Comment on 'Buy one, get one free' deals for unhealthy food banned in supermarkets
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoUnless you want to do something dystopian like requiring a parenthood licence before people are allowed to have children and then force them to keep it renewed by attending regular parenthood classes, you can’t force people to receive education on how to be better parents. The state doesn’t have many levers to pull that don’t involve taking people’s children away. Making harmful products less appealing by preventing retailers promoting them is a much better balance of good effect against oppression. The kind of deal being restricted here is something supermarkets do because it manipulates people into buying things they otherwise wouldn’t. It’s not like every time you see a BOGOF sale in a shop it’s because they’re overstocked and are trying to clear things before they go past their sell-by date. If that’s not happening, then the only rational reason for supermarkets to have these deals is to manipulate their customers, and it’s not oppressive for a government to prevent multi-billion pound companies from manipulating its citizens.
Bassman27@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I agree it’s used to manipulate but that’s the nature of a free market. I Shouldn’t have my choices taken away by the government and be burdened by the other recent changes just because some people have no self control or can’t effectively police what their kid does online.
Parenthood license also sounds like a great idea and I would be super on board with it. Bad parenting is often a vicious cycle that can destroy families over multiple generations. A license would be a preventative measure to stop children’s lives being ruined by unfit parents. Much like the porn ban stopping people from becoming porn obsessed psychos or stopping me from becoming obese because of my donut addiction.
These rules for the “greater good” are quite frankly a bit shit…
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Unless you’re a Ferengi or Ayn Rand, a free market shouldn’t allow agents within the market to manipulate each other, as that inhibits trades being done solely based on what gives the best value for the least currency, making the market less free. The regulation here isn’t taking away a choice you want to have as supermarkets that run BOGOF offers just set the unit price to the cost of two units, so your choice is between paying for two things and getting two things or paying for two things and only getting one. Effectively, your choice to just buy one thing at a fair price is taken away by supermarkets, and it’s dressed up to make it look like you’re getting a bargain when you pay a fair price for two things and get two things.
A parenthood licence is a really common trope in dystopian fiction because it’s fundamentally the most authoritarian thing a state could do short of mind control. If you don’t trust a government to decide whether or not there should be BOGOF offers on crisps, you absolutely shouldn’t trust them to decide who gets to have children. For most of the twentieth century, the British government was actively trying to suppress minority political opinions like it being acceptable for people to be homosexual or anti-pollution. If they’d been deciding what the requirements were to get a parenthood licence, they’d absolutely have made people agree to teach their children that it wasn’t okay to be gay etc…