Tuesday, September 8, 2015

i think she made a very cogent point, and you've merely strengthened her argument.


but, i've gleaned from another post here that this woman is a canadian. and i need to interject a cultural difference related to our health care systems.

even on the other side of the forced insurance scheme that is obamacare, the united states remains a society where people pay for their own health care. whatever the inefficiencies in such a system, an american individual is ultimately responsible for funding the consequences of their own health decisions. should they decide to be obese (and spare me the nonsense), then the costs for this decision will ultimately come out of their own pocket. such a system more or less seems to shield the individual from the sort of criticism in the original post.

in canada, we have a single payer system. what that means is that we all pay into a system of limited resources to take care of each other. over-eating is consequently not a victimless crime, as the resources used to treat obesity are siphoned out of other, more legitimate uses. it's not just obesity. it's smoking. it's intravenous drug use. the consequences of all of these things are preventable, and because the society pays for care collectively, it reserves the right to try and coerce others into behaviour that reduces the social costs.

it is out of this different health care delivery system that the idea of fat shaming - and smoke shaming - becomes entirely justified. it's not restricted to an individual choice, it's also a public health issue regarding the use of public funds and the expenditure of public resources.

now, this isn't entirely divorced from the american system - there are not infinite health resources in america. but, the artificial scarcity produced by high costs buffers the effects on the system, somewhat - but only somewhat. at the end of the day, the obese are still siphoning out resources as a consequence of preventable health issues created by making bad choices.

the idea that we ought to be able to do whatever we want, and fuck everybody else, is very american. but it is not sustainable. and it is not canadian. whether you like her video or not, there are hard truths in it that we all need to grapple with.

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Nana M
correlation: a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things

mjsteele42
He was making fun of her mispronouncing the word.  She was saying it as though it had a hyphen: "co-relation."

phnexOice
I don't know if the pronunciation is a Canadian thing, or if she's just an idiot, most likely the latter.

deathtokoalas
i think you might want to take a closer look at the word and think really carefully about how it was constructed and what it means.