Sooo I just got back from my visit to Bloomsburg, maybe I will blog about it later. Right now, I have a different topic on my mind.
(one thing that did piss me off about BOTH colleges was they both had some type of “get health lose weight” program. At B it was “Lose Flab Get Fab!” or some shit. God I just wanted to tear down that little papers off the wall. I don’t know if that is just some lame little program or it it’s popular or not. Ughh but Cedar Crest had a “Healthy U” program were you get weighed in and it’s a fucking competition. That pissed me off. So I guess comparitively Blooms wasn’t as big a thing, seeing as I only saw two little hot pink papers on a bulletin board, but Cedars had a whole chunk of their website dedicated to it… UGH!)
ANYWAY!
That’s not what I am going to talk about now.
So I get home my visit and I make the rounds on my fat blogs that I oh-so-lurveee to read. I always go to Shapely Prose first, just because it’s easy to remember the URL lol. Plus, I just always like to check it first. From there I head on over to the Fatosphere link and read and read and read. So anywho, I was at Shapely Prose and read this post, and it made me remember a topic i wanted to write about in this blog about Capitalism.
So in our senior year, students at my high school are forced to take Gov/Econ. We don’t have a choice (thank you education). Emulee can vouch for this fact. We had Government the first semester, and are currently in Economics. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like Economics (a whole hell of a lot more than Government… uGH!). We are currently talking about how self interest is good for the economy. See, when people are trying to sell stuff, the ones who have the best product/quality for the price generally are the ones that sell, so it is in a sellers best interest to make the best product so they can get $$$ from us old consumers. And something about an invisible hand or other and a guy called Adam Smith.
Apparently back in the olden days people thought his theories were pretty sucky and radical. Back then being selfish was BAD and the thought of our whole economy being based on it would lead to CHAOS (or something like that..). So most people thought it was crap. But apparently, as we know, it is not. When people are selfish it benefits society and something about a butcher. Because the butcher doesn’t put meat on the table because he is nice, it’s because he wants $$$ and people to think he is nice, or something. (as you can tell, I should probably study my book alittle bit more. Maybe Emuhlee can correct me if I am wrong).
What I disagree with about this self-interest is that it benefits everyone. Because what did I think of? Dieting industry/anyone who wants to make a buck off fatties like me. Does that benefit me AT ALL? FUCK NO.
When someone is trying to sell me something I think I want but I don’t need, or that I think I want it because they are shoving down my throat beliefs that I need it, or that everyone else is buying it, or that my life will suck if I don’t buy it, that I am an evil selfish blob if I don’t buy it…. That is NOT beneficial to me in anyway. That only benefits the assholes who are selling the shit to me.
So maybe selfinterest is good for competition and making better products, etc., but it is not always beneficial. It stops being beneficial when the end product is you buying something that will only cause you harm. Maybe you don’t know any better. I know there are ton of people out there who still hate their bodies and would buy and crap magic potion to fix it because they don’t know any better. Or maybe they do and they just don’t care. When people start selling us crap because they know they can make money and not because it will make our lives better, that’s when it stops being beneficial for everyone.
And maybe if you aren’t in my economics class this makes absolutely no sense. Lord knows if I wasn’t I would probably be like “okay, next blog”… But I just had to rant about it because it has been on my mind. Maybe my Econ teacher would be proud that I am actually thinking about this (unlike the majority of my class).. Or that i am reading into this wayyy too much.
Time to leave with a quote from the post I linked above that is somewhat off topics but still kinda on topic:
Face to face with marketing telling her that she should be ashamed, that she has a Freckle Problem that needs fixing, she nevertheless refuses to allow her body to be pathologized. She doesn’t give in to messages telling her that she should be suffering; she doesn’t even acknowledge them as applying to her. She loves her freckles because they’re part of her face, and she loves her face because it’s part of her, and she doesn’t see any reason not to love herself. So why would she give any credence to people who assume she’s suffering from something?
We could all use to be a little more like Pippi. Freckles and fat aren’t conditions that you suffer from or problems that you struggle with, and anyone who says differently is probably selling something. Don’t buy the freckle salve. In fact, don’t buy the sign. It wants you to think you should be suffering from freckles — that they’re wrong, that they make you wrong. Don’t buy it; it doesn’t apply to you. There will always be messages telling you that your body’s beautiful individual idiosyncrasies are “issues” and “problem areas” that need to be cured. I want to be able to march right up to them and say “I don’t suffer from it; I love it.” I want that for all of you, too.
The free market isn’t the problem; (and by the way aren’t they even teaching any Von Mises???) the problem is that a) there’s no truth in the advertising, b) the media falsely reports on the “epidemic” to create fear, and most importantly, c) the industry literally partnered with the government to lower arbitrary BMI standards so that the advertising can’t specifically even be labeled “false” anymore – they created a problem that doesn’t exist. Industry partnering with government is not a free market – quite the opposite. In a free market people would be able to sue for personal damages from products that were falsely promoted, for one thing.
For some excellent economic education try http://www.mises.org/ (His book, Liberalism, is about the best there is) and also http://www.fee.org Highly educational stuff. Much better than boring high school texts lol.
By: anniemcphee on March 6, 2008
at 6:43 pm
anniemcphee-
^^; We are only in chapter 2 as of right now.. Like, basic BASIC economics… So we havn’t gotten very far into the book yet.
I wasn’t so much as attacking the free market, just that our (boring) school text book was talking about how self interest benefit everyone… Which at first I though “wow, that it soo true” but once I got to thinking about it, there were some instances I could think of where I was like “hey, this isn’t benefiting me! It’s only benefiting the people selling the crap to me”… Which is an adversiting issue as well, plus people’s crap “knowledge” on the issue…
But maybe I just suck at even understanding what I am talking about lol… I should definitely check out those links (maybe they will even help me with any upcoming tests!) So thanks for linking them
By: lovemeformexox on March 6, 2008
at 6:53 pm
Enjoy them
This might be a bad question but are those your legs up top on your banner? Because damn, girl. Those are some fine gams!
By: anniemcphee on March 6, 2008
at 7:34 pm
:3 yep, they’re mine lol. The pics they are from are posted in some of the posts here lol.
*^^* Thank you!
:3 bad questions are fun questions lol!
By: lovemeformexox on March 6, 2008
at 7:48 pm
Might I suggest looking up on YouTube Penn & Teller’s Bullshit: Obesity if you want some laughs (well, instead of crying) about the idiocy of the BMI. Like Annie said, it isn’t even Capitalism at this point with regards to the ‘fat industry’, but something akin to Socialism. Please note that Penn & Teller are unabashed Libertarians (like me), so be forewarned. Their views tend to make alot of Leftists mad. ~_^
By: Brooklyn Red Leg on March 6, 2008
at 9:48 pm
This reminds me of something Daniel Quinn has said in various forms a few times: “Our civilizational system works very well for products but very poorly for people.”
By: calculusdude16 on March 7, 2008
at 12:59 pm
Brooklyn Red Leg-
omg! I loved Penn & Teller’s Bullshit: Obesity… I managed to wait like an hour for my stupid dial-up computer to load the thing because I heard about it and really wanted to see it.
Okay, so i totally just wikipediad (and made up that word lol) Libertarianism because I didn’t know what it meant.. wow, can I just say I have found something I agree with? Ron Paul! woot! My dad wants him to be President but he knows he doesn’t really have a shot (and apparently in my econ class a current event was that he is hinting at dropping out..) and I actually like him too.. lol, just bringing him up because they mention him on the page “However, a few conservative Republicans, such as United States congressman Ron Paul, maintain viewpoints sympathetic to libertarian philosophy”.
Getting off topic lol. I don’t particularly like to talk about politics because everyone always thinks they are right and I just don’t want to go there. So enough of that lol.
Thanks for getting me to look up Libertarianism
By: lovemeformexox on March 8, 2008
at 10:39 am
I had to take Government when I was a HS senior, but Economics was an elective, so I took it. I liked the class, and I learned quite a bit, especially about supply and demand. My teacher was a pistol; she was one of my favorites. Luckily I was a senior during the Clinton/Bush election year, so we had plenty to talk about during class.
Anyway, my fat rolls aren’t inhibiting my mobility or my health, so screw WLS, WW, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem (their commercials are HORRIBLE—a size 14 is not life-ending), and any other stupid diet which forces you to eat 300 calories a day Even if I did lose 10% of my body weight, like Queen LaSellout wants me to do, and which I do, thanks to drinking more water and walking during nice weather, I’m still fat.
I can think of better and more rewarding ways to spend money than getting shammed by the latest diet craze.
By: Bree on March 9, 2008
at 3:32 pm
The whole self-interest thing is quite the paradox; on the one hand, it drives the free market/capitalist society we live in, but on the other hand, it erodes social capital, so there’s no trust or sense of community anymore. And since marginalised people can’t make use of social networks and have no other forms of power (ie money), they never really get the chance to move up the social ladder. Can you tell this is what I’m learning about in class right now? It totally is, and I really like your blog.
But yeah. On topic: I completely agree with what you just said.
By: K on March 10, 2008
at 6:38 am
I don’t mean to disagree with you (because you are my bestie!!
) but no one has ever tried to tell us in econ class that the diet industry benefits everyone in the way you are claiming they tell us it does. What I believe they were trying to say is… well, here comes one of my classic made-up people examples: Cindy is a woman who thinks she needs to lose weight. In her own SELF-INTEREST (!!!) she decides diet pills are the way to go. She buys diet pills (for HERSELF, because of her SELF-INTEREST), and the store that she purchases them from benefits from the money she pays for the pills. The store’s supplier benefits also, along with the people who made the pills, the workers at the factory where the pills were put into their containers, etc. All of a sudden, a big part of the economy (individuals and businesses) are making more money because Cindy and her like are buying the diet pills. This means that stock prices go up, and a part of the economy starts to do well and grow. Other related parts of the economy start to do well also. For example, maybe the diet pills cause headaches, so Cindy and her like start buying Tylenol like crazy. Then parts of the economy related to Tylenol start benefitting. Therefore, people like you and I, who would never even consider walking down the diet pill isle benefit from the diet industry and Cindy’s self-interest. The benefit we get is not feeling good or happy about our own weights or anything like that. It is a financial benefit, because when the economy does well, people tend to have more money to throw around, right? 
Does this make sense? Do you catch my drift now? 
By: EmUhLee on March 14, 2008
at 3:42 pm
wow, great stuff. I’m in an economic class too, and I feel economic is cold. Formulas and numbers predicting more numbers.
Yeah, where’s the love, the community, the caring for one another? I’m still growing up, and I’m beginning to think they are just fantasies.
Communism = fantasy far from reality?
Capitalism = fantasy closer to reality?
I wish communism works, but it doesn’t because we are human they would say.
By: bob on April 12, 2008
at 12:37 am