Well, from a libertarian perspective, most of the planet IS fascist.
The idea is pretty simple. Using drugs as an example, they are legalized and de-regulated. Anyone is free to become a cocaine addict, but it is unlikely that you'll find work if you can't perform adequately. No one is forced to pay for your mistakes because you'll be turned down for health insurance, or will have to pay more. People who use cocaine responsibly, i.e. all politicians, won't be wasting everyone's money by paying for the government to hunt them down and take them out of the work force, taking them away from children, education etc. Gee, the world sure would be better off if Obama had been sent to jail. If only he'd been caught! (I'd use Bush as an example, but too many people would agree.)
For people who are addicted and want help, the same people who want to help now will help in the hypothetical situation. People will be free to donate to whatever they feel like instead of being told what to "donate" to by the government.
I generally support America... if the Government prodding people toward slightly healthier choices and having 911 services is fascist, then, I guess America is fascist and apparently the whole planet is fascist at best and the term is not useful and can be retired.
how can anyone have an intelligent response to such ramblings , and on a side not even if America is facist does it mean the rest of the world is
I think a society that restricts folks , even with the intention of there own health is slowly heading towards a nanny state .
sure educate but dont legislate , and dont spend huge amounts on it .
you cannot and will not save idiots from themselves .
In fact all this lack of self responsibility is IMHO what is creating a world inhabited by morons . ill` get fat , sick , and then someone will take care of me .....
we arent talking drugs , should any government be able to tell you what you stick in your mouth Ian ?
eating is a basic need and one of the most powerfull fundamentals of life , you want to legislate it ?
we need more enforcement of fewer laws , not more laws we cannot possibly enforce .
anyone that doesnt see the simple logic will see everyone in the future in a overly beaurecratic legalised nanny state which controls all aspects of our lives .
I guess when they went after tobacco , they would of laughed if they said this would one day mean theyed legislate against trans-fats in your food .
well not so funny now , wonder what will be the next thing for your benifit .
the fact isnt the food , its the lazy useless sob`s that eat it .
but once again dont blame the people , make them victims , lets make em dummer , lets look after them , so we increase there general entitled moronic approach to the world ... heck maybe they can sue someone ....
at least more of our tax dollars will go to beauracracy , those contributors to society ... the real producers .
give folks a hand up not a hand out , make em work , or diet , or change there place in the world , dont give them excuses .
"The idea is pretty simple. Using drugs as an example, they are legalized and de-regulated. Anyone is free to become a cocaine addict, but it is unlikely that you'll find work if you can't perform adequately. No one is forced to pay for your mistakes because you'll be turned down for health insurance, or will have to pay more."
When someone robs your mom and shoots her to pay for cocaine, would that be considered paying for their mistakes? Of course, banning cocaine is no promise they won't use. But I would sure have a heavy set of disincentives because the "everyone free and things will be perfect and anything that goes wrong will be the fault of the user and no one else will suffer" fantasy is just that. Disincentives should be sufficient just so that using cocaine legally is slightly less annoying or costly than the black market, so we can shut down the war on drugs and those monsters' cash flows. And yeah I support your idea of going only after nonfunctional users (eg, drunk drivers instead of sober wine enthusiasts; crackheads instead of Obama) or, if drugs remain illegal, focusing only on their sale and not their use.
The next post was a ramble if I've ever heard one, despite the opening salvo:
"How can anyone have an intelligent response to such ramblings , and on a side not even if America is facist does it mean the rest of the world is?"
If you missed it, America is about as free as it gets, and if you want to define that as facism, then the term has no ability to discriminate between styles of government, and is therefore useless. If you don't like it, where are you planning on living?
"I think a society that restricts folks , even with the intention of there own health is slowly heading towards a nanny state."
Yes, I hear you. Any restriction is bad and fascist. I guess you'd like to live in northern Pakistan where you can do your own thing? And what about the assumption that any step is slow progress to a nanny state? Do you mean.... a step along the way? That seems tautologic: any step toward being a nanny state is a step toward being a nanny state. That doesn't tell us where it's best to live on that path.
"you cannot and will not save idiots from themselves."
In fact, we have. Seatbelt laws, car safety laws, motorcycle helmet laws DO save lives. Drunk driving laws should help not only other drivers but the drunks themselves. I know its tough to acknowledge successes, but it wasn't a union of angry water drinkers who set the standards for safe water or a coalition of diners who demanded the removal of transfats in new york or the bartenders who forced the issue of second hand smoke at work.
"In fact all this lack of self responsibility is IMHO what is creating a world inhabited by morons . ill` get fat , sick , and then someone will take care of me ....."
That's quite a different issue, isn't it? Passing a helmet law doesn't mean that anyone has to get free medical care when they crash; banning meth doesn't mean burned cookers get free expensive burn care. Those situations arise for other reasons, largely because the medical profession AND the country has decided that leaving someone to die on the steps of a hospital due to inability to pay is not cool. Now, you may disagree, but I encourage you to keep the issues clear and separate.
"we need more enforcement of fewer laws , not more laws we cannot possibly enforce."
Really? We can't enforce all those examples I listed? Gosh I thought they were all established, effective moves that had shown their worth.
"we arent talking drugs , should any government be able to tell you what you stick in your mouth Ian?"
I'm a fan of legalization with REGULATION. And yes, there are sound community reasons for a group of people to decide not to allow the totally unregulated consumption of dangerous substances. Social costs are huge, and your plan for society to ignore injured parties and absorb injuries to nonusers and ignore the secondary costs relating to punishment, lost wages, violence, property values etc is simply not going to work in the USA where almost everyone disagrees with you.
"Eating is a basic need and one of the most powerfull fundamentals of life , you want to legislate it?"
Yeah, along with almost everyone else in the USA I support nutritional labeling, accurate ingredient lists, elimination of false and unsupported health claims, and the regulation of potentially hazardous additives to the public food supply. These little thought burps of yours are concerningly unthoughtout. I was actually waiting for "I breathe air you want to regulate what fumes and toxins go into THAT??" just so I could reply "YES just like everyone else in the USA except you!"
"The fact isnt the food , its the lazy useless sob`s that eat it."
Well, perhaps the reason you completely missed the boat here is that you don't understand the issues. Without a ban on transfat, it is actually next to impossible to eat out in a restaurant without getting transfats. Calorie content is actually very difficult for educated people to estimate. Within your libertarian dreams, perhaps, the population deserves every unnecessary heart attack they get from not eating only what they grow in their own, inner city gardens, but that just isn't practical. If all those new yorkers wanted to acomplish that, they wouldn't try to force massive corporations to change with a letter campaign or boycots--the way they'd do it would be to organize a representative body to speak for them and ban the dangerous additive--and that's what their government did. Yay for NYC! Remember, the food tastes the same, is no more expensive, and people who want to die of transfats can still obtain them. Fabulous!
Despite your concern that kind of intervention doesn't make people stupid, it doesn't give them a license to sue everyone, and if anything, it will lead to their education and thought about their diets and perhaps move them toward exercise. And no one got a "hand out," over the issue either.
Suggestion: when you look over a post, and its riddled with punctuation mistakes and poorly arranged arguments and random slogans, it means you pounded out a rant: stop, think, revise. Better yet, take a drive and think about the mandatory safety features in your car, its unleaded gas, your safer housepaint, those stoplights, and all the untold benefits of government intervention that you would have no time to seriously pursue if you and your band of libertarians were on your own to do it.
Laird2 wrote:
Apparently freedom has a different definition in America!
With freedom comes responsibility. If you can't behave responsibly, you lose your freedom. No citizen is entitled to freedom if (s)he can't abide by the rule of law.
I don't buy the criticism of the U.S. from any country that doesn't have the same ethnic diversity and collection of those fleeing from other countries and governments.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
With that invitation, you're going to get some chafe mixed in with the wheat. It is what it is. Personally I'd rather have the ethnic and social diversity we have, and I'll accept the risk for picking up a few bad apples along the way. Life is so much more interesting that way. There's no pressing need to travel the world when most cultures are represented right within our own shores. And no other country has the same volume of creative juices flowing from the salad bowl of minds and ways of thinking.
Since the early 1970s the prison and jail population in the United States has
increased at an unprecedented rate. The more than 500% rise in the number
of people incarcerated in the nation’s prisons and jails has resulted in a total
of 2.2 million people behind bars.
This growth has been accompanied by an increasingly disproportionate racial
composition, with particularly high rates of incarceration for African
Americans, who now constitute 900,000 of the total 2.2 million incarcerated
population. The exponential increase in the use of incarceration has had
modest success at best in producing public safety,1 while contributing to
family disruption and the weakening of informal social controls in many
African American communities. Overall, data from the Bureau of Justice
Statistics document that one in six black men had been incarcerated as of
2001. If current trends continue, one in three black
Those jail numbers would go down stupid amounts if you de-criminalized drugs. That chart is a blatant example of the complete and utter failure of the applicable drug laws, in every definition of failure.
Gee, the world sure would be better off if Obama had been sent to jail. If only he'd been caught!
IJ wrote:"The idea is pretty simple. Using drugs as an example, they are legalized and de-regulated. Anyone is free to become a cocaine addict, but it is unlikely that you'll find work if you can't perform adequately. No one is forced to pay for your mistakes because you'll be turned down for health insurance, or will have to pay more."
{snip}
Suggestion: when you look over a post, and its riddled with punctuation mistakes and poorly arranged arguments and random slogans, it means you pounded out a rant: stop, think, revise. Better yet, take a drive and think about the mandatory safety features in your car, its unleaded gas, your safer housepaint, those stoplights, and all the untold benefits of government intervention that you would have no time to seriously pursue if you and your band of libertarians were on your own to do it.
Good post Ian..
The blurbs are what they are..
-----------------------------------
As far as incarceration...
You're going to see those numbers going up and up and UP.. Because the problem isn't being dealt with and instead the symptoms (criminal behavior / criminal culture) is what is dealt with via incarceration and after the fact..
It can be a touchy subject but elements of society continue to grow the next larger generation of criminals in part with tax payers money.. A pity really especially if you add up all the costs of bringing up the criminals, their crimes and then housing them in jail in years to come.. A phenomenally high cost both financially and socially.
Last edited by JimHawkins on Sat Aug 16, 2008 7:38 am, edited 3 times in total.
Shaolin M Y V T K F "Receive what comes, stay with what goes, upon loss of contact attack the line" – The Kuen Kuit
IJ wrote:When someone robs your mom and shoots her to pay for cocaine, would that be considered paying for their mistakes?
Cocaine is not the problem here, the person is the problem. I don't support gun regulation but I do support making shooting random people in the face illegal.
People willing to murder for drugs are going to murder regardless of anything I do.
Bill Glasheen wrote:
With that invitation, you're going to get some chafe mixed in with the wheat. It is what it is. Personally I'd rather have the ethnic and social diversity we have, and I'll accept the risk for picking up a few bad apples along the way. Life is so much more interesting that way. There's no pressing need to travel the world when most cultures are represented right within our own shores. And no other country has the same volume of creative juices flowing from the salad bowl of minds and ways of thinking.
C'mon Bill, you are capable of much better stuff.....
I'm sure you don't really think, as this implies that we are shipping in the talent that fills the prisons of this country.. Right? And please no defaults to 'we were all shipped in unless you mean the native Indians..' Another aiki circle.
The truth is a lot more complex and disconcerting.
We are growing this stuff. (conditions)
What does that really say about our society and how it deals with its problems?
What does not addressing this problem, or preferring to side step the issue altogether say about it?
Perhaps nearly the same thing..
Shaolin M Y V T K F "Receive what comes, stay with what goes, upon loss of contact attack the line" – The Kuen Kuit
Those jail numbers would go down stupid amounts if you de-criminalized drugs. That chart is a blatant example of the complete and utter failure of the applicable drug laws, in every definition of failure.
Cocaine is not the problem here, the person is the problem. I don't support gun regulation but I do support making shooting random people in the face illegal.
Drugs aren't the only reason for incarceration in the U.S. Not even close. In fact, the U.S. has had the same world-wide dramatic increase in violent crimes. There are so many murderers, rapists, and armed robbers filling our jails that drug abusers are being let go early.
That being said, dismissing cocaine as a factor in violent crime is an act of willful ignorance. Imagine legalizing the stuff. Where will they get it? The local pharmacy? If they do, how would you apportion this dangerous drug? If you only allow them a set amount per day/week/month, they will get used to the effects, and withdrawal would demand of them that they get more. At what point do you stop telling them they can't have more? And what do you do when they take steps to get what they want outside the rules? Because they are going to do whatever it takes to get the stuff.
No, legalizing drugs like cocaine is an experiment doomed to failure. I scoff at the idea of making common plants illegal, but cocaine and other narcotics like it have an established record.
Go deal with people on meth, crack, or regular cocaine on a regular basis, then tell me you want to make the stuff legal. Deal with their families and their victims. Drug abuse isn't a victimless crime.
This growth has been accompanied by an increasingly disproportionate racial composition, with particularly high rates of incarceration for African Americans, who now constitute 900,000 of the total 2.2 million incarcerated population.
The disproportionate composition has more to do with urban populations than race. More African-Americans live in bad neighborhoods and continue the cycle. Economic disparity can't be resolved until urban cultures reverse their self-destructive habits. Replace African-American populations with Caucasions, Latinos, etc, etc, and it will not change anything except the makeup of prison populations.
The exponential increase in the use of incarceration has had modest success at best in producing public safety,1 while contributing to family disruption and the weakening of informal social controls in many African American communities.
What kind of family would be maintained by the person who would otherwise be in jail? I don't know if you've noticed, but these guys aren't model father figures.
Cocaine is all the rage in the North East. I mean EVERYone does it here. (One girl I ran into didn't even realize it was bad for her when she was younger, she did it simply because everyone she knew did it. She has a masters degree now.) Particularly, natives of Boston love their cocaine. So I'm pretty used to seeing what I consider "responsible" cocaine users. I still think it's retarded for them to do it, but I respect their choice, and I respect the fact that they don't murder people for it.
I imagine you could say the same thing if you lived in DC or LA. Now go to Detroit, and you see people murdered over cocaine daily. It's not the cocaine in Detroit, it's the underlying issues. Rich white folk do coke in Boston. People with no jobs or even the slimmest hope of getting a job do coke in Detroit.
