I think it would make a lot of sense to simply tax foods that contain particularly high amounts of refined sugars more heavily than healthier alternatives. Overall, the value added tax on food or food ingredients could be the same as now but those harmful ingredients taxed more heavily that we consume excessively.
Finland almost had the right idea with the sugar tax except, every dollar it raised should have been subtracted from raw food ingredients. Incentivize healthy eating while disincentivizing low quality.
That's exactly what I was talking about. Was there some political reason that could not be done?
Another idea that has potential, in my opinion, would be paying people to exercise. It would probably not be too complicated to develop smartphone app capable of detecting whether the carrier of the phone was walking, running, cycling, rowing or whatever based on how the phone was moving based on accelometer data. The same app could identify the carrier from patters of motion. The GPS tracker of the phone could be used to record the route traveled. From the time elapsed it could easily be calculated how strenuous the exercise was. The data could be stored on a blockchain and tokens would earned by exercising. To motivate people of all ages and backgrounds, the users could be identified to account for the background variables. Privacy concerns could be alleviated using zero-knowledge-proofs to verify that the correct amount of tokens be distributed without anybody being capable of deciphering any of the exercise geolocation or time data.
The idea would be to distribute the tokens on the basis of how much each person could save tax euros by remaining healthier through exercise. State and municipal governments could give the tokens monetary value by spending healthcare cost savings on purchasing the tokens. I don't see any downsides to this.
I actually think it was PS that killed it. Same with the wine in supermarkets.
It seemed to have positive effects overall at Pekka Niska but it does tend to lead into the social scoring system in time perhaps. Rebates on tax for healthy living?
Did PS really kill wine in supermarkets?
Interesting. So it was tried at Pekka Niska. Most interesting.
It is pretty certain that someone would suggest the system include factors other than exercise and thus begin to resemble a social scoring system. That's why using a zero-knowledge-proofs would be essential. I'm not sure the Finns would be willing to go along with anything resembling a fully-fledged social scoring system.