[FRIAM] Santa Fe's Sugar Tax

[Steven A Smith]

On 4/26/17 10:00 AM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> Could we get back to Tom's OP? I for one am a "no" vote for exactly 
> Tom's reasons.
>
I can't help you with the vote.  While I'm a county resident, I am not a 
city resident for just such reasons.   If I did have a dog in this 
particular fight, I would tend to support the "no" vote for roughly 
Tom's reasons as well.   But then I tend toward voting "no" against most 
new legislation and wish I could vote "no" against a lot of old 
legislation as well.

My former-libertarian self shudders every time someone tries to 
"legislate morality" or "health" or "good clean living"...   but my 
socially progressive self wishes for a culture/group/society/community 
that isn't addicted to high-fructose corn-syrup based artificially 
flavored and colored sugary drinks sometimes right from the bottle (I'm 
sure you have seen parent fill a baby bottle with soda? I have.)

I also don't believe in "two wrongs make a right", though I have seen 
two problems put together in such a way that they seem to constitute a 
solution!    I see the appeal for the sugar tax to fund preK 
education.   It feels vaguely like such a situation.

Back to the Bent end of the Thread:

On 4/25/17 4:51 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
> I think one of the useful arguments in this vein is the one often lobbed against the concept of a free market.  There is no such thing; and there will/can never be such a thing.  So, your question seems to assume there is a "true" economy by comparison to the "false" economies (or an upside right one vs an upside down one).  What makes you _believe_ ... where lies your faith in true or upside right economies?  Maybe your Utopian homunculus has broken free of its chains?
>
> This is, I think, different from the "best of all possible world"... It's more like a rejection of a stable landscape.  There are no optima ... or perhaps all optima are local (in time, space, and sub-graph)?
I agree that my whole thesis includes the assumption/questioning of what 
means "free market" or "true economy".  At best, these would seem to be 
platonic ideals.   I also agree (if I parse you correctly) that my 
maunderings about right-side-up and up-side-down economies are built on 
top of Value Sysems which in the extreme lead to Utopian/Dystopian idealism.

I'm interested in discussing more about the stable landscape and local 
optima apprehension of the problem.  If you have read this far into my 
post (you may be the only one Glen), then maybe you could give an 
example of the Sugar Tax in this language?

- Steve

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