What if society mandated exercise?
I am quite lazy and need to exercise way more. I always get started but then my laziness creeps in and I can't keep up the consistency. I'm also busy as F. Today is a slower day, so I was able to get a little bit of exercise done. But it got me thinking.
Why doesn't society try to implement mandated exercise? Hear me out:
Consider how education is mandatory by law in most places. It's considered essential for especially young people to have access and opportunity to gain knowledge to enable them to properly participate in society to some kind of minimum level. We view knowledge and intellectual sophistication as not only a right, but something that generally speaking betters society overall. Why would exercise and improved health for people not be considered similarly?
The obvious benefit is a reduction in health care costs. I think this benefit is huge and especially evident after the pandemic. Imagine how much better everything would have been if everybody had exercised on even a minimal basis. The stresses on the system and overreach on resources would have been alleviated to a huge degree.
Mental health benefits, obviously.
How do you do it? Tax incentives, check-in apps, gym memberships. If you choose to get your exercise in other ways, log it into a government site and be subject to audit. Even though this would be possibly massively abused, I bet you'd still even get a portion of the population doing it and still achieving a huge societal benefit. How do we ensure kids are in school? We don't really? I feel like there are solutions I have already thought of in what the minimum amount should be mandated (like, 3 days a week, 20 minutes, something to that effect), but I'm interested in others takes.
What about ethical infringements on personal freedoms? Well, don't these exist when you force people to go to school too? Don't we all give up some reasonable freedoms for the betterment and safety of society? For example, traffic laws, smoking laws, etc.
If you were to mandate exercise, I feel like only even a little bit of required amount would go a long way. I dunno, it also might "normalize" it and get society to adopt it into their everyday routines which again, only improves society generally. People will make healthier food choices likely... I really don't see the downsides outweighing the upsides in creating a mandatory exercise system.
Thoughts?
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