(Updated below)
I just read something that has verily shocked and outraged me. Via Raw Story - Workers told to shape up or pay up:
"Looking for new ways to trim the fat and boost workers' health, some employers are starting to make overweight employees pay if they don't slim down. Others, citing growing medical costs tied to obesity, are offering fit workers lucrative incentives that shave thousands of dollars a year off health care premiums."
At the last, the companies and corporations are now flatly coming out, unafraid and unfettered, to proclaim their intent of actually controlling your lives as they see fit.
Not only does this constitutes a serious breach of human rights, such encroachment into our personal, private lives would leave us open to any desire, whim and fancy of the moment from high-minded, arrogant corporate bureaucrats whom, let us not forget, will ever remain watchful of the bottom line first and foremost, rather than your health and/or well being.
What's next? Employees being fined for not eating enough veggies? For eating too much meat? For drinking too much coffee? For listening to "non-approved" kinds of music or artists? For reading non-approved books or blogs? For watching "non-approved" TV channels and/or shows? For smoking cigarettes or having a drink, at home?
For dating a "non-approved" other?
For having a "non-approved" number of children?
For having a "non-approved" overall lifestyle?
For holding "non-approved" political views?
For following a "non-approved" religion, or specific denomination?
For belonging to a "non-approved" party?
For non-conforming to every single dictate of your employers?
As utterly mind-boggling that such an advent as companies/corporations establishing policies of fines for employees who do not fit their "definition" of health, read what one person targeted by such unconstitutional authoritarianism had to say about it all:
"At first, I was mad when I thought I would be charged $30 for being overweight," said Courtney Jackson (...) "But when I found out it was going to be broken into segments — like just $10 for being overweight — it sounded better." Jackson said she was going to try to slim down before the plan took effect. "If I still have weight to lose when it starts, I'll deserve to pay the $10."
Behold the wisdom of the sheep, quietly accepting to have its life owned lock, stock and barrel, and thus being entirely run, by company/corporate decree.
If, and when, our democratic societies crumble into corporate authoritarianism, we will owe our gratitude to such quiet, intellectual sloth-driven acceptance/apathy.
Looks like we have already begun sliding downward the slippery slope ...
Update: 07/29/2007 - Via at-Largely: Chicago police stormtroopers swarm a gathering of poetry reading on private property - without warning and without warrants. Now, I am not a "fan" of poetry, but still ... looks like the Powers-That-Be decided that poetry was not for your own good, or something to this effect? Perhaps the quite innocent, legal and constitutional gathering was percieved as an exercise in subversion - perhaps even indulging in reading the Constitution, the most subversive type of litterature of all? Or perhaps the nefarious shadow of poetic terrorism is on the rise again? How about the clear and immediate danger to Homeland Security for reading in public? After all, knowledge is a very dangerous thing indeed.
And further down we slide the slippery slope ...
(Cross-posted from APOV)
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