (those KFC boneless fillets just don't take no for an answer....).

It takes a few bucks to make a delicious home-made chilli from scratch, which lasts for days in the fridge.

Something fancy? Cornish game hens are like $2, and always make it look like something you'd get for $30 a plate at a nice restaurant, and they're SO easy to cook.

So why are poor people lazy? Well, that's backwards is why.
A good deal of the time, someone is poor because they're lazy, or undriven. Yeah, sometimes bad luck plays into it, but not always.

Causa Mortis

04-25-2010, 02:25 PM

Larger seats mean less seats, means less money per flight coming in (fewer seats=fewer passengers, means higher ticket prices to cover it.

Why should I have to pay more because people can't fit into their seats and want bigger ones? I'm a normal size, I fit in an airplane seat with plenty of room. My husband is 6", and a pretty normal 180lbs, and he also fits. Why should our ticket price go up?

Right. When I was 300 pounds, airplanes were hell. At 250, it was a squeeze but not bad. At 215 its not a problem.

Feral

04-25-2010, 02:27 PM

And yes, meant 6' not 6" :P

Ray9

04-25-2010, 03:34 PM

Sure.... ignore what I just posted...

Tunnel vision dude. Look it up.

The authors conclude, “While individual-level characteristics such as income, cultural preferences, and genetic predisposition contribute to geographic disparities in weight, neighborhood-level services and structures that affect physical activity behaviors and dietary choices are emerging as important and potentially modifiable loci for public health intervention.”

This looks like opinion based journalism to me.

Sorry, I never read it the first time because my original post was moved from a new thread I started about sloth and healthcare. Because I mentioned obesity, an administrator moved it here.

---------- Post added 04-25-2010 at 05:41 PM ----------

There seems to be no end to excuses for being overweight and inactive. Too poor, too rich, too busy etc. Frankly I don't care who is fat or who is lazy. It's a free country. I want it to stay free which is why I don't want to pay for someone else's lifestyle choice.

TheLastMohican

04-25-2010, 07:16 PM

If fat people have to buy two seats, then people under 5'3" and 110 lbs should only have to buy 1/2 a seat.
I don't follow this logic. It's infeasible for airlines to deal in fractions of seats. What is the rationale here, anyway?

blueback

04-25-2010, 07:17 PM

Yeahbut, as with airplane seats, they can't help what size those seats are. Why should they be financially punished for an engineering decision?

They aren't being financially punished. No one sized or priced those seats with the intention of sticking it to the fatties. The seats are sized and priced to maximize profits for the airline. That means they should fit up to around 95% of the population. But, the point isn't how big they are or aren't, the point is that they are a certain size.

Just because someone wants to fly on an airplane for a certain price in a certain amount of space doesn't mean it has to be provided to them on their terms. If a person can't fit into the space they paid for, they have to buy more space. If the options are limited they still have to pick from the available options.

If fat people have to buy two seats, then people under 5'3" and 110 lbs should only have to buy 1/2 a seat.

If the airlines come up with a 1/2 seat option then that is what they should do. Or fatties could buy 1.5 seats. The situation would be more flexible. But, until that happens, people have to pay for the space they need.

It's a free country. I want it to stay free which is why I don't want to pay for someone else's lifestyle choice.

I agree. But how can we split the check?

If a person gets lung cancer, and smoked cigarettes their whole life, did the smoking cause the lung cancer? Not always. If a person smoked for a decade, but then never smoked again, and gets lung cancer, should their treatment be prorated based on the percentage of their life they smoked? If a person gets fat off of Big Macs should they have to pay for more of their diabetes treatment than a person who got fat off of red beans and rice? Should a person who regularly ate steak have to pay for more of their bypass than a person who only ate veggies, but never exercised?

How can we turn life style choices into a simple cost? How can it be reduced to a single number?

mormeguil

04-25-2010, 07:51 PM

When people where talking about fast food I mostly had in mind the pre-packed things you see at supermarket and other snakcs. Not the fast food restaurent themselves.

Also, the cheapes things to eats are carbs. These don't have a lot of nutritives values. Finally, in winter the cost of vegetables rise quite a bite.

My husband and I usually make meals together. Last night we calculated our meal out to cost about $7, between the 2 of us. BBQ chicken (about $2.50 for some drumsticks), corn on the cob (like a buck?) and baked red potatoes ($3.50 a bag, only used a few).

What you describe as two majors problem. First it's not really bad, but definetly not that healty. No greens vegetables, replaced them by corn a high sugar and fibers veggie. Also, 3,50$ for a meal is more then I can afford right now. Being poor means about 50$ a week per person per meals. So the meal as to average out under 2,50 per meals. It's very hard to make a nutritive and fullfilling meal this way. In those circumstance a cheap bag of potato chips can definetly fill the hunger very cheaply.

Factor in that you don't have much money for most form of entertainement and food still probably comes out as the cheapest way to "go out". It's that or turning crazy.

blueback

04-25-2010, 10:22 PM

Can you get food stamps if you're that poor?

Anywho, even when people have the money to afford choice in food they rarely pick the healthier option. For an anecdotal example, go to a convenience store and watch what people buy. For an even better example, watch what people buy with food stamps.

Marcus Septim

04-25-2010, 10:23 PM

All Hail Causa Mortis the Bane of Fat people !!! The Doom of the Obese

The 28-31% of the adult population in North America is obese,do you realize what would happen if they all jumped up and down at the same time?

They might loose a bit off a fucking weight!!

plotthickens

04-25-2010, 11:01 PM

The 28-31% of the adult population in North America is obese,do you realize what would happen if they all jumped up and down at the same time?

They might loose a bit off a fucking weight!!

The 1 out of every 15 women on Earth suffering and dying from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome's pain and cancer thank you for your understanding, respect, and humanity.

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Marcus Septim

04-25-2010, 11:30 PM

Are you suffering from that?If the reason a person is fat its hormone caused,its excused,can't help it
Otherwise they need to control themselves,we where never expected too eat that much,its an instinct caused by the brain,cause back when we where in the caves hunted by sabretooth tigers,we where lucky to find anything fatty,so the brain receptors perceive that as yummy
We don't have sabretooths running around people,so manage some selfcontrol about what you eat and how much,you dont have too be fitness freaks
Being overweight for no other reason,exept not being able too control your gut is unnesserary and unhealthy

As for being a big-boner,i had Orthopedics as teachers and explained to us that yeah some people do have thicker bones and some have thiner,that can range from 500 grams to a kilo no more no less
So your big-boness cant exceed that number the rest of it is fat..
Also muscles are more lean than fat...so a muscled person does not occupy the same space as an obese person weighting the same weight
Steroid users are excluded..they tend to overdo it when it comes to muscle

elsdfr

04-26-2010, 05:43 AM

I also think the parents of children who are obese should be counselled because essentially they are committing them to an early grave and if not that a lifetime of poor eating habits.

The economic cost of obese citizens is massive. People and governments are so afraid of offending what is now a large proportion of society that it's probably feeding off itself. Puns intended.

yoginimama

04-26-2010, 07:25 AM

How can we turn life style choices into a simple cost? How can it be reduced to a single number?

I don't think we can, especially since, as M. Scott Peck put it, "all symptoms are overdetermined." Being sedentary will never be the sole cause of someone's heart attack. Eating Big Macs will never be the sole cause of someone's obesity. We can weakly correlate between certain choices and certain health outcomes, but not with enough scientific rigor to justifiably pin the blame for anyone's condition on any one or two aspects of their lifestyle. Thus, any "simple cost" to be pinned on individual lifestyle choices will never really be based on anything but perception.

elsdfr

04-26-2010, 07:58 AM

The cost can be calculated. Here is a paper from a medical journal if it helps.

The cost of overweight and obesity in Australia (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

Results:

The annual total direct cost (health care and non-health care) per person increased from $1472 (95% CI, $1204–$1740) for those of normal weight to $2788 (95% CI, $2542–$3035) for the obese, however defined (by BMI, WC or both). In 2005, the total direct cost for Australians aged ≥ 30 years was $6.5 billion (95% CI, $5.8–$7.3 billion) for overweight and $14.5 billion (95% CI, $13.2–$15.7 billion) for obesity. The total excess annual direct cost due to overweight and obesity (above the cost for normal-weight individuals) was $10.7 billion. Overweight and obese individuals also received $35.6 billion (95% CI, $33.4–$38.0 billion) in government subsidies. Comparing costs by weight change since 1999–2000, those who remained obese in 2004–2005 had the highest annual total direct cost. Cost was lower in overweight or obese people who lost weight or reduced WC compared with those who progressed to becoming, or remained, obese.
Conclusion:

The total annual direct cost of overweight and obesity in Australia in 2005 was $21 billion, substantially higher than previous estimates. There is financial incentive at both individual and societal levels for overweight and obese people to lose weight and/or reduce WC.

themuzicman

04-26-2010, 08:10 AM

elsdfr

04-26-2010, 08:33 AM

Nah, smoking and obesity directly effect a persons productivity. Be it with less active working hours with smoking or with an obese person being under utilised or not able to work at all. The more citizens an economy is able to productively employ and utilise completely the better off it will be. No examples but logic surely dictates.

Aronnax

04-26-2010, 12:05 PM

themuzicman

04-26-2010, 12:10 PM

That argument only works "from a monetary POV" if you don't look at both sides of a balance sheet. Last time I checked the living contribute more to the GDP than the dead.

Actually, since these diseases tend to remove these folks from the work force more towards the end of their working days, and those who live on for another 10-15 years generally don't contribute anything, but are a considerable draw on public health dollars (via medicare) and on taxes in general (social security), and considering that a large percentage (like 80%? forget the exact number) if your health care dollars are spent in the last ten years of one's life, the contribution to the GDP is relatively small compared to the huge expense of keeping an elderly person alive, especially those who live longer and die from far more expensive diseases such as alzheimers and such.

Ray9

04-26-2010, 12:30 PM

Some food for thought-pun intended:

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plotthickens

04-26-2010, 01:06 PM

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Longevity from Calorie-Restriction Diet Questioned

Yet all along there have been cracks in this longevity theory. Yes, many species of animals in the laboratory live longer when on a caloric-restricted diet. The big exception, though, is the housefly, which dies faster when starved. So one question to ask is whether you are more like a fruit fly or a housefly?

Also, while some laboratory mice can live longer on a restricted diet, the progeny of wild-caught mice reap little to no benefit from fewer calories. This led scientists to think that maybe the animals gaining the most extra years from calorie restriction are those animals bred to study calorie restriction.

snip

A team led by Raj Sohal of the University of Southern California's School of Pharmacy tested the diet on two types of mice: mice bred to be fat on a normal diet and mice bred to be lean. Only the chubby variety of mice, albeit lean in this study, lived longer on the caloric-restricted diet. The naturally lean mice forwent all that delicious cheese for naught.

Among human it is clear that some of us are naturally chubbier or leaner given the same amount of caloric intake and energy expenditure. Thus those of us who don't pack on pounds easily—perhaps the very type of person attracted to the caloric-restricted diet—might starve themselves in vain.

The most significant finding from this study, however, is that the diet lowered the metabolic rates of both types of mice. The leading theory has been that a slower metabolic rate—and the subsequent lower rate of oxygen consumption and lower rate of free-radical production—was the cause for the increased longevity. This theory is now up in the air.

IrishGuy

04-27-2010, 02:38 AM

That's a funny canard. It's kinda like saying that tobacco costs us X amount in health care costs.

The fact is that dying from obesity or smoking related diseases is much cheaper over one's lifetime than dying or suffering the diseases that those who live to be far older suffer from.

Yes, you heard it here... smoking and obesity reduces your lifetime health care costs.

Now, I can see the benefits in living longer and healthier from a non-monetary perspective, but strictly from a monetary POV smoking and obesity save money.

I have heard this before, but a word of caution: advances in medical technology may reduce the lethality of these diseases and extend life, but at the cost of continual medical treatment. For instance, one of my grandparents developed emphysema from a lifetime of smoking. The typical prognosis for the disease when he first developed symptoms was he would live for another 7 years or so. Medical advancements after the onset of the condition added 10 years to that figure. He died at the age of 83.

Another thing with smoking is lung cancer. It is currently very deadly and thus the costs are relatively low over the long term, but if there are advancements and additional treatments come onto the market then the costs will go up since people who would have died before would be living longer (not to mention the costs of state of art drugs), but not necessarily as a cancer free or healthy individual.

Ray9

04-27-2010, 06:19 AM

Another thing with smoking is lung cancer. It is currently very deadly and thus the costs are relatively low over the long term, but if there are advancements and additional treatments come onto the market then the costs will go up since people who would have died before would be living longer (not to mention the costs of state of art drugs), but not necessarily as a cancer free or healthy individual.

This is the primary problem with our system of healthcare. It focuses it's efforts and resources on keeping people alive who deserve to be dead. The most humane and sensible thining our system of healthcare could do to rdeuce costs and improve society would be to let these people die miserably as examples to the general population of what not to do.

themuzicman

04-27-2010, 06:24 AM

This is the primary problem with our system of healthcare. It focuses it's efforts and resources on keeping people alive who deserve to be dead. The most humane and sensible thining our system of healthcare could do to rdeuce costs and improve society would be to let these people die miserably as examples to the general population of what not to do.

Wow... A complete lack of compassion at the expense of monetary policy. What's next? Not freeing drunk drivers from their cars after being in a horrific accident? Just let them die to teach the rest a lesson?

It isn't as though the consequences of these diseases are minimal, even if we do cure them. And they still (at least should) have to pay the expense of treatment.

Tough Love

04-27-2010, 07:06 AM

Ray9

04-27-2010, 07:09 AM

Wow... A complete lack of compassion at the expense of monetary policy. What's next? Not freeing drunk drivers from their cars after being in a horrific accident? Just let them die to teach the rest a lesson?

Actually my thoughts are taken right out of the book of genuine liberalism. It is the greater good that is important. True freedom is not telling people what they cannot do. If citizens want to smoke, over eat and abuse drugs they should be allowed to do so. But they cannot infringe on the rest of society to maintain their personal freedom. Expensive medical treatments to compensate for personal habits are a definate infringement on the rest of society because they drive up the cost of medical care and overburden the system making it more difficult for the legitimate sick, the aged and victims of accidents. It is not a lack of compassion that dominates my ideological landscape, it's just that my compassion for the selfish and thoughtless can be measured in microns while my compassion for the innocent is boundless.

themuzicman

04-27-2010, 07:21 AM

Actually my thoughts are taken right out of the book of genuine liberalism. It is the greater good that is important. True freedom is not telling people what they cannot do. If citizens want to smoke, over eat and abuse drugs they should be allowed to do so. But they cannot infringe on the rest of society to maintain their personal freedom. Expensive medical treatments to compensate for personal habits are a definate infringement on the rest of society because they drive up the cost of medical care and overburden the system making it more difficult for the legitimate sick, the aged and victims of accidents. It is not a lack of compassion that dominates my ideological landscape, it's just that my compassion for the selfish and thoughtless can be measured in microns while my compassion for the innocent is boundless.

Umm... Would you object to developing treatments for Lung Cancer if those who became afflicted paid for the treatments themselves? Seems to me you are unnecessarily harsh on those who engage in your civil sins by denying them any avenue to find a cure at their own expense. That isn't liberty. That's tyranny.

yoginimama

04-27-2010, 07:37 AM

It is not a lack of compassion that dominates my ideological landscape, it's just that my compassion for the selfish and thoughtless can be measured in microns while my compassion for the innocent is boundless.

You define a smoker who gets lung cancer as "selfish and thoughtless," and someone who's in an accident as "innocent." It's not that simple. What if the person in the accident is also a smoker? Do we save them? After all, they're "selfish and thoughtless." Their smoking may not have caused the accident, but it will cost money to treat them--do we want to spend that money on someone who's just going to get sick again at a later date, thereby wasting our investment?

Now what about someone who gets lung cancer from secondhand smoke? Is that person "innocent"? They didn't smoke themselves. But obviously, they were living with someone who did. And people these days do know the risks of that. So...are they "selfish and thoughtless" too? Maybe they can be considered halfway to 'selfish and thoughtless.' So what do we do then? Treat them halfway?

What if an obese person and/or smoker has a stroke at 43, and they've got kids at home? They're "selfish and thoughtless," but their children are by definition innocent. Do we let the person die, and tell the kids "Well, sorry, but your father simply wasn't worth saving from a social perspective, because he made selfish and thoughtless choices. I hope you all learn a valuable lesson from that"?

Or what if the obese smoker was supporting aging parents who would then be thrown into the social-services system once their support was gone? How do we balance the cost/benefit there?

And as far as "selfish and thoughtless" goes, if we're going to materially judge people on that, we can't stop with just lifestyle choices. We have to look at other factors. What about the person who buys expensive sweaters with their disposable income instead of giving at least some of it to charity? That's "selfish and thoughtless" too. What about the person who could support their aging parents, but chooses not to? That's "selfish and thoughtless." What about the person who breaks up their family, barely makes minimum child support payments, keeps finding excuses not to take the kids on his or her weekend, buys a new sports car, and flaunts his or her new lover? That's "selfish and thoughtless" for sure. If that person wrecks their car, do we save them?

Ray9

04-27-2010, 07:55 AM

Umm... Would you object to developing treatments for Lung Cancer if those who became afflicted paid for the treatments themselves? Seems to me you are unnecessarily harsh on those who engage in your civil sins by denying them any avenue to find a cure at their own expense. That isn't liberty. That's tyranny.

My only objection is that the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, the processed food industry and drug pushers will be kept in business by a tax system that will force healthy, responsible people to pay for the collateral damage. That's where the tyranny exists.

themuzicman

04-27-2010, 07:58 AM

My only objection is that the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, the processed food industry and drug pushers will be kept in business by a tax system that will force healthy, responsible people to pay for the collateral damage. That's where the tyranny exists.

Perhaps, rather than replacing tyranny with tyranny, you should work towards having individuals pay for the treatments they require, instead of the socialist "utopia" that Obama is foisting upon us, which is the maximization of what you propose.

So, do you support allowing drunk drivers to die in their cars when they cause an accident?

HAL 9000

04-27-2010, 08:44 AM

6 ibs or more.

Ray9

04-27-2010, 08:57 AM

So, do you support allowing drunk drivers to die in their cars when they cause an accident?

I try not to respond to hypothetical situations. I think my point is clear. Our healthcare system is broken because our society is broken.

Tough Love

04-27-2010, 09:10 AM

So, do you support allowing drunk drivers to die in their cars when they cause an accident?

I believe that any drunk person who gets behind the wheel has a death wish. Anyone who allows themselves to get so intoxicated they dont know what they are doing has a death wish. The only reason ide pull them out is so that they can explain themselves in court, and then hopefully they will be incarcerated.

themuzicman

04-27-2010, 09:30 AM

I try not to respond to hypothetical situations. I think my point is clear. Our healthcare system is broken because our society is broken.

You involved yourself in a hypothetical situation with the attack on smokers who get lung cancer, saying that they should die. Why the objection now?

plotthickens

04-27-2010, 10:27 AM

HPV -- the cause of most cervical cancers -- was basically unknown to the public 4 years ago. PCOS was unknown to the public 2 years ago. Not everything is known yet. How long are we to wait to institute this harsh regime, and what comes in the meantime?

themuzicman

04-27-2010, 10:34 AM

I believe that any drunk person who gets behind the wheel has a death wish. Anyone who allows themselves to get so intoxicated they dont know what they are doing has a death wish. The only reason ide pull them out is so that they can explain themselves in court, and then hopefully they will be incarcerated.

And this belief is based upon......

Megalomania

04-27-2010, 10:41 AM

Distance

04-27-2010, 11:26 AM

Airlines should sell seating by volume, rather than on a per seat basis.

themuzicman

04-27-2010, 11:38 AM

Airlines should sell seating by volume, rather than on a per seat basis.

Care tell us how you would implement that?

blueback

04-27-2010, 11:57 AM

I try not to respond to hypothetical situations. I think my point is clear. Our healthcare system is broken because our society is broken.
If your theory can't be applied to hypothetical situations what good is it? Aside from making you feel good about yourself?
Airlines should sell seating by volume, rather than on a per seat basis.
That would work if the airlines sedated us and stacked us like luggage. I wonder if anyone's built a business model around that.

Distance

04-27-2010, 12:09 PM

Care tell us how you would implement that?

If your theory can't be applied to hypothetical situations what good is it? Aside from making you feel good about yourself?

That would work if the airlines sedated us and stacked us like luggage. I wonder if anyone's built a business model around that.
It was a tongue-in-cheek comment but now that you're both commenting on it, implementation can be as follows:

Bookings must includes measurements. When it comes time to check-in for your flight, these measurements are verified. If the measurements are inaccurate to the degree that they exceed the volume of the seat, the individual has two choices of either losing the flight/cost of flight or ante up the cost difference.

Keep in mind I neither agree or disagree. What does offend me is when people invade my personal paid-for space.

Ray9

04-27-2010, 12:24 PM

If your theory can't be applied to hypothetical situations what good is it? Aside from making you feel good about yourself?

Ok, I don't support denying medical care to drunk drivers. What I do support is a system that discriminates in favor of the innocent and the responsible. The Democrats and the liberals are big on groupism. Why not seperate patients into groups based on personal responisbility? The innocent and the responsible get the best coverage and the dregs are funneled into a second class system where they belong. This is the kind of groupism I could really support.

plotthickens

04-27-2010, 12:43 PM

Ok, I don't support denying medical care to drunk drivers. What I do support is a system that discriminates in favor of the innocent and the responsible. The Democrats and the liberals are big on groupism. Why not seperate patients into groups based on personal responisbility? The innocent and the responsible get the best coverage and the dregs are funneled into a second class system where they belong. This is the kind of groupism I could really support.

:stare: "Insurance rates and premiums" come to mind. Congratulations, you've reinvented the wheel.

themuzicman

04-27-2010, 12:53 PM

Ok, I don't support denying medical care to drunk drivers.

That seems highly inconsistent. First, you want to deny health care to smokers who may or may not have caused a health malady to occur through their actions (you do realize that lung cancer is caused by more then just smoking, right?), but then you won't deny health care to drunk drivers who directly cause their own malady through choosing to drive while their abilities are impaired, and make a poor decision.

Seems completely backwards to me. Maybe you should rethink that. Maybe apply some critical though to what you get fed about smoking and lung cancer.

What I do support is a system that discriminates in favor of the innocent and the responsible. The Democrats and the liberals are big on groupism. Why not seperate patients into groups based on personal responisbility? The innocent and the responsible get the best coverage and the dregs are funneled into a second class system where they belong. This is the kind of groupism I could really support.

Why not just have individual coverage? Why group people together at all? Why make the occasional smoker pay for the bills of the heavy smoker?

Don't you see what's happening? You're trying to force a lifestyle changes on others through increasing their health insurance costs.

What happened to individual liberty and responsibility? Insurance is a way to transfer risk. That's all it is supposed to do. Insurance premiums are measured through a company assessing a risk and determining what rate to charge. On average it always costs more. The most cost effective way to have insurance is to self-insure and not pay anyone at all for anything. That's individual liberty.

As for the politics of fat and how it relates to all this, insurance companies, likewise, need to make their own assessments of risks regarding obesity and set rates individually accordingly. I do agree that making one large pool and charging everyone the same rate is taxing the healthy for the unhealthy. But the solution isn't making the marginally healthy pay for the unhealthy. It's individual liberty and responsibility.

And, by extension, letting science develop cures for whatever ails people (including lung cancer), and letting those who come down with it pay for it.

firebee

04-27-2010, 12:58 PM

:stare: "Insurance rates and premiums" come to mind. Congratulations, you've reinvented the wheel.

Actually, insurance rates and premiums are based on the principle of "relative risk", not the principle of "whether Ray9 thinks you're worthy to live".

This is a major flaw which needs addressing.

SeaCzar

04-27-2010, 01:27 PM

Blse

04-28-2010, 12:03 AM

I do not care how heavy someone is. That is their business, not mine. As far as flying goes, if someone weighs 500 pounds, well, they should buy an extra ticket. What has gotten me about flying (which I hate and do as little of as possible) recently are guys with broad shoulders. Cost Centre #1 is 6'8" and has very broad shoulders and a great wing span to boot. When sitting next to him at dinner, there is an elbow close to my ear.

I think what a lot of posters are missing here, in dissing others that may be over weight is that we are all different. That is human nature.

While I agree with the individualistic sentiment on a philosophical level, I do feel the need to point out that we're dealing economic externalities here that cause considerable inefficiency, placing a burden upon society. These externalities (e.g. reduced productivity, increased medical costs, skewing market demand toward unhealthy foods, providing a perverse incentive to food suppliers to provide more unhealthy foods fueling a vicious cycle, etc...) need to be reduced by providing proper disincentives.

lurk

04-28-2010, 12:37 AM

providing proper disincentives.
And who decides on what disincentives and when they're provided. It smacks of more nanny state. Just because something's a good a idea, doesn't mean it should be a law.

IrishGuy

04-28-2010, 01:00 AM

This is the primary problem with our system of healthcare. It focuses it's efforts and resources on keeping people alive who deserve to be dead. The most humane and sensible thining our system of healthcare could do to rdeuce costs and improve society would be to let these people die miserably as examples to the general population of what not to do.
You have to consider that not everyone who gets lung cancer smoked. Airborne pollution, family history, allergies, and infections have also been implied in increasing lung cancer risk. It would be very difficult to ascertain if someone developed lung cancer because of smoking or some other variable.

Blse

04-28-2010, 02:20 AM

And who decides on what disincentives and when they're provided. It smacks of more nanny state. Just because something's a good a idea, doesn't mean it should be a law.

There's a fine difference between mandates and incentives. Without addressing externalities through public policy, inefficiencies drag down the economy (as every economics textbook, at even the introductory level teaches us, externalities need to be absent for the market to work properly).

Who's to decide? Well, those in the best position to do so, those with the most knowledge. In most cases, this means the market since it is driven by the common wisdom of millions. When externalities arise, however, experts can design incentives that can harness the power of government to increase efficiency. Taxes placed on tabacco and alcohol, as well as stiffer penalities of DUIs, for instance, are examples of govt. addressing externalities through modifying incentive structures.

Mind you, we're not banning any foods, we're not telling people what to eat, we're not forcing people to exercise. We're simply adjusting incentives they face on a daily basis.

Our culture and private sector does so too. Our culture considers fat people to be unattractive and attaches social stigma to being fat. That provides an incentive to slim down. Private enterprises like airlines discriminate against the far, thus providing further incentive to slim down.

Through all three avenues: government, culture and market, society is able to provide an incentive for people to loose weight. Thinking that society should not attach stigma to obesity, companies should not discriminate against the over-weight (even if it is necessary to account for changes in operations cost, like it is with airlines), and government should not tax certain foods higher or require schools to serve healthy lunches, is disregarding the externalities brought on by obesity.

blueback

04-28-2010, 02:34 AM

And who decides on what disincentives and when they're provided. It smacks of more nanny state. Just because something's a good a idea, doesn't mean it should be a law.
Well, it's absurd to argue against the concept of disincentives, since they've always been used everywhere in one form or another. So, yes, the real question is who gets to decide which disincentives we are going to pursue. On that topic, much has been debated, and much debate remains. Personally, I think it should be a two stage process 1) everyone votes on representatives, 2) those representatives appoint experts in the area to make suggestions.
It would be very difficult to ascertain if someone developed lung cancer because of smoking or some other variable.
Granted, but maybe the cost could rise with the probability that smoking was the cause. That creates a huge incentive to not smoke, because if you never smoked you wouldn't even enter the liability pool, and if you do smoke you are literally paid to stop as soon as you can manage. On the other hand, it also creates a perverse incentive for smokers to gather in the most toxic areas, because it would increase the chance that any lung cancer they get in the future wasn't caused by smoking, and further isolating second-hand smoke to areas that no one wants to be in anyway...like asbestos plants.

I'm liking this idea more and more.

We should do the same thing with heart disease and diabetes. The cost to the patient increases with the probability that they caused their own problem. That will push the externality into the market by forcing people to take personal ownership of what used to be a common good. If the environment you live in only provides you with unhealthy food, and you know for a fact eating it will force you to pay more for any diet-related diseases you suffer from in the future, then you will demand healthier food, and the market will deliver. As things are now, people don't demand healtheir food, because they can just spread the cost of their treatment out over the entire population. Make them deal with it personally and they'll demand changes in their environment; changes that won't have to be imposed on them by a nanny state. In fact, making them pay for their own care is exactly the opposite of a nanny state.

yoginimama

04-28-2010, 09:52 AM

If the environment you live in only provides you with unhealthy food, and you know for a fact eating it will force you to pay more for any diet-related diseases you suffer from in the future, then you will demand healthier food, and the market will deliver.

I find this statement to be incredibly naive, at least where the United States is concerned.

In the US, the "unhealthy food environments" are the poor neighborhoods.

Food is often the least of their worries, as poor neighborhoods tend to be stuck with pollution as well. Ever heard of the "toxic donut" in Cincinnati?

"The environmental and toxics problems in the Winton Hills area are a prime example of environmental racism. Winton Hills, with over 6,000 residents, is the most densely populated community in Cincinnati. The community has been described as a 'toxic donut,' because it is literally surrounded by three landfills, numerous illegal dump sites, more than fourteen polluting chemical and manufacturing factories, and two hazardous waste treatment facilities. The Winton area was declared the most polluted area in Ohio several years ago.

Winton Hills residents have experienced environmentally-related health problems such as respiratory illnesses, skin rashes, asthma, and cancers for years. A tremendous number of families have experienced serious health problems after moving into the area, even though they had good health when they lived elsewhere."

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You will probably not be too shocked to learn that Winton Hills is an otherwise-than-affluent neighborhood.

Merely "demanding" fresh food and clean air does not budge "the market" one iota if your "demand" (i.e. your purchasing power) is outweighed by the "demand" of an entity with greater purchasing power. The landfills, factories and treatment plants of Cincinnati's toxic donut are where they are because they can (and do) out-bid the residents.

Threatening the residents of the toxic donut with having to pay for their own treatment is a total joke. Go ahead--it's not like you'll ever be able to collect. These people are broke.

And informing the polluters that they're driving up social costs by forcing society to pay for late-stage cancer and asthma treatments won't get you anywhere either. I am sure that everyone involved has done off-the-record cost-benefit studies and decided that it costs society much less to slap a Band-Aid over the chronic illnesses of the poor than it would to force the polluters and bad-food purveyors to clean up their act or move or force rich neighborhoods to pay for the privilege of not having to share the environmental burdens of living in a post-industrial society.

The market has already made its cost-benefit calculations, in short.

So either we have to accept substantial obesity and ill health all around us, and quit bitching about the "cost" because it works fine for the plutocrats....or we need to remind the market that it's a good servant but a poor master, and that some things--like health for all--are more important and will be legislated if the market cannot or will not provide it.

blueback

04-28-2010, 11:39 AM

...some things--like health for all--are more important and will be legislated if the market cannot or will not provide it.
Okay. So who do you think should have to live near the landfills? And how exactly do you propose to legislate "health for all?"

yoginimama

04-28-2010, 11:48 AM

Okay. So who do you think should have to live near the landfills? And how exactly do you propose to legislate "health for all?"

Good questions.

1) Ideally, no one would have to live near landfills. Or at least, not landfills in their current dirty, toxic form.

2) If making landfills safe is impossible, and/or if locating them well away from ALL human habitation is impossible, then--the world being what it is--it's pretty much inevitable that poor people will have to continue living near them because of their inability to buy their way in anywhere else.

3) In that case, I would recognize that somebody has to lose, but at least they don't have to get blamed for it. I would massively increase health services to poor neighborhoods in an effort to mitigate the conditions under which the poor are forced to live because they have the lowest income relative to everyone else.

That would be a slap in the face of "the market," but I am fairly sure it would NOT cause the entire economy to come crashing down.

IrishGuy

04-28-2010, 08:17 PM

Granted, but maybe the cost could rise with the probability that smoking was the cause. That creates a huge incentive to not smoke, because if you never smoked you wouldn't even enter the liability pool, and if you do smoke you are literally paid to stop as soon as you can manage. On the other hand, it also creates a perverse incentive for smokers to gather in the most toxic areas, because it would increase the chance that any lung cancer they get in the future wasn't caused by smoking, and further isolating second-hand smoke to areas that no one wants to be in anyway...like asbestos plants.

I'm liking this idea more and more.

We should do the same thing with heart disease and diabetes. The cost to the patient increases with the probability that they caused their own problem. That will push the externality into the market by forcing people to take personal ownership of what used to be a common good. If the environment you live in only provides you with unhealthy food, and you know for a fact eating it will force you to pay more for any diet-related diseases you suffer from in the future, then you will demand healthier food, and the market will deliver. As things are now, people don't demand healtheir food, because they can just spread the cost of their treatment out over the entire population. Make them deal with it personally and they'll demand changes in their environment; changes that won't have to be imposed on them by a nanny state. In fact, making them pay for their own care is exactly the opposite of a nanny state.

I don't think that denying smokers treatment for lung cancer will do much to stop smoking. If the threat of premature death from smoking is not enough why would lack of treatment for lung cancer be a better disincentive to smoke? Don't get me wrong I think some disincentives are useful, I am just not seeing how this disincentive in particular will be more effective than the disincentives already in place (threat of premature death & taxes on cigarettes etc.). For heart disease and diabetes the government could levy huge taxes on sodas and fast food, effectively raising the costs to the consumer and squeezing the profits of the producer; reducing the overall market for those unhealthy foods.

Also, these at risk people would likely already be paying higher health insurance premiums. The only way to get them to take responsibility for their health would be to deny them (and people like them) insurance. I think this would create a lucrative black market for insulin and other diabetes treatments. That would make organized crime a much bigger threat to the general public which could lead to higher costs for police services while also discouraging investment and economic growth (you have to pay taxes and the mob boss which cuts into your profits).

Ray9

04-28-2010, 09:23 PM

In the US, the "unhealthy food environments" are the poor neighborhoods.

Forgive me if I laugh at this statement but I'm old enough to remember the spectral, emaciated, ghostly figures from the dust bowl and the great depression. These unfortunate souls did not take their food stamps to a supermarket to buy lobster as I've seen many times personally. Today's poor as you refer to them are literally swimming in food and they are fatter than maggets on a garbage heap. I don't know what you saw when you watched video footage of Hurricane katrina but I saw a bunch of slobs looking for the nearest McDonalds who were mad as hell when it wasn't open. It's difficult for some to rectify the rotund, stuffed class you refer to as the poor in the US with the distended, desperate and starving victims of places like Ethiopia. But if it makes you feel good defend the privileged poor in the US knock yourself out.

Aronnax

04-28-2010, 09:47 PM

Forgive me if I laugh at this statement but I'm old enough to remember the spectral, emaciated, ghostly figures from the dust bowl and the great depression...

You're 63, that means you were born in 1947 and never saw the great depression firsthand. Your experience of the great depression is no different than ours: limited to photos and conversations with people who actually experienced it.

Ray9

04-28-2010, 10:34 PM

You're 63, that means you were born in 1947 and never saw the great depression firsthand. Your experience of the great depression is no different than ours: limited to photos and conversations with people who actually experienced it.

Well, ok, I didn't mean to imply that I lived through it. My dad who passed away in 2008 at 92 grew up in a house with thirteen brothers and sisters. They had no indoor plumbing, they carried water from a spring in buckets. He used to wake up in the morning with snow on his bed and most of the time he had no shoes. He used to joke that the first time he had three meals a day was when he got drafted into the army during WW2. He could have been bullshitting me but I don't think so. Maybe they faked the photographs. I don't think my poor grandfather who was about 5'10 ever weighed more than 120 pounds in his life. We didn't have much when I grew up either but no one else in the neighborhood did so poor wasn't so bad because there wasn't much better to compare it to. I am absolutely certain that there are very people alive today who have even the remotest clue what real poverty is. It's all political today. Just talking points.

Architectonic

04-28-2010, 11:48 PM

Care tell us how you would implement that?

Dunk customers in water before boarding the plane. :p

blueback

04-29-2010, 01:10 AM

1) Ideally, no one would have to live near landfills. Or at least, not landfills in their current dirty, toxic form.

While we're wishing for things, I want a dragon.

2) If making landfills safe is impossible, and/or if locating them well away from ALL human habitation is impossible, then--the world being what it is--it's pretty much inevitable that poor people will have to continue living near them because of their inability to buy their way in anywhere else.

Yup. Problem solved. The people who don't have any say over anything get the short, poop-covered end of the stick. Just like they always have every time and every place ever.

3) In that case, I would recognize that somebody has to lose, but at least they don't have to get blamed for it. I would massively increase health services to poor neighborhoods in an effort to mitigate the conditions under which the poor are forced to live because they have the lowest income relative to everyone else.

By how much would you "mitigate" their conditions? What level would they have to rise to be equal to before you'd stop giving them more free stuff?

That would be a slap in the face of "the market," but I am fairly sure it would NOT cause the entire economy to come crashing down.

How sure? Also, the real issue isn't whether or not everything will break overnight. The question is how brittle it will make the system. You can't take back entitlements once you grant them. Just look at the previously great American auto industry to see how generous entitlements are unsustainable, especially when hard times come. You can't cancel the free stuff you promised someone, which means your budget has less slack in it, and in bad times might even bankrupt you.

Why not just leave the mitigation of the poor's condition to private charities? That way when there is money available people will give it, and when the money's not available people won't, so it will self-adjust. Why does the government have to make is a law?

I don't think that denying smokers treatment for lung cancer will do much to stop smoking.
The idea wasn't to deny treatment. That's not even close. The idea was to make them pay a percentage of the costs of their treatment based on the probability that their own lifestyle choices caused the disease. If it's uncertain, then there's no change, but if certain factors greatly increase the chance that they caused their own illness (like smoking their entire life or never exercising) then they have to pay a certain percentage out of their own pocket.

Of course, this would apply to government insurance, not to private insurance.

Well, ok, I didn't mean to imply that I lived through it.

Really? Cuz when I read, "I'm old enough to remember the spectral, emaciated, ghostly figures from the dust bowl and the great depression," I thought for sure you were claiming to remember precisely that. You know, personally. I don't think you're being deliberately deceptive...but I do think you have a talent for overstatement and hyperbole.

It's all political today. Just talking points.

No one lives in poverty anymore? The whole thing is manufactured like in Wag The Dog? Wow, that must mean all that money the government pretends to give to people who need it must be going somewhere else. That must be how they fund all the research into alien technology! It's all coming together now :)

Ray9

04-29-2010, 06:54 AM

Really? Cuz when I read, "I'm old enough to remember the spectral, emaciated, ghostly figures from the dust bowl and the great depression," I thought for sure you were claiming to remember precisely that. You know, personally. I don't think you're being deliberately deceptive...but I do think you have a talent for overstatement and hyperbole.

I believe I said I was old enough to remember the victims. As far as overtatement and hyperbole, blame the the seasoned, clever newspaper editor I was apprenticed to in my twenties. He taught me to color language and paint pictures when I write. Of course if you're too good at it you'll get death threats. Now an important question: Do you think people today recognize "real" poverty? I don't because most people today have never really been poor.

Tough Love

04-29-2010, 07:13 AM

Poor is only relative to the quality of life the majority of the people around you enjoy. The quality of life in America is alot higher than the quality of life in Ethiopia (Im not sure quality of life is the right term so forgive me if not) therefore the poor in America in comparison to the poor in Ethiopia... You can't compare.
The problem IMO is the feelings that evolve from comparing yourself to the people around you. The poor in America have every right to complain if their lifestyle is not up to par with their neighbors, but i dont think its in good form to state them as poor in a place like this where 'poor' is purely relative.
Having said that though, there is something to the price of fresh produce going up. I DO NOT think it is cheaper to eat fast food, but having been pretty much destitute myself, it IS alot easier, especially if you cannot even afford the basic cooking equipment. Another thing is, when you dont have much going on to give you those little 'happy kicks' food is quite easy to replace it with.

yoginimama

04-29-2010, 09:02 AM

While we're wishing for things, I want a dragon.

Ever heard of guinea worm?

[Twenty years ago in Ghana], the former US President Jimmy Carter stumbled across a crying woman who appeared to be cradling a baby to her right breast. He stepped forward to talk to her – but he reeled back when he realised a three-foot-long worm was inching its way out of her nipple, at the centre of an engorged purpling breast. It was one of eleven guinea worms taking a month or more to crawl out of the young woman’s body that summer. One was burrowing out from her vagina. The woman couldn’t speak; she could only howl.

She was living through a guinea worm infestation.

My point?

When Jimmy Carter first encountered the disease, some 3.5 million people were riddled with guinea worm. Tens of millions of people had endured it, from Europe to Asia; it was regarded as an intractable, eternal problem. The idea of eradicating it was mocked as “utopian”.

In other words, when people said "I want to get rid of guinea worm," others replied, "And I want a dragon."

But today, the number has been slashed by more than 99 percent. Fewer than 10,000 people in a few remaining pockets of Ghana and Sudan still suffer.

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We are a species who has split the atom, eradicated smallpox, invented microchips, sort-of-kind-of begun figuring out space travel, yada and yada and yada. There is no doubt in my mind that we will figure out the landfill-and-pollution issue, and why? Because pretty soon, we're going to have to.

Why did it take so long to eradicate guinea worm? Because of the ugly side of human nature--no one who "mattered" was getting it. It was just "those people," far away from the pockets of humanity who by historical accident had become rich and technological. But as soon as one man with access saw this disease, he created the pressure it took to find a way to decimate it, and lo and behold.

With landfill/pollution issues, we've done the typical ugly human thing--pushed it onto "those people," the local "ones who matter least"--but eventually, through global warming and sheer garbage saturation, it will come home to roost.

When that happens, we will all watch in amazement as "the market" suddenly and magically accommodates everything we previously called "utopian" and "commie" and "I want a dragon," and the next penicillin/microchip/fission Leap Forward happens and all this stuff gets cleaned up with astonishing speed and ingenuity.

Or, if that proves impossible, then solutions for the resulting health problems appear with dizzying speed, so that the people who "matter" do not have to live with rashes and respiratory problems and other things that could interfere with their fabulosity.

When that happens, I want to make sure it happens for the poor as well. And I will be totally uninterested in any excuses as to why it can't. Because it can...because of what happened with the guinea worm.

[/soapbox]

blueback

04-29-2010, 01:49 PM

I believe I said I was old enough to remember the victims.

OMG. I quoted you and you included that in your quote of me, so what you actually said was RIGHT THERE when you wrote this. You said you remembered what the victims looked like while they were suffering. If you meant you remembered pictures of them, or that you remember them still looking like shit long after the events in question, then you failed to communicate clearly. But it's not our fault.

As far as overtatement and hyperbole, blame the the seasoned, clever newspaper editor I was apprenticed to in my twenties. He taught me to color language and paint pictures when I write. Of course if you're too good at it you'll get death threats.

Oh. My bad. I guess it's not your fault. But, wait, I learned hyperbole from the movie 300, in which "everyone is responsible for the words of their voice" and if you aren't careful you get kicked into a well. Which, in hindsight, makes about as much sense as claiming to remember something you weren't alive for.

Basically, if you overstate, it's your fault when you are misunderstood. Don't blame someone else for what you yourself said.

Now an important question: Do you think people today recognize "real" poverty? I don't because most people today have never really been poor.

Is this a trick question? You even put the word 'real' in quotes because you aren't willing to define it clealry until you can catch someone being wrong about how "real" reality really is.

Ever heard of guinea worm?

Gross.

There is no doubt in my mind that we will figure out the landfill-and-pollution issue, and why? Because pretty soon, we're going to have to.

Sorry, but we have never in the entire history of the world figured out a solution to a problem just because we "had to." Our needs have never caused the laws of nature to be temporarily recinded to expose a miracle cure.

Why did it take so long to eradicate guinea worm? Because of the ugly side of human nature--no one who "mattered" was getting it.

Wait, the "ugly side" of human nature is to spend resources on our friends and family before total strangers? Explain that one again.

It was just "those people," far away from the pockets of humanity who by historical accident had become rich and technological. But as soon as one man with access saw this disease, he created the pressure it took to find a way to decimate it, and lo and behold.

Hmmm. . .so, pockets of humans accidentally stumbled upon vast wealth. One of them happened to see a problem in a part of the world no one visits. Then they took some of their vast, randomly acquired wealth, and basically solved that problem with no expectation of anything in return. And your upset because people aren't solving problems inside of those enclaves of random wealth? But you just said it was bad of people to solve problems close to home.

Oh, wait, are you under the impression money is a magic wand that rich people just wave at problems to make them go away?

With landfill/pollution issues, we've done the typical ugly human thing--pushed it onto "those people," the local "ones who matter least"

Where else is the garbage going to go? The rich people can pay the poor people to collect it and take it away, but the poor people can't pay anyone else to take it away. The natural result is that poor people have to deal with more trash in their immediate proximity. What's wrong with that? Should we use trained animals to take the garbage away from poor people?

...we will all watch in amazement as "the market" suddenly and magically accommodates everything we previously called "utopian" and "commie" and "I want a dragon," and the next penicillin/microchip/fission Leap Forward happens and all this stuff gets cleaned up with astonishing speed and ingenuity.

Or, if that proves impossible, then solutions for the resulting health problems appear with dizzying speed, so that the people who "matter" do not have to live with rashes and respiratory problems and other things that could interfere with their fabulosity.

It sounds like you're getting your politics from Wall-E.
Didn't you equate the landfill/garbage problem to the guine worm? Which you described as being a totally unnecessary problem that was solved instantly as soon as a rich person applied money to it? So why would you now say that the landfill/garbage problem should have a lot of money thrown at it to find solutions, but that it won't happen until everyone has to deal with the problem personally? Did you just want to talk about the guine worm?

When that happens, I want to make sure it happens for the poor as well. And I will be totally uninterested in any excuses as to why it can't. Because it can...because of what happened with the guinea worm.

I'm going to explain the flaw in your reasoning. And I want you to listen to it, rather than think it's one of those excuses you aren't interested in.

See, in the guine worm example the poor people aren't the poor people, the guine worms are the poor people (metaphorically). They are the least powerful and so they are the ones who get shoved around. Or, in this case, exterminated.

There is no such thing as a solution to the garbage problem because there is no such thing as a lack of garbage. There is no such thing as garbage. There is only input to a system and outputs from it. Back in the Earth's past oxygen was a noxious, poisonous gas, that was slowly choking the life out of the plants. That's why animals breath oxygen. Because it's not a poison, it's just an output from a system. As long as you have systems, they will excrete waste products. Whether or not you consider those wastes garbage depends only on your particular inputs at a particular time.

So, anything powerful is able to push the things it doesn't like away, and anything powerless is necessarily forced to deal with stuff it doesn't like. That is not a problem. That is like saying gravity is a problem. What it is is a thing that can create problems. The fact of garbage can create problems for systems that don't use it as an input.

The real issue is that humans are relatively adaptable to a variety of inputs. Our body can run off of a remarkable variety of different subtances, at least compared to other animals. By definition, tho, most of those substances are sub-optimal. Can a person live on twinkies, sure. Can they live well, of course not. In the same way, can a person live in a landfill, sure. Can they live well, of course not.

But the very nature of waste is that it cannot be eradicated, it can only be converted. Any solution to the prsence of things we don't want will necessarily create more things. . .that someone won't want.

Storm

04-29-2010, 10:39 PM

If you're taking mass transportation, people are going to be in your space. An airplane is not a private vehicle - it's an expensive hunk of metal designed to fly. Space restrictions are a necessity. People are going to be using "your" armrest, putting their giant bags in "your" storage bin, walking in front of "your" leg space to use the bathroom, snoring into "your" air, and pulling the shade up or down on "your" window. A person whose body extends an inch into "your" space isn't that big of a deal. It's just how mass transportation is - unless you're willing to upgrade to first class or charter a private jet.

Having said that, there is a certain point where a person is simply too big to fit into an airplane seat and airplanes can not be expected to make seats big enough to fit every single person that wants to fly. There are many things that have size requirements, both maximums and minimum, there is no way that airplanes should be any other way. You can't ride many roller coasters unless you're a certain height (sorry kids and little people). You can't go spelunking if you're too big to fit into tiny rock crevices. You can't donate blood if you weigh under 110 pounds. You can't ride a pony if you're not child-sized. There are many more. Of course, for airplanes it's a lot harder since there isn't as clear a line they can draw, perhaps because it's so sensitive of an area since air travel is so popular.

Just in case you think I'm talking about people who are a little pudgy, this is what I'm talking about:

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This person can not safely buckle his seat belt or even sit in the seat. During an emergency, his blockage of the aisle would be a safety hazard. Now, I don't care why this man is fat, and I feel sort of sad for him that he has to live his life being so uncomfortably big - but he can't be in only one seat on a plane. So, what should be the standard be? I'm not sure, but this seemingly guesswork they do right now is way off base. I'd be happy with "if you can't physically sit in the seat with the armrest down and the seat belt strapped - you need two seats." Which, I actually thought was the standard today. Makes me wonder if Kevin Smith can do that.

Note, Kevin Smith usually does purchase two tickets - he claims just for the extra comfort and not because he's too fat to sit in a seat. He actually bought two tickets for the flight to his destination, but could only get 1 seat for the flight back.

Of course, I think charging these people for two seats is sort of silly, since people who are so big they can't sit in the seat should be extremely rare and it's rather bad customer service to charge them twice for the same service. Upgrade to first class without the services, or just giving these people two seats by having them enter their dimensions during purchase would be an easy way to solve it. If people try to cheat and put in bigger numbers to get the free extra seat - just charge them for it when they show up skinny

pip

04-30-2010, 03:13 AM

Of course, for airplanes it's a lot harder since there isn't as clear a line they can draw, perhaps because it's so sensitive of an area since air travel is so popular.

Yes, there is.
The seats on just about every aircraft capable of carrying passengers ever built are mounted on two rails (for each line of seats) which run the length of the cabin from front to back.
These rails are part of the structure which holds the aircraft together and are a set (and fixed) distance apart and thus limits the available 'width' you can fill with seating.
You can't simply make bigger seats as you have a finite amount of space to work with, plus you have to leave a certain minimum gap for the aisle(s).
The only way you can make larger seats is to replace multiple standard seats with fewer larger ones - which no sane airline will ever do.
Not to mention that removing seats from the rails in service is a non-trivial task - sure, unbolting them from the rails is easy but getting them out and swapping them is a pain in the arse, especially if you have grumpy impatient passengers waiting.

Turnaround times are everything to airlines, remember....
Short of specifically dedicating a number of aircraft to carrying larger people, there is nothing which can be done. And this will never be done as the airline which does this will be at a MASSIVE disadvantage to all the others which don't.

Storm

04-30-2010, 08:00 AM

Yes, there is.

I said that putting in larger seats would be impractical and then offered a standard.

What I meant by "no clear line" is that when exactly someone is too big to fit into a seat is a bit gray right now.

yoginimama

04-30-2010, 07:02 PM

Sorry, but we have never in the entire history of the world figured out a solution to a problem just because we "had to." Our needs have never caused the laws of nature to be temporarily recinded to expose a miracle cure.

Wow, I didn't mean to imply that the laws of nature would obligingly suspend themselves if we asked them to. I'm sorry I was so unclear. What I meant was: get enough people working on a problem, and there is no doubt in my mind we can come up with at least a passably workable solution. (And regarding your upcoming point--yes, any solution will cause new problems. To my mind, that's not a reason to keep from trying.)

Wait, the "ugly side" of human nature is to spend resources on our friends and family before total strangers? Explain that one again.

Again, I clearly didn't provide enough context for what I was saying.

The "ugly side" of human nature is to (a) develop a technological advantage, (b) go marching in someplace like the African Continent like we own it, (c) exploit the ever-living fuck out of it for foreign slave sales, local slave labor, natural resources like rubber, diamonds, oil and coltan, etc etc, (d) carve it up into new, arbitrary political divisions, (e) ruthlessly put down all attempts to push back against these actions, (f) in short, alter the human and natural landscape of the continent almost beyond recognition, and (g) then...when it comes to the matter of worms crawling out of some local people...say, "And what exactly do you expect us to do?" as if intervening in the local parasite ecosystem was JUST TOO MUCH EFFORT and TOO LIKELY TO BACKFIRE.

Unlike, say, enslaving whole populations, building vast mines, creating a transportation infrastructure for goods to come and go--which, as we all know, is totally easy and effortless and never has any externalities or blowback.

That is what I meant.

Had "we" left the African continent the hell alone, then I could see an argument of "why should we care if they get guinea worm." But no such luck. In for a penny, in for a pound. Don't go in there and do what you want, and then pretend what you don't want (which would be something which just happens to benefit as opposed to exploit the local population) would just be too hard.

Hmmm. . .so, pockets of humans accidentally stumbled upon vast wealth. One of them happened to see a problem in a part of the world no one visits. Then they took some of their vast, randomly acquired wealth, and basically solved that problem with no expectation of anything in return. And your upset because people aren't solving problems inside of those enclaves of random wealth? But you just said it was bad of people to solve problems close to home.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Oh, wait, are you under the impression money is a magic wand that rich people just wave at problems to make them go away?

Take a look around you. I'd say that describes the way the world works pretty well. Except money isn't a magic wand, it's a tool--a tool that rich people utilize with great skill to make it worth people's while to find ways to mitigate anything unpleasant in the plutocrats' existence.

Where else is the garbage going to go? The rich people can pay the poor people to collect it and take it away, but the poor people can't pay anyone else to take it away. The natural result is that poor people have to deal with more trash in their immediate proximity. What's wrong with that?

Um...the...the trash is dirty and toxic and hazardous to human health. It's not just an eyesore. It makes people ill.

Didn't you equate the landfill/garbage problem to the guine worm? Which you described as being a totally unnecessary problem that was solved instantly as soon as a rich person applied money to it? So why would you now say that the landfill/garbage problem should have a lot of money thrown at it to find solutions, but that it won't happen until everyone has to deal with the problem personally?

Because the landfill/garbage problem is actually a lot bigger than the guinea worm problem, and a lot harder to solve. It is also a problem directly caused by human actions; a lot of people and businesses (seem to) benefit from the way things are now. Thus, I don't think anything will change as regards landfill/pollution until most of the actors causing it no longer perceive themselves as benefiting from their actions. As for why it will take that much change in the environment, that's because most of the actors who currently benefit from our garbage/pollution system are rich and connected enough that it will take a LOT of pressure to force them to budge.

But the very nature of waste is that it cannot be eradicated, it can only be converted. Any solution to the prsence of things we don't want will necessarily create more things. . .that someone won't want.

You're right. That's the way it's always been. I see no reason to change. Creating solutions and then rushing to deal with all the new problems keeps us busy :)

blueback

04-30-2010, 10:11 PM

get enough people working on a problem, and there is no doubt in my mind we can come up with at least a passably workable solution.

Who gets to decide how passable a workable solution is? You? Rich, powerful people? Poor Africans? Garbage collectors? If your goal involves such a large grey area how do you ever expect to know whether or not it is reached? Let alone how many people need to start working on it.

The "ugly side" of human nature is to...in short, alter the human and natural landscape of the continent almost beyond recognition, and (g) then...when it comes to the matter of worms crawling out of some local people...say, "And what exactly do you expect us to do?" as if intervening in the local parasite ecosystem was JUST TOO MUCH EFFORT and TOO LIKELY TO BACKFIRE.

Okay, so, I looked up the guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis). Apparently this particular parasite is a very strange choice of example. It requires humans to sustain its life cycle. So, it is approaching being the first parasitic disease to be eradicated through nothing but behavior change. I want to focus on that point. Apparently the copepods which carry the worm larvae through water are large enough to be filtered out with nylon. Nylon. Also, no one ever invented a cure for it. The massive decrease in cases has been achieved through the creation of a monitoring network. All this network does is identify people with the disease and ensure that they don't stick their feet in the water so the worms can't spread their eggs. That's it. The only reason it's taken this long is the last people who have it are so poor and distant that it costs too much to monitor them.

Had "we" left the African continent the hell alone, then I could see an argument of "why should we care if they get guinea worm." But no such luck. In for a penny, in for a pound. Don't go in there and do what you want, and then pretend what you don't want (which would be something which just happens to benefit as opposed to exploit the local population) would just be too hard.

Ummm. . .I don't think anyone complained it was hard. They probably just pointed out that it wasn't profitable. The only reason that parasite exists is that the people who carry it don't have any infrastructure or education. So they have no way to pay anyone back. Any help provided to them is pure charity. Are you arguing that there isn't enough charitable giving?

...a lot of people and businesses (seem to) benefit from the way things are now. Thus, I don't think anything will change as regards landfill/pollution until most of the actors causing it no longer perceive themselves as benefiting from their actions.

Could you be more specific?

Also, wasn't this supposed to relate the to fattie problem in some way?

Ryujin

05-01-2010, 04:24 AM

To add my opinion for what it's worth, as many people have mentioned it comes down to economics.

The business does what it thinks will keep it in business and you chose if you want to buy what they're selling.

Airlines sell seats of a certain size on a plane. You can buy them or choose not to buy them. Beyond that they're not really responsible for much else (like comfort, makes a great advertising word, because it is so vague in anything other than an extreme example).

If your skinny, but don't want to be bothered by anyone, you can buy the whole row. If you want you can try to buy every seat on the plane and have the flight to yourself.

To get to the more specific example of large people needing two seats, the airline sells space and you buy however much you need/want. If you physically take up the space of two seats, then you pay for that space, you don't get any for free. The reasons why you need that space are irrelevant, overweight or bodybuilder, it's the same in this context. Now to be fair, the airlines should define a standard of what taking up the space two seats is, however they won't do that for PR reasons.

Most of the controversy seems to be from making the cause of needing the space of two seats part of the equation. This simply isn't part of how services operate in a capitalist sense. Yes it can be cold, but it's how it is. I have a condition that I inherited. I still pay related medical costs even though I have no control over it. Those medical costs are technically an optional service from a private company. I could in theory not buy it if it was not "worth it" or buy from another provider. Why I need those services is not really part of the equation.

In the same sense air travel is an optional service from a private company. You can not fly on their airline. Capitalism has pros and cons, one down side for many is it's not very accommodating.

So in theory this has nothing to do with discriminating against overweight people (though when you have no standards and add people (employees) to the mix, it can certainly crop up).

Also when you mix in PR, giving out a free seat may have economic value. If giving someone a free extra seat has more value in PR/customer service than the cost of the seat, the might do. However given how rare people who need a second seat are, it's probably not worth it for the company. They're certainly not going to give it out to be nice.

yoginimama

05-01-2010, 06:39 AM

The only reason it's taken this long is the last people who have it are so poor and distant that it costs too much to monitor them.

"Cost" defined how? In the face of intense human suffering, how do we define the concept of "costs too much"?

To me, it starts when an intervention is more than what's needed to solve the problem--but not until then.

If you were watching worms wriggle underneath your skin, choosing a place to start eating their way out, you would not take kindly to someone telling you: "Actually, we could have put a program in place fifty years ago which would have reduced the chances of your getting this parasite to nearly zero. But sorry! It just plain costs too much to find people like you and monitor your behavior."

That's essentially saying, "Your suffering doesn't matter enough." The ultimate slap in the face--insult added to (extreme) injury.

You can argue that that's just the way the world is. But "the world" is an awfully nebulous concept. It's as much what we make it as "how it just inevitably is." We can decide that no one's suffering is irrelevant, no matter how poor and isolated they are. We can decide that, wherever fistula, guinea worm, etc etc is happening, we are going to track it down and fix it and deal with whatever problems arise from our solution (as problems inevitably do).

Obviously, I think we should.

Oh--and as for the "who gets to decide" question, well, who "gets to decide" now? Who "got to decide" initially? Why do you seem to implicitly trust the infrastructure that got us to this point, but assume it would have to change significantly to produce slightly more equitable decisions in the future? A progressive infrastructure exists right alongside the (for lack of a better term) oil-company-type infrastructure; it just doesn't win as often. But it's just as full of venerable establishment types who don't want to rock the boat too much...just a little :)

Also, wasn't this supposed to relate the to fattie problem in some way?

You're right, it was. I guess the way I would want this to relate to the "fattie problem" is to say...can we learn to identify fat people as suffering people? Can we learn to ask questions to and about them, rather than pointing fingers and accusing them of suffocating us on airplanes? And speaking of airplanes, can we stop being so in love with the poor airlines' precious "cost" margins? Can we find a way for them to be profitable enough without feeling like they need to squeeze every penny they can from every square inch of space in the cabin? And the "outliers" just have to suck it?

So yeah. From guinea worm to airline seats, no more "just suck it" if you're an outlier.

blueback

05-01-2010, 02:01 PM

Ha ha, okay, I think I have a better handle on your argument now.

"Cost" defined how? In the face of intense human suffering, how do we define the concept of "costs too much"?

This is a serious question, and it deserves a serious answer. Did you know that people and institutions have placed a monetary value on human life and suffering? For example, NASA decided not include a life boat on any space missions. It would cost too much.

The way "cost" is defined tends to depend on the specific context. But, as a rough estimate, I would say it means how much of the available resources need to be devoted to mitigating the negative events, relative to the amount required to get the positive events. Different entities in different situations structure that ratio differently, but it is inherently no on else's business. You can do what you want with your resources, but you don't get to tell anyone else what to do with theirs.

It's not appropriate to ask how much suffering is required before one is morally justified in compelling an entitiy with resources to give them up. Overriding the rules that keep everyone safe requires an existential crisis, not a painful one. Life is more important than quality of life.

To me, it starts when an intervention is more than what's needed to solve the problem--but not until then.

Can you rephrase that? It doesn't make sense.

If you were watching worms wriggle underneath your skin, choosing a place to start eating their way out, you would not take kindly to someone telling you: "Actually, we could have put a program in place fifty years ago which would have reduced the chances of your getting this parasite to nearly zero. But sorry! It just plain costs too much to find people like you and monitor your behavior."

Again, this goes back to how the guinea worm is a strange choice of example.

No one ever invented a cure. The reduction in cases is solely the result of behavior changes. So, the program you're talking about is nothing more than finding some of the most isolated tribes on the planet and teaching them just enough about the guinea worm lifecycle that they stop sustaining it.

So, those people could have eradicated the guinea worm on their own. It's not like they lacked the means. What they lacked was the education. Getting rid of the guinea worm hasn't depened on some cool technology that could only have been invented by rich people in their fancy labs. It's just a matter of not allowing the worm to spead its eggs in the water and not drinking unfiltered water.

But, aside from all that, where in this drama do you find a problem? Is it that people went to Africa to mine resources, saw the guinea worm, said "man, that sucks", and then ignored it while they mined, unitl someone stopped ignoring it and motivated a lot of people and groups to use the wealth created by the mining to help eradicate the worm? Cuz that sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Keep in mind all the other problems Africa alone has. Let alone other poor places. Let alone right back at home. There isn't enough money in the world to solve all those problems, so some of them are going to get money and some of them aren't. But, no one can spend money to fix a problem without first making money.

That's essentially saying, "Your suffering doesn't matter enough." The ultimate slap in the face--insult added to (extreme) injury.

Uh, no, not really. "Adding insult to injury" means that you caused the injury. Rich people didn't give anyone guinea worm. And telling someone they aren't important enough to give free money to isn't an insult. Your complaint would apply to a situation where I punched someone, and then told them they were a bitch. An insult added to an injury. It's a very straight forward phrase.

Also, that is EXACTLY saying "your suffering doesn't matter enough." And what's wrong with that? Why aren't you in Africa helping eradicate the guinea worm? Is it because the suffering of guinea worm infested natives isn't important enough for you to interrupt your life? I thought so. And, even if you were in Africa, logging onto the internet in between saving suffering natives, what about all the other people in the world who are suffering even more? What about all the suffering you could be relieving instead of arguing on an internet forum? What about all the people you could help if you didn't sleep? Are you eating food, well someone else is suffering and that food would relieve their suffering, so why are you eating it?

You can argue that that's just the way the world is. But "the world" is an awfully nebulous concept. It's as much what we make it as "how it just inevitably is."

Oh wow, is it possible to disagree on a point by infinity?

The world is in no way shape or form as much "what we make it" as what it "inevitably is". We are just fleas rearranging grains of sand in the Sahara.

We can decide that no one's suffering is irrelevant, no matter how poor and isolated they are.

Uh huh. We can also decide to power our cars on rainbow energy. That doesn't mean the universe has to agree with us.

We can decide that, wherever fistula, guinea worm, etc etc is happening, we are going to track it down and fix it and deal with whatever problems arise from our solution (as problems inevitably do).

Obviously, I think we should.

So, we should all quit our jobs and devote ourselves to eradicating guinea worm? We should take our kids to Africa and let the lions look after them while we baby sit people too uneducated to keep their feet out of the water? Of course, we should liquidate the stock market and use all the dollar bills to weave clothing for the poor suffering Africans so they don't get sunburned and suffer through the itchiness.

Why does your theory completely ignore reality? You know why lions eat their fill before they let their cubs eat? Because a lion can always have more cubs, but if the lion starves to death, or is weakend by hunger and gets killed by a wildebeast, it can't raise its existing cubs...which will then die anyway. No one's going to be able to help relieve suffering if everyone devotes themselves solely to relieving suffering.

Oh--and as for the "who gets to decide" question, well, who "gets to decide" now?

The point wasn't for you to repeat the question, the point was for you to explain why you think you get to decide, but no one else does.

Why do you seem to implicitly trust the infrastructure that got us to this point, but assume it would have to change significantly to produce slightly more equitable decisions in the future?

I trust the infrastructure that got us to this point because this point is the most advanced and successful the human race has ever been.

I don't think there are a broad variety of infrastructure models that would be equally or more successful. So, significant change would inevitably result in a less successful model.

A progressive infrastructure exists right alongside the (for lack of a better term) oil-company-type infrastructure; it just doesn't win as often. But it's just as full of venerable establishment types who don't want to rock the boat too much...just a little :)

That doesn't make any sense. It sounds like your words are mumbled ever since you extended your tin-foil hat to cover your whole face.

You're right, it was. I guess the way I would want this to relate to the "fattie problem" is to say...can we learn to identify fat people as suffering people? Can we learn to ask questions to and about them, rather than pointing fingers and accusing them of suffocating us on airplanes?

We already do that. Well, we do both. Have you considered the possibility that if everyone seems to disagree with you maybe you're wrong?

And speaking of airplanes, can we stop being so in love with the poor airlines' precious "cost" margins? Can we find a way for them to be profitable enough without feeling like they need to squeeze every penny they can from every square inch of space in the cabin? And the "outliers" just have to suck it?

Nope. Unfortunately for you our society thinks property rights are fundamental, and that whining doesn't get to infringe on those rights. Please note that airlines aren't targeting fat people just because some passengers have complained about them overfilling their seat. Airlines are in business, and they will respond to their business interests. If enough customers start to change their buying patterns due to America' expanding waistlines, THEN the airlines will change their policies. Actually, with fatties quickly becoming the majority, the Airlines have an incentive to cater to them, since their body size is becoming average.

So yeah. From guinea worm to airline seats, no more "just suck it" if you're an outlier.

OMG, really? Outliers always have to suck it. We don't force everyone to build 10' doors just because Yao Ming might visit your house.

Basically, your argument seems to boil down to the idea that if someone feels bad everyone else should drop what they're doing and devote their lives to helping that person not feel so bad.

yoginimama

05-01-2010, 02:50 PM

that is EXACTLY saying "your suffering doesn't matter enough." And what's wrong with that? Why aren't you in Africa helping eradicate the guinea worm? Is it because the suffering of guinea worm infested natives isn't important enough for you to interrupt your life? I thought so. And, even if you were in Africa, logging onto the internet in between saving suffering natives, what about all the other people in the world who are suffering even more? What about all the suffering you could be relieving instead of arguing on an internet forum? What about all the people you could help if you didn't sleep? Are you eating food, well someone else is suffering and that food would relieve their suffering, so why are you eating it?

Okay, so...I don't get to want suffering to be eradicated unless I'm out in the field personally eradicating it. Without ever taking a break. Or eating food.

And if I am out in the field personally eradicating it with my eyelids propped open by toothpicks and my 81-pound body running on meth fumes, what I'm doing doesn't matter anyhow, because somewhere, somebody is suffering worse, and I'm not with them.

Makes sense to me!

And because outliers always have to suck it anyhow, they should continue to suck it. Not wanting them to be eternally in kneepads means OMG everybody has to build a 10-foot door for Ming Yao, which is obviously absurd, and thus, so is the entire idea of wanting life to be at least a little bit better for people you'll never meet.

Glad we got that cleared up :)

But as you mentioned before, this has strayed pretty far afield from the topic of fat people.

Me: I'm for 'em. I like 'em. I don't get upset when they sit next to me on an airplane. Instead, I get upset when others go "eTo view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. teh faaatz, make them pay more, they're taking up my spaaaace, they have no riiiiight, plus they're grossing me out with their soft fle-e-e-eeesh, eeeeTo view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts."

That's just me.

blueback

05-01-2010, 11:44 PM

I LOL'ed. It's nice to see you taking this discussion as seriously as I do.

Okay, so...I don't get to want suffering to be eradicated unless I'm out in the field personally eradicating it. Without ever taking a break. Or eating food.

And if I am out in the field personally eradicating it with my eyelids propped open by toothpicks and my 81-pound body running on meth fumes, what I'm doing doesn't matter anyhow, because somewhere, somebody is suffering worse, and I'm not with them.

Exactly. You can't claim that the mere existence of suffering demands a response without going all the way. Otherwise, by definition, you are claiming that there is some suffering that doesn't actually demand a response, which turns your argument into a mere arbitrary choice. And arbitrary choices don't have any moral weight. One arbitrary choice is as good as another one. It's personal and contextual. You can disagree with someone else's choice, but you can't say they were wrong.

And because outliers always have to suck it anyhow, they should continue to suck it. Not wanting them to be eternally in kneepads means OMG everybody has to build a 10-foot door for Ming Yao, which is obviously absurd, and thus, so is the entire idea of wanting life to be at least a little bit better for people you'll never meet.

But why would you demand that someone make life easier for one stranger and not another? Why do you think one person's suffering is more deserving than anothers? What is the similarity between Africans with guinea worm and fat Americans in airplanes that you think makes them worthy of getting help first?

And, more specifically, you can't make those arguments without personally doing something about those situations. You didn't include any qualifications. You didn't say that people should help out when they have a spare minute and a spare dollar. You said people should give; absolutely. So, if there's no room for argument, you can't justify not doing something yourself.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Me: I'm for 'em. I like 'em. I don't get upset when they sit next to me on an airplane. Instead, I get upset when others go "eTo view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. teh faaatz, make them pay more, they're taking up my spaaaace, they have no riiiiight, plus they're grossing me out with their soft fle-e-e-eeesh, eeeeTo view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts."

What is it with you and making everything gross? First it's the guinea worms crawling out of a woman's hoo-hoo and now it's fat people with their squishy flabbiness. There goes my LOLz.

I want you to expand on the idea that a person who paid for 2 feet of space, but tries to take up 3 feet, shouldn't have to pay for the extra foot. Why shouldn't a person who requires more resources than they initially bargained for be charged for the overage? Especially when they aren't just taking up more resources than budgeted, but they are specifically taking resources from someone who paid for them.

My issue isn't with the morality of fat. It's with the morality of theft.

How about this: instead of charging the fat person for another seat, what if we just give someone else a discount? What if the seat next to fat people is auctioned off, just like those bumped-seats on over-booked planes. People can voluneer to sit next to the expansive fattie in return for a partial refund of their original ticket price. I'm sure there are people who would go for that.

Ray9

05-02-2010, 08:03 AM

I think persons of size as they are referred to by the airlines, should only be allowed to fly on cargo planes once they reach certain dimensions that pose a threat to the safety to the other passengers.

elsdfr

05-02-2010, 08:08 AM

If people are being taxed for smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol then they should be also taxed for being over the "recommended average body weight".

yoginimama

05-02-2010, 08:18 AM

Exactly. You can't claim that the mere existence of suffering demands a response without going all the way. Otherwise, by definition, you are claiming that there is some suffering that doesn't actually demand a response, which turns your argument into a mere arbitrary choice. And arbitrary choices don't have any moral weight.

This is so interesting. You and I see the world so differently.

What are we arguing here, theory or practice? If a town wants to establish a police force on the grounds that "people should be safe," would you say all residents must then (a) become policemen themselves AND (b) give all their resources to every other municipality they can possibly reach, even just a penny, to help those municipalities form police forces too, OR (c) they have lost the "moral weight" behind the statement "people should be safe" and they are thus just making an "arbitrary choice"? And if so, what should they do then? Find a different rationale for funding a police force? Not have a police force at all, to maintain their conceptual integrity?

It sounds as if you're saying that, if a person espouses a principle, they have to dedicate their lives to furthering that principle everywhere and all the time, because if they fail to do so--say, if they concentrate their efforts on one aspect of the principle in one circumstance--then they are denying the principle.

I.e., "children should not go hungry" + "I throw some money at my local soup kitchen" = "I don't really believe ALL CHILDREN should not go hungry, just the ones that show up to my local soup kitchen" = "I don't really believe in my principle at all" = "I don't believe in anything, I am just committing arbitrary actions."

Have I got that more or less right? I can see where it's very consistent, but not very...what's the word...practical? Useful? Relevant? I mean...okay, so we're all arbitrary. You espouse principles too, like the principle that any principle not absolutely followed-through-on all the time devolves into total arbitrariness. Do you absolutely follow through on that principle all the time? :)

Actually, you probably do, and that's how come you can call being too big for an airline seat "theft."

If you're an American citizen currently living in the US, you're a thief too, or at the very least a squatter. Are you going to start cutting checks for back rent to your closest local Native American tribe? If not, then by your own definition, you are not really concerned with "the morality of theft" and are just applying the concept in an arbitrary way, which has no moral weight.

Which we all do, inevitably, so where does that leave us? Everything is arbitrary, nothing has any moral weight, but I abhor suffering where I see it and wish it could all be eradicated, and I am going to continue saying that, because that's my arbitrary choice.

Sorry I grossed you out with my descriptions. Didn't mean to.

Feral

05-02-2010, 09:14 AM

Moral or not, it's just plain rude to let your fat pile into someone else's seat, and there's really no good excuse for it.

Doesn't matter why you're fat, how long you've been fat, how you got fat, or your feelings about your fat - it's in someone else's space, and it's certainly not their fault that you're too damn big to fit into one spot, and it probably is your fault that you are. Truth hurts for sure, but that still doesn't change it. Just because you have more mass doesn't give you the right to take space from someone who purchased it.

Fat people have every right to purchase 2 seats. Their body, their travel, their responsibility. If you brought extra baggage onto a plane, would you expect to just carry it on and put it in someone's lap? What gives fat people the right to make others uncomfortable?

plotthickens

05-02-2010, 10:10 AM

Moral or not, it's just plain rude to let your fat pile into someone else's seat, and there's really no good excuse for it.

Doesn't matter why you're fat, (....) Truth hurts for sure, but that still doesn't change it.

When my family member dies and I need to go to the funeral, are my partner's broad shoulders just as repulsive as my fat ass to you? They both take up enormous amounts of space (though we fit into other seats just fine). Or is it just the fatty fatsters who engender your ire?

Are you aware that doctors do not know what causes obesity? Modern media would have you believe it's people sitting on the couch eating eating eating, but a bit of logical thinking would help in that area -- there are skinny people who do that but do not get fat.

The 1 out of every 15 women on Earth suffering and dying from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome's pain and cancer thank you for your understanding, respect, and humanity.

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elsdfr

05-02-2010, 10:33 AM

plotthickens you have no rational argument at all, give up and admit this topic is too close to home!

yoginimama

05-02-2010, 10:54 AM

plotthickens you have no rational argument at all, give up and admit this topic is too close to home!

Plotthickens is (I think--plotthickens, correct me if I'm wrong) trying to say the following:

Y'all are acting like fat people somehow like being too big for their airline seats. As if they were going "Oh, goody! I get to get on an airplane, spill over, and STEAL SOMEONE ELSE'S SPACE THAT THEY PAID FOR! Ha-ha, I get extra space for free!" So the right, good and true people of the world have to stand up and say, "STOP, greedy fatty! PAY for that space you are selfishly stealing! This here is a matter of ethics, morality and rationality."

Reality check: Most fat people in this society know very well that they're "too big," know very well that even the most enlightened people tend to consider them "probably" to blame for their size, and tend to feel hefty amounts of anxiety, self-consciousness, and shame when they have to fly, use a carpool, take a bus, etc.

A lot of people on this thread say that feelings like shame or self-loathing are irrelevant, so the logico-rational, thinking, INTJ thing to do is say "Too bad, fatty. Your shame does not change the fact that you are (even if only slightly) spilling over into my seat that I paid for, so you should have been forced to buy another one."

But that sense of offended territorialism, that's a feeling too. And the sense that, because you paid money for your seat, it and the airspace within it are YOURS YOURS YOURS--that's a feeling too, and often a culturally-conditioned one. (I hope none of you ever have to ride a train India.)

So what's really going on here is "ME ME ME" being (a) projected onto the Other (it's those fatties that are being selfish by breathing while big) and (b) dressed up in rationalist clothing (...and I have a right to be mad at them for being 'selfish' because there are principles and issues and concepts at stake!).

For people who are genuinely disturbed by possibly being crowded on an airplane--why don't you buy two seats? That way, whoever happens to sit down next to you--an "inconsiderate" fatty, a restless toddler, a chatty old lady, someone with Tourette's who yells "GAH!" every six and a half minutes--will be safely buffered from you by a little extra space, and you can travel in peace.

Feral

05-02-2010, 11:12 AM

...

No, it doesn't make a difference. I could care less as to the reason someone else is traveling, just as they don't care a damn bit as to why I'm traveling. I've never seen anyone who isn't overall hugely fat have shoulders SO broad that they're taking up an extra space on a plane. Arguments here are starting to get a bit ridiculous.

Not sure what Polycistic Ovarian Syndrome has to do with it... not going to reading back through the whole thread for that little bit of randomness.

Are you trying to say that some people can't help that they're fat? Yes, I know that. My favorite sister has a thyroid condition that makes her huge if her levels fluxuate counter to her medications- she pretty much eats salad, and she walks to work. I could lay in bed for a year and IV myself with chocolate fondue and not gain a pound.

Do any of these things actually matter?
No. They don't.
Were we on a plane together, I'd likely share some of my seat with her, wouldn't have a problem with it. But if she were flying alone, and with people who don't want to share her space, she'd likely need to get another seat. I hate that she'd have to do it, it hurts me to see her hurt, but again, those feelings really don't matter to anyone else.

The options are still there- lose some weight (which she will if she keeps getting her medication adjusted as she should), or pay for the extra space.
If it turned out that the plane wasn't full and she didn't NEED the extra seat, depending on the flight, she'd probably be reimbursed for the extra.

Your body, your responsibility to figure out the logistics of it, regardless of why it is how it is.

blueback

05-02-2010, 01:08 PM

If a town wants to establish a police force on the grounds that "people should be safe," would you say all residents must then (a) become policemen themselves AND (b) give all their resources to every other municipality they can possibly reach, even just a penny, to help those municipalities form police forces too, OR (c) they have lost the "moral weight" behind the statement "people should be safe" and they are thus just making an "arbitrary choice"?

Yup. Because they made an unqualified statement just like you.

If you say "x is right" you haven't left yourself any room to maneuver. X is right; and that's final. If, however, you actually don't think X is an unqualified right, then it is important to mention what is more important than X; what can override X in certain situations.

For example, if you claim "relieving suffering is right" then that is what you should do. Period. But, if your opinion is actually more nuanced than that, it is up to you to explain. It's not up to your audience to read your mind and imagine how rational you are. In the case of your town, if the only thing they think is right is to "keep people safe" then that's what they should do. However, if they actually think keeping people safe is merely an important thing, and not the most important thing, it is up to them to articulate that.

It's not like this is a tricky concept.

It sounds as if you're saying that, if a person espouses a principle, they have to dedicate their lives to furthering that principle everywhere and all the time, because if they fail to do so--say, if they concentrate their efforts on one aspect of the principle in one circumstance--then they are denying the principle.

That's pretty much right. I am taking your unqualified position to the logical extreme to point out to you the importance of not making silly, emotionally charged statements of universal moral imperitives. And, if one somehow slips out, the importance of being able to articulate the many (or even just a few) exceptions to what it is much more emotionally satisfying to say is a rule.

It doesn't make you a better person to adamantly declare that those poor suffering people in Africa deserve free money. Most everyone would like to help them out in some way if they could. But in reality there are so many other problems that need solving, and their particular problem is so large, that most people aren't going to address that problem. And it doesn't make you a bad person to admit that your own personal life is more important than the suffering of other people. It just makes you honest.

I.e., "children should not go hungry" + "I throw some money at my local soup kitchen" = "I don't really believe ALL CHILDREN should not go hungry, just the ones that show up to my local soup kitchen" = "I don't really believe in my principle at all" = "I don't believe in anything, I am just committing arbitrary actions."

Exactly! Most of this stuff is mere emotional gratification. People feel bad because they empathize with some particular brand of suffering (there's a very good reason charities always plaster their ads with close-ups of innocent starving children) and so they do something that makes them feel better. Did they help a homeless guy eat for a couple days, sure. Are they going to help more homeless guys, or ensure that homeless guy always has enough to eat? No, and there's no reason they should.

But, that means they don't get to claim they believe in the unqualified good of feeding homeless people. Because they really think there are many other things that are more important. Just doing it once, or just doing it a little bit all the time, means that it's still heavily qualified.

The moral high ground is not a qualified position.

...you can call being too big for an airline seat "theft."

That's not what I said. I said being too big for an airline seat, buying only one seat, and then expecting the people next to you to yield some of their space for free is theft. Conceptually it's no different from running out of phone minutes and expecting someone next to you on the bus to give you their phone and let you finish your conversation. When will we recognize the suffering of those who, through no fault of their own, talk a lot? They're suffering so much being constrained to just the phone minutes they purchased when there are other people, who don't talk as much, right next to them with unused minutes.

If you're an American citizen currently living in the US, you're a thief too, or at the very least a squatter. Are you going to start cutting checks for back rent to your closest local Native American tribe? If not, then by your own definition, you are not really concerned with "the morality of theft" and are just applying the concept in an arbitrary way, which has no moral weight.

You're right, I'm not really concerned with the morality of this topic. Just with the consistency of the discussion on it. That would be why I never called anyone to action. I'm not the one saying the entire developed world is evil for not trying to eradicate guinea worm earlier, or for not doing it faster. However, my position is still entirely consistent, as opposed to yours, which is (at best) poorly articulated and (at worst) mere emotion.

Which we all do, inevitably, so where does that leave us? Everything is arbitrary, nothing has any moral weight, but I abhor suffering where I see it and wish it could all be eradicated, and I am going to continue saying that, because that's my arbitrary choice.

Good for you! It's only a few more conceptual steps to realizing all morality is inherently arbitrary.

Y'all are acting like fat people somehow like being too big for their airline seats.

No one has ever said that. Not ever. Not even close. I no one can produce a single quote to back up that interpretation.

Reality check: Most fat people in this society know very well that they're "too big," know very well that even the most enlightened people tend to consider them "probably" to blame for their size, and tend to feel hefty amounts of anxiety, self-consciousness, and shame when they have to fly, use a carpool, take a bus, etc.

Man, that sucks. What should we do? Should we give them things for free so that they feel better about themselves? I know, maybe I should devote an hour a day to finding a fat person and telling them they're beautiful instead of, you know, spending that hour exercising. If EVERYONE does that, it won't matter that I get fat because someone who isn't exercising will come and tell me I'm beautiful.

Or, everyone could exercise, and then no one will have to tell anyone else they're beautiful.

A lot of people on this thread say that feelings like shame or self-loathing are irrelevant, so the logico-rational, thinking, INTJ thing to do is say "Too bad, fatty. Your shame does not change the fact that you are (even if only slightly) spilling over into my seat that I paid for, so you should have been forced to buy another one."

But that sense of offended territorialism, that's a feeling too. And the sense that, because you paid money for your seat, it and the airspace within it are YOURS YOURS YOURS--that's a feeling too, and often a culturally-conditioned one. (I hope none of you ever have to ride a train India.)

Ummm. . .so you really are arguing that skinny people should be forced to yield part of their seat to fat people? Becaue the fat person's feelings are more important than the skinny person's feelings? Is that because the fat person doesn't just feel bad about themselves on a plane, but every time they walk past a magazine stand, so they feel worse overall than skinny people?

Fun fact: if you buy something and the contract never mentioned feelings, you don't get to appeal to them later.

If I buy a ticket on a plane my contract says I get the space I paid for. If I buy a ticket on a bus in Japan my ticket says I get only as much space as I can successfully fight for. Those are the rules, and everyone understands them from the beginning. Any change to those rules based on how low someone's self-esteem has sunk are purely up to the charity of the people around them.

So what's really going on here is "ME ME ME" being (a) projected onto the Other (it's those fatties that are being selfish by breathing while big) and (b) dressed up in rationalist clothing (...and I have a right to be mad at them for being 'selfish' because there are principles and issues and concepts at stake!).

Why are the skinny people who you want to give up their space more selfish than the fat people who you want to take their space? How about this: the prisons are overcrowded. Why don't you let them house a couple prisoners in your house. If you refuse, you're really just being selfish.

For people who are genuinely disturbed by possibly being crowded on an airplane--why don't you buy two seats? That way, whoever happens to sit down next to you--an "inconsiderate" fatty, a restless toddler, a chatty old lady, someone with Tourette's who yells "GAH!" every six and a half minutes--will be safely buffered from you by a little extra space, and you can travel in peace.

Again, no one ever argued that you should be able to travel on an airline without knowing anyone else is traveling with you. Only that people too big for their seat shouldn't get some of yours unless you agree to give it to them. But I suppose that position is a bit too nuanced to make you feel self-righteous, and so gets ignored.

And why did you skip past my idea? I've already demonstrated that it really is the principle, and not the particular implementation of it, that is important:

How about this: instead of charging the fat person for another seat, what if we just give someone else a discount? What if the seat next to fat people is auctioned off, just like those bumped-seats on over-booked planes. People can voluneer to sit next to the expansive fattie in return for a partial refund of their original ticket price. I'm sure there are people who would go for that.

yoginimama

05-02-2010, 02:14 PM

Yup. Because they made an unqualified statement just like you.

If you say "x is right" you haven't left yourself any room to maneuver. X is right; and that's final. If, however, you actually don't think X is an unqualified right, then it is important to mention what is more important than X; what can override X in certain situations.

For example, if you claim "relieving suffering is right" then that is what you should do. Period. But, if your opinion is actually more nuanced than that, it is up to you to explain. It's not up to your audience to read your mind and imagine how rational you are. In the case of your town, if the only thing they think is right is to "keep people safe" then that's what they should do. However, if they actually think keeping people safe is merely an important thing, and not the most important thing, it is up to them to articulate that.

It's not like this is a tricky concept.

It's fascinating how often things come down to language with you. You would object to saying "It is right/important to keep people safe" if people also want to do other things, but would not object to saying "keeping people safe is an important thing," which is not in conflict with holding multiple priorities.

So...let me try this again.

I think relieving suffering is an important thing, and I also think that showing courtesy and kindness to fat people is an important thing. I think these things are each important for the same reason, which is that I personally want to be thought of, and, where possible, treated with kindness and courtesy, so I think that expressing kind and courteous thoughts myself is an important thing to do.

It doesn't make you a better person to adamantly declare that those poor suffering people in Africa deserve free money....Most of this stuff is mere emotional gratification.

What's wrong with that? So is going to the opera or watching football. Whatever floats your boat. And either way, people benefit. If you go to the opera, the specific singers and musicians in that company get to keep their jobs a little while longer. If you watch football, the people who packaged that game for TV get to keep their jobs a little longer. If you write a check to a food bank, or serve food, then some people having hard times get one more hot meal.

Good for you! It's only a few more conceptual steps to realizing all morality is inherently arbitrary.

I do realize that. I recognize it both in the sense of "diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks" AND in the sense that no one person can achieve total moral coherence/consistency. In fact, no one should. We are meant to be messy and fuzzy and at least a bit contradictory.

No one has ever said that. Not ever. Not even close. I no one can produce a single quote to back up that interpretation.

And the often vitriolic tone with which people have accused fatties of "taking" their space, and demanded that said fatties have to Stop It Right Now? It's as if we were talking about strangling puppies, fergodsake.

Not that anyone has any reason to be angry at anyone for strangling a puppy, especially not if they eat meat and/or go hunting, because if you eat meat and/or hunt, and you get angry at witnessing someone strangle a puppy, you are being incoherent and hence arbitrary :)

But I suppose that position is a bit too nuanced to make you feel self-righteous, and so gets ignored.

And this:

Man, that sucks. What should we do? Should we give them things for free so that they feel better about themselves? I know, maybe I should devote an hour a day to finding a fat person and telling them they're beautiful instead of, you know, spending that hour exercising. If EVERYONE does that, it won't matter that I get fat because someone who isn't exercising will come and tell me I'm beautiful.

...isn't an example of blueback flattening out the nuance so as to get that sweet hit of self-righteousness?

The difference between you and me on this particular thread is: I am giving myself that hit by carping at the relatively more powerful: airlines, people whose bodies conform a bit more to the "ideal" (and who arrogate to themselves the right to complain about people whose bodies don't), people who conquered and exploited and are still exploiting the African continent.

You, in this thread, are giving yourself that hit by saying "Too bad, fatties! Too bad, Africans! Hey, sucks to be you! No one promised you a rose garden, so buy two seats like a good little outlier and quit putting your feet in the water!"

You're kicking downward instead of upward, taking a hard rhetorical line against people who are already relatively stigmatized rather than those who are relatively comfortable.

When I want to play anger parasite, I prefer to attach to a whale rather than a tadpole. YMMV.

Feral

05-02-2010, 03:35 PM

yoginimama

05-02-2010, 05:00 PM

So how about this- I have anxiety about being touched without my consent... and a lot of the time, even with consent. It makes my skin crawl to feel someone else's warmth on me when I don't want it there.

I'm still not seeing why a fat person has the right to take up my seat just because I don't take up the whole thing. Why do they have the right to infringe on my personal bubble?

This isn't rocket science in the least.

1) That way of looking at it is culturally conditioned. Which doesn't make it invalid--but, as blueback would no doubt say, it does make it arbitrary. Why do they have the "right to infringe" on your personal bubble? Well, why do you have the right to assert a "personal bubble"? What makes you think you possess something called a "personal bubble" that extends at least four inches beyond your skin? Only the social convention of where you live. Such a concept is not even recognized everywhere. In many places, people will cram right up next to you, body to body, on buses or in restaurants or trains. If you told them they were "infringing on your personal bubble," they wouldn't have the vaguest idea what you meant. And if you explained to them that you have anxiety about being touched and don't like to feel someone else's warmth on you, they would probably think, "Well, gee, too bad for h/er, but that doesn't give h/er the right to make me move."

In other words, this whole "fat people taking up my space" thing is 100% social-convention-ism.

2) It's not like you were sitting at a restaurant table in the United States and a fat person pulled up a chair right next to you and stuck their elbow on your table so they would have a better angle to slam back the nachos. That would be "infringing on your space"--a rude, deliberate, unwarranted intrusion. The airline seat thing is an unintended consequence of the fact that the fat person is fat. It's the same thing as if a mom and baby took up the two remaining seats in your row. If the baby starts screaming and crying, you wouldn't say, "Why does that woman have the right to let her baby cry in this airplane?" Well, there's nowhere else she can take it. If she were in a restaurant or a movie theater or a church or something, you could certainly reasonably expect her to get up and take her crying baby outside. On an airplane, that can't happen. Yet nobody is suggesting that babies be sequestered in a special section of the plane, or that people traveling with babies should have to buy a whole row, or pay extra for the noise pollution. (Actually, somewhere, people probably are. These would be people who are particularly bothered by baby noise. And their proposals would probably seem totally logical, rational and reasonable to them.)

3) I have anxieties and phobias too. But I try not to make them someone else's problem unless they're unfortunate enough to be my family or close friend, or unless I'm unfortunate enough to slide into panic and need immediate help.

If having someone encroach on my seat were a serious issue for me, I would try to consider it my problem, not the stranger's problem. I would try to deal with it on my end: neurotically (buying two seats for myself as a preemptive strike, and here's where my unfortunate family would come in--"Time to help defray the costs of yogi's panic disorder"), even more neurotically (trying to avoid flying), somewhat less neurotically (talking it out in therapy, getting a sedative for the flight to take the edge off), and so forth.

4) Flying is a difficult situation for everyone--triggering, tiring, boring, annoying. Instead of saying "Why do they have the right to add to my burden," I think it's more helpful to say, "How can I help myself bear my particular burden with greater ease."

blueback

05-02-2010, 06:15 PM

It's fascinating how often things come down to language with you. You would object to saying "It is right/important to keep people safe" if people also want to do other things, but would not object to saying "keeping people safe is an important thing," which is not in conflict with holding multiple priorities.

Consistency is imporant. In fact, the argument could be made that it's the most important thing of all. But that would be off topic. What we should all focus on is that I'm right (and humble). It is more accurate for you to say "an", or whatever correction you want to make to how you express your ideas to keep them from self-contradiction. Making those little adjustments gets easier over time; you stop letting them escape your head and start making the corrections before you speak (or write). Then you start making the corrections before you are even done thinking, and after a while the stuff that comes out of you becomes more and more accurate. And then you turn into "that guy" who nitpicks everyone else.

Think about it this way. Language is a summary. It is just a series of symbols. What looks like a minor, even meaningless change, and create huge errors when the summary is decompressed. A single bit-flip in a string of 1's and 0's can render the entire stream completley useless; it looks like a small change, but it's really a huge change.

I think relieving suffering is an important thing, and I also think that showing courtesy and kindness to fat people is an important thing.

Cool. But why don't fat people have to show just as much courtesy and kindness to other people? If you think you should buy two seats so that no one can possibly encroach on your space, then why don't you think fat people should buy two seats so that they don't encroach on anyone's space? It is their extra need that is causing the problem after all. Wouldn't it be kind and courteous of them to think of others ahead of time? It's not like they're surprised when they find they can't fit into the seat.

I think these things are each important for the same reason, which is that I personally want to be thought of, and, where possible, treated with kindness and courtesy, so I think that expressing kind and courteous thoughts myself is an important thing to do.

Absolutely. I agree with the sentiment. There is never a situation so bad that poor manners still aren't a choice. However, it's possible to politely tell someone to buy as many resources as they need, and not plan on guilting their neighbors into involuntary donations.

I do realize that. I recognize it both in the sense of "diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks" AND in the sense that no one person can achieve total moral coherence/consistency. In fact, no one should. We are meant to be messy and fuzzy and at least a bit contradictory.

Yeah, that's not what I meant. I meant that, literally, all moral standards are arbitrary choices. By definition morality cannot be used to pick a moral standard. One is as "good" as another, because "good" doesn't exist before one is chosen. Again, off topic.

It is possible to be totally morally consistent. The fact that the standards might be capricious doesn't mean that the resulting actions have to be. It's not inconsistent to act on a higher moral standard instead of a lower one. It is totally acceptable to kill in self-defense (at least in most circles). Normally it is never acceptable to kill, but one's own life is more important than those other standard, so acting on it by killing isn't inconsistent. It's just important to clearly understand the hierarchy.

If you want to donate a dollar a month to guinea worm eradication then do so. It's an appropriate way to act on the conviction that the guinea worm needs to be eradicated, but that said eradication isn't as important as, say, your morning coffee. Just don't fool yourself, or try to fool others, that you think it's more important than it really is.

And the often vitriolic tone with which people have accused fatties of "taking" their space, and demanded that said fatties have to Stop It Right Now? It's as if we were talking about strangling puppies, fergodsake.

Stop arguing against people who make emotional appeals. I don't think any of them are even around anymore if they were ever here to begin with. It's not hard to point out that hating someone because they're fat is stupid. Or that getting violently angry just because someone is pressing against you is stupid. Anyone who actually did that would be generally considered an idiot. You don't need to defend fat people against them.

Not that anyone has any reason to be angry at anyone for strangling a puppy, especially not if they eat meat and/or go hunting, because if you eat meat and/or hunt, and you get angry at witnessing someone strangle a puppy, you are being incoherent and hence arbitrary :)

I think you're still having trouble grasping the concept. The important thing is that strangling puppies is a good stress reliever, and fat people need to do it to raise their self-esteem, which is dangerously low from being fat :)

...isn't an example of blueback flattening out the nuance so as to get that sweet hit of self-righteousness?

I just thought it was a funny idea. Maybe I should have added an emoticon.

The difference between you and me on this particular thread is: I am giving myself that hit by carping at the relatively more powerful: airlines, people whose bodies conform a bit more to the "ideal" (and who arrogate to themselves the right to complain about people whose bodies don't), people who conquered and exploited and are still exploiting the African continent.

You, in this thread, are giving yourself that hit by saying "Too bad, fatties! Too bad, Africans! Hey, sucks to be you! No one promised you a rose garden, so buy two seats like a good little outlier and quit putting your feet in the water!"

You're kicking downward instead of upward, taking a hard rhetorical line against people who are already relatively stigmatized rather than those who are relatively comfortable.

I'm just explaining the logic.

Actions speak louder than words, and you're not in Africa helping UNICEF, you're not patrolling planes for fattie-haters, you're living your life. So, through your actions, you are saying all those things that I actually say in so many words. The only difference is you seem to think your actions aren't exactly the same as mine if you spread a pleasing layer of empathy-icing on top. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. But someone still has to work with the medicine in all its noxious, realistic, effective glory before Julie Andrews can bribe the kids to take it with candy.

1) That way of looking at it is culturally conditioned. Which doesn't make it invalid--but, as blueback would no doubt say, it does make it arbitrary. Why do they have the "right to infringe" on your personal bubble? Well, why do you have the right to assert a "personal bubble"? What makes you think you possess something called a "personal bubble" that extends at least four inches beyond your skin? Only the social convention of where you live.

That's a stupid argument, which is why it's easy to debunk.

The real argument is the one I keep bringing up, and you keep ignoring. Please explain why people who knowingly enter into a contract for a certain amount of space have a right to take up space that someone else already contracted for. Everyone knows how airplanes work. The seats are barely adequate for the average person, so if you're above average in girth you aren't going to fit.

People currently solve this problem by simply guilting the people next to them into leaning into the aisle so they can spread out. The thing you want people to do, just take it, is what they usually do. The cultural convention is to let fat people take the space they need even though they didn't pay or it.

In other words, this whole "fat people taking up my space" thing is 100% social-convention-ism.

To be fair, there are few cultures in the world with as many fat people as America. So maybe those other cultures will start to change when only half as many people can cram into a train.

2) It's not like you were sitting at a restaurant table in the United States and a fat person pulled up a chair right next to you and stuck their elbow on your table so they would have a better angle to slam back the nachos. That would be "infringing on your space"--a rude, deliberate, unwarranted intrusion. The airline seat thing is an unintended consequence of the fact that the fat person is fat.

Actually, that's exactly like it. On an airplane the fat person just shows up and acts all surprised that the seat is too small for them, and is all "Oh, I hope my elbows don't bother you." Or they simply don't mention it. People know that it's basically just the luck of the draw whether or not you get sat next to someone too big for their seat (belly or shoulders).

It's the same thing as if a mom and baby took up the two remaining seats in your row. If the baby starts screaming and crying, you wouldn't say, "Why does that woman have the right to let her baby cry in this airplane?"

Again, no one ever argued that you should be able to travel on an airline without knowing anyone else is traveling with you. Only that people too big for their seat shouldn't get some of yours unless you agree to give it to them. But I suppose that position is a bit too nuanced to make you feel self-righteous, and so gets ignored.

3) I have anxieties and phobias too. But I try not to make them someone else's problem unless they're unfortunate enough to be my family or close friend, or unless I'm unfortunate enough to slide into panic and need immediate help.

So, why aren't you arguing that someone who has extra blubber should try not to make it someone else's problem? It's not my blubber, why is it in my seat?

4) Flying is a difficult situation for everyone--triggering, tiring, boring, annoying. Instead of saying "Why do they have the right to add to my burden," I think it's more helpful to say, "How can I help myself bear my particular burden with greater ease."

It's amazing your bone marrow can keep up with the steady loss of blood from that bleeding heart :) Maybe it's just that you are afraid of confrontation?

yoginimama

05-02-2010, 07:01 PM

Cool. But why don't fat people have to show just as much courtesy and kindness to other people? If you think you should buy two seats so that no one can possibly encroach on your space, then why don't you think fat people should buy two seats so that they don't encroach on anyone's space?

That is a really good point.

Actually, maybe you can help me with this. You're good at thinking things like this through and clearly enjoy it. Here is my question:

I do understand that it's inconsistent of me to say, "I should show courtesy to fat people/smokers/whatever because showing courtesy is right, but they do not have to show courtesy to me, because I am too busy showing courtesy to THEM to ever allow such a thing."

But then...it seems to me that the other side of it runs into the same problem: "I can politely request that my fat seatmate show me the courtesy of taking actions to avoid intruding on my space, but I do not have to show them the courtesy of having already bought two spaces for myself to avoid this situation (since I know that it particularly bothers me to be encroached on)."

You say that the fat person can't possibly be surprised when they turn out not to fit into the seat, so they should have thought ahead. Well...you (or anyone bothered by being encroached on) can't possibly be surprised by the possibility that someone will encroach on you, so you should have thought ahead too.

Either both of you should have thought ahead, and thereby ended up with TWO seats between you, or neither of you should have thought ahead, and ended up squished together.

But the positions you and I have been advocating--me think ahead but not the fat person/fat person think ahead but not me--both seem imbalanced to me.

Your thoughts?

P.S. The way I have dealt with this imbalance in my own life is this way: I generally (not always), in many (but not all) circumstances, go by the (not-quite-a) principle that "you can't expect someone else to do something you're not willing to do yourself." So: if I think encroachment on airplanes is a BIG HUGE PROBLEM, and I think fat people should buy two seats, then I should buy two seats too, and thereby be part of the solution to the overall encroachment problem--and also, free bonus track, silently rebuke one-seat fat people by my example.