Should there be an obesity tax?

Again for the third time you appear to be summarizing my position in a way that is completely different to the points I know myself I am making. I am unsure whether this failure of communication lies on my side - your side - or a mixture of the two. But regardless the failure is there. You have three times in a row now come out strongly against positions I absolutely know I A) do not hold and B) have not moved to espouse in even the smallest way.

So I am unsure how to progress the conversation at this point and unless you have any good ideas - I agree with your previous post that we should probably just leave it there.

That is one likely interpretation. Another likely interpretation is that it is proof/evidence that it is difficult for the majority to attain it in that way specifically. I am certainly not qualified to discern between the two. Even a little bit.

But yes losing weight is not easy. I would be the last person on the thread to suggest it is. As I said in a previous post there was even studies suggesting that not only is it hard to lose weight - but if you lose it, regain it, and attempt to lose it again - the effort required actually goes up significantly! Which makes no sense under the rubric of "Weight loss is nothing more than calories in minus calories out". It certainly suggests weight loss is both more difficult and more nuanced than some people give it credit for.

On a slightly related note - I think it was Joe Rogan (not sure) recently who ranted quite passionately about homelessness in parts of the US. He was astounded at the very large and ever increasing quantities of money being pumped into "solutions" for it yet the problem just gets proportionately worse. His conclusion is that that particular industry has no incentive to actually solve the homelessness crisis. Because then the gravy train would stop.

I do not know much about the "diet industry" myself. So I plead ignorance here. But I would certainly think it would be prudent to wonder if the same issue might be in play there. Would such an industry making billions as you say actually and actively be interested in solving issues like obesity? Or would their gravy train be entirely dependent on the issue being ongoing or even ever worsening?

What you say does make sense to me tax I'm just not sure if there are outliers rather than a whole array of different people with different ways of living and reasons for those ways.

We should be able to have a conversation about the importance of health and how weight ties in to that. But why can we not include all the possible reasons a person may not be able to lose weight or why they may choose not to?

Some posters here are completely discounting anything other than a person being lazy or self deluded or to use Cognitive Dissident's words "lacking in willpower". I think that's a pretty shít stance to take.

I know one family where the children are overweight and it appears to be because their mum feeds them rubbish and food is a sort of babysitter.

I also know of another person who has binge eating disorder. It's real and it's painful but they seem to be getting a handle on it.

In my closer circle there's a number of people who could stand to lose a few pounds for the sake of their health but who are happy out.

Lots of different people. It just baffles me why they can't all be taken in to account when looking at rising weight levels in our population.

I agree we have to be careful with the term "outliers" and what we actually mean when we use it. When I use it I specifically mean people who have outright medical conditions - which can not be cured but only mediated at best - which make it difficult if not even near impossible for them to address their weight. Such people exist and we should account for them. But I fear some people happily use them to suggest that any conversation about general weight issues in a general population can not usefully be had.

Inside the general population of which I speak however - what you said above becomes very relevant. Different people with different lifestyles and life pressures and incentives and hurdles. So a more nuanced conversation is absolutely useful there you are right.

I am someone who subscribed heavily to personal responsibility, self discipline and what Jokko Willink would call "Extreme ownership". But despite that near religious dedication to phrases like "Discipline equals freedom" I still find the entire thing vastly more nuanced that someone like "Cognitive Dissident" who you also mention. As if "willpower" is a 0 or 1, on or off, have it or do not have it, use it or do not use it thing.

I do not see it as so black and white. Rather I view it more like muscles. You can be weak and be able to lift weights. You can have all the muscles in the world and fail to be able to lift the weights. It all depends on the weights put in front of you to lift! So telling someone simply "You just need to have willpower" assumes that everyone has the same weights to lift in life. They do not. You can have all the willpower in the world and still fail if the challenges before your willpower exceed it. You can have bugger all will power and still succeed because the task before you is simple.

And most of all willpower and attainment appears - to me at least - to be something that begets more willpower and attainment. So the "just use your willpower and do it" mantra tends to fail. There are all kinds of stats saying "x% of diets fail" and I think that very often this is because people try to do too much too soon and too fast. I failed in my life of self improvement too for the same reason. Until I settled on a very incremental method of self improvement. And the results of that built up over - and are still building up over - 20 years. I am still not 100% where I want to be. But I am on and have stayed on the path. And I am no paragon of willpower by any measure.