TheAgitator.com
Reducto ad Totalitarianism
Thursday, July 31st, 2003Two good pieces on the fat suits:
Sally Szwarc questions the whole obesity epidemic to begin with. The whole lengthy piece is worth reading, because it debunks every bit of obesity misinformation we’ve been fed over the last decade or so. Yes, many of us are getting fatter. But we’re also living longer. And the dangers associated with obesity are probably overblown.
On the lawsuit front, this piece by Robert Tracinski sums up the trial lawyer epidemic (and that, friends, is the rea epidemice):
Indeed, fast-food lawsuits began as a joke, an example of obviously ridiculous legalistic meddling. Critics first imagined fast-food litigation as a “reductio ad absurdum”âa reduction to absurdityâof the lawsuits against tobacco companies. If lawsuits can be used to ban any product considered “unhealthy,” critics argued, then logically the same approach could be used to sue fast-food chains for selling greasy burgers and fried chicken.The problem with the “reductio ad absurdum” argument, one of my philosophy teachers once warned me, is that your opponent may simply embrace the logical end result of his ideasâno matter how absurd it is. And that’s exactly what is happening now.
Almost makes me want to eschew my federalist inclinations and opt for federal tort reform. Almost.
The issue of tort reform is one of those few instances where I can’t cleanly reconcile my capitalist beliefs with what appears to be a glaring problem.
People should have the right to see civil sanction against those who wrong and harm them. Free market fraud fighting would depend on this counterbalancing backlash against contract violators and those who operate on bad faith. Given enough time, the reputation of the company/doctor/etc. would plummet and so would it’s fortunes.
The problem seems to be based in the entitlement mentality a large number of people in this nation apparently hold and a serious lack of principled and just jurors and judges. Frivolity in the courts is nothing new, but too much of it is getting past the first lines of defense, and even worse, some of it is getting to the higher reaches and becoming legal precedent. It takes years to undo the damage caused by this.
The legal system isn’t a truely free market so it wouldn’t be right to call this a “market failure” but it seems to be described as such implicitly. Often when confronted by an anti-capitalist with situations like this where free people can’t seem to fix a problem on their own, I say things take time to sort themselves out. But the problem gets greater and greater with time. The arguement could be made that more and more people are deserving of these lawsuits and more and more people are standing up for themselves in the face of fraudulent businesses and malpractice, but the problem isn’t really that but irrational fines.
Of course, the interesting thing is the left wants THIS market to remain free-er while the right generally wants THIS market to be regulated greater. Something is philosophically amiss…
But would it be right to restrict both our ability to bring these suits and to levy fines against others? It certainly would count as market intrusion and intervention, which I almost unanimously disapprove of. How would we go about fixing the problem of outrageous financial penalties and still preserve our right to sue? Has anyone run across some good or interesting articles worth reading on this?
I like TechCentral, but this notion that obesity isn’t bad for you is a bit much (okay, that’s not exactly the focus of the article - but bear with me).
Fact: People are living longer than ever. Not disputed. However, when you can take a cocktail of six pills to lower your blood pressure, ease your aches, improve your circulation, decrease your cholesterol, and help your kidneys stave off destructive, full-blown diabetes, do you think that might have just something to do with it?
Yes, the BMI is ridiculous. I’m “overweight” and I have a body fat of around 11% - the index simply doesn’t account for the weight of muscle.
So, is obesity offing people left and right? Who the hell knows? If you can’t link smoking to death, or even drinking to accidents (blatant shout-out to Radley), then what makes us think we can tie in Ho-Hos to infarctions?
One thing that cannot be debated: an obese person’s quality of life will be greatly diminished as compared to someone who is fit.
Razor Milkshake:
Obesity isn’t that bad when compared to starvation. And not eating food that’s available is leaps and bounds easier than trying to get a meal where there is none. I’m not arguing, just providing my interpretation of techcentral’s sentiments.
It’s like we’re moaning,”oh, we’re so fat. We have so much food. Poor us. Our life is so hard.” It’s gross.
Josh:
Clearly to be fat and merry is better than emaciated and dying. But the fact that we’re so complacent that we can just eat and eat is surely a sign of something larger being wrong with us.
If you look at the diabetes in this country, especially juvenile diabetes, you’d be hard-pressed not to find a problem that is getting worse.
Once you get past basic subsistence problems in a society, is when things get more challenging. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to huff and puff our way to the finish line.
Obesity is a problem in this country. But whose fault is it? Is it the fast food industry? No. It’s our own damn fault. Who’da thought that eating massive amounts of fat and sugar would make you unhealthy? DUH! It also doesn’t help that we have become an increasingly sedentary society with our internet, video games, and 600 channel satillite systems. Maybe we should sue AOL or DirectTV for making us fat.
And to elaborate on Glenn’s point, the fact that it’s our own fault (not mine, I’m a personal trainer) is precisely what makes it a non-problem, as far as policy etc is concerned.
There’s nothing “wrong” with people who eat and lounge their way to obesity. Eating is immediate gratification, physical labor is delayed gratification.
So when we point fingers at anyone other than the responsible individual, we enable the very behaivior we’re supposedly trying to eradicate/minimize. It’s the same mentality as the Drug War.
Charles,
One solution i’m a big fan of, is to force the plaintiff to pay all court costs, including defense attorney fees, if said plaintiff files a lawsuit and loses. The very real threat that filing a lawsuit can have extremely high costs to you would deter those would-be plaintiffs in all but the most clear cut cases of wrongdoing. they could not afford to bring frivoulous lawsuits, unless of course they have deep pockets of their own.
Julian Sanchez has dubbed this reductio-becomes-reality phenomenon “reductio creep.” We need to spread that meme.
I’d go along with Craig’s solution with one proviso: Losing plaintiff pays defense attorney fees up to the amount of his own attorney fees. (Obviously there would have to be some provision for pro bono or contingency cases.)
Absent such a limit, you have the situation where Joe Plaintiff faces the prospect of financial ruin from paying the $10,000/hour “legal expenses” of MegaCorp’s “defense team” should he sue and lose. This way, Joe always knows his exposure: Court costs + double Trial Lawyer Shark’s bill.
Josh has such an apt statement: It’s like we’re moaning,”oh, we’re so fat. We have so much food. Poor us. Our life is so hard.” It’s gross.
The overweight debate is strikingly devoid of a dominant factor - - relative inactivity. Today’s caloric intake would cause much less obesity and diabetes if we had to walk and engage in the laborious activities of a century ago. Today we are blessed with much less premature death due to infection and accidents; there is also a CORRESPONDING reduced exposure to lower-grade illnesses - - illnesses that reduced the population’s body stores of fat.