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grecy10/12/20241 replyview on HN

And you think the solution is a prescription drug?


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ironman147810/12/2024

In the moment yes. Do you have an actually reasonable set of laws that could solve these societal level problems that encourage obesity in let's say, the next ten years? Also, they have to be passable.

Here is another disease caused and triggered by society. Asthma. Cars cause tons of pollution and people who live near highways are at much greater risk of experiencing asthma. However, society as a whole suffers from the pollution generated by cars. We all know this. The bay area has something called "spare the air day" which is a day where they ask people to not drive, when it's particularly smoggy. This has never worked. There are always people driving, because they gotta get places and the bay area can't built trains and the buses are awful. So people drive. What is the societal solution to localized pollution (like smog)? Better public transit, higher taxes on gas and on larger vehicles which produce more tire based pollution, and more tolls. But we don't do any of that. We know as a society how to reduce car based smog, which would reduce asthma and other diseases, but we don't do it, so we throw inhalers at people to get them to stop complaining. It's not super different from the weight problem in my eyes.

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