Thx, Seldiora.
"RESOLVED: restaurants should be able to reject customers based on being overweight"
CONTENTION 1: ULTIMATELY NON-UNIQUE
The thesis of the PRO argument is that restaurants would take advantage of the provision outlined in the resolution to promote public health. Ultimately, though, if restaurants do not use the provision, then any positive impacts of increased health PRO could cite are irrelevant, and all we are left with is the injustice inherent in such a statute.
On that note, “unhealthy” restaurants & “healthy” restaurants alike would not use such a policy as it is diametrically opposed to good business sense.
“In 2013 the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that 57.6% of all American citizens were overweight or obese.”
Already then, both categories of restaurants are cutting their potential customers by more than half if they used the policy. But even ignoring this, both types of restaurants STILL wouldn’t exercise the statute.
For unhealthy restaurants, their main demographic is unhealthy people whose desire to eat unhealthy foods outweighs their desire to lose weight… It is within their best interest that more people become unhealthy.
For healthy restaurants, it’s more complicated. Aside from the fact that in the short term, if they decided they were only an exclusive club for “skinny” or “already healthy” people, they would be automatically losing up to 60% of their potential customers in the US, their main demographic is people who want to be healthy… and that means that overall, their biggest demographic is ALSO people who are overweight.
“In 2013–2016, 49.1% of U.S. adults tried to lose weight in the last 12 months...The percentage of adults who tried to lose weight increased with family income and with weight status category.”
This confirms that as people become more overweight, their incentive to reduce that weight increases… and how do they do that? By eating healthier. It follows, then, that if healthy restaurants refused to serve overweight customers, in the long-term, that would lead to less & less people becoming healthy due to those increased barriers… and with that, comes a dramatic shrinking of the demographic reach of those healthy restaurants.
It is within the best interest of the restaurant, therefore, to serve overweight people healthy foods, as it increases their demographic reach both in the short and long term.
CONTENTION 2: COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE
Even if none of what CON said last contention holds water, you can still negate because PRO’s proposal actually backfires. In the long-term, if restaurants actually exercised such a proposal, PRO will increase the amount of overweight people instead of decrease it.
PRO claims healthy restaurants will use the statute to appear more health-oriented. In a PRO world then, overweight people would be locked into eating unhealthy foods whenever they want to eat out… working against PRO’s goal of decreasing obesity.
RECALL:
“This confirms that as people become more overweight, their incentive to reduce that weight increases… and how do they do that? By eating healthier. It follows, then, that if healthy restaurants refused to serve overweight customers, in the long-term, that would lead to less & less people becoming healthy due to those increased barriers… and with that, comes a dramatic shrinking of the demographic reach of those healthy restaurants.”
Instead of urging healthy restaurants to deny customers who are overweight, then, a better idea would be to target the unhealthy food industry itself. Passing laws requiring healthier foods to be served in fast food restaurants, for example, would be much more effective.
CONTENTION 3: NEBULOUS & DISCRIMINATORY
Even if none of the last two contentions apply, you can still negate because the laws PRO proposes are unnecessarily nebulous & discriminatory.
PRO proposes no metric of evaluating who is overweight… If it’s done by eyeballing the customer, then that opens up a large margin of error & leaves opportunity for employees to discriminate against people they don’t like.
Additionally, restaurants are considered a
public place. According to
LegalMatch, a legal help site,
“
Any establishment that involves a large amount of public money is considered a public place. This would include places like public parks or recreational centers. However, privately-owned restaurants and bars are an exception to the rule. They are also considered public places by most legal definitions because the public is invited into the establishment.A ‘Public Place’ is an enclosed area where the public is invited or which the public is permitted including, but not limited to, banks and other financial institutions, schools, college buildings, public conveyances, recreational facilities, lounges, taverns, and bars, The best way to analyze whether somewhere is a public or private place is to ask if you can enter without an invitation if you can it’s a public place on the other hand if you cannot then it is probably private.
While restaurants are considered places of public gathering the primary purpose of a restaurant is to sell food to the general public, which requires susceptibility to equal protection laws. A restaurant’s existence as private property does not excuse an unjustified refusal of service. A restaurant is much different than a country club or a nightclub, which usually caters itself to a specific group of clientele based on and social status.”
Here are some instances in which denying service in a public place would be acceptable according to LegalMatch:
Note that in all of these instances, there must be a disruption caused. Even in the dress code scenario, the person will have violated social etiquette. On the other hand, simply being overweight does not cause any disruption or disturbance to the operation of the restaurant, nor does it risk anyone else’s safety or violate a social code of conduct.
Additionally, while “overweight” isn’t explicitly outlined in many state’s equal protection laws, telling a person who is overweight that they can not eat in a restaurant because of their appearance is legally akin to denying them from entering a bank, school, library, or another public place for that reason… It is an unnecessarily severe form of discrimination given that the restaurant invites the general public to come into it, & CON would argue it is similarly severe to denying service on religious, political, or racial basis.
Even if you buy none of that, refusing to serve someone based on how they choose to appear, if it’s not disturbing anyone else & doesn’t violate social etiquette, violates their basic right of bodily autonomy.
If a person WANTS to be obese, who are we to deny them that right? They do not cause any societal harms due to their condition that is worth overriding it.
CONCLUSION:
This proposed policy will never be exercised in the real world, negating any potential positive effects PRO could have & only leaving the injustice of allowing such a horrid policy to exist in the first place. Even if it WAS practiced, it would overall be counter-productive to the cause of increasing health, and is not a smart policy decision compared to the alternatives. Regardless of anything practical, though, on the sole basis of injustice, we can negate.
Back to you, Seldiora.
shhhhh don't spoil anything!
First of all no restauraunt would do this. Enterprises take the position of profit over principle. Rejecting overweight people would be cutting out a portion of their profit margin. Second no sane person would think that the consequence of them being overweight is due to the restauraunt they are eating in ( being over weight is a consequence of a disease or a serve inability to control their hunger and taste buds). However lets skip my first point and go on with your reasoning. You said the reason the restauraunt refuses to serve overweight people is because they want to maintain a healthy image does not work because you can also say the resturant so good that individuals simply eat it for the pleasure of it( gaining weight) not because of their hunger which leads to promoting the restauraunts delciousness in their food; attracting more customers. Your logic is flawed because you are missing one fundemental element. The profit over principle attitude that enterprises stand for.
Ah, you rethought your banning. OK then
free win ig, unless Seldiora unbans himself, in which case I have an argument to make.
Make args a week and you got a debate