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Legalize It All

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Re: Legalize It All

#61

Post by narrator »

shmerl wrote: post #46
narrator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I find interesting (INTERESTING, not necessarily moral or otherwise) about China is that when they want to do something controversial they are open and straight forward about it. They openly attack and arrest groups that they find disruptive to the social order. In America, the leadership has to invent all sorts of crafty subterfuge to accomplish their goals of persecuting and imprisoning groups that they c…

Why is that interesting that dictatorship doesn't hesitate to openly attack dissent? That's actually expected from it.

Stalin was by all accounts a dictator, but he operated differently. When the NKVD secret police would arrest someone who had made a political joke that somebody heard and reported, they weren't sent to freeze to death in a gulag in Siberia for the joke. No, they were forced to confess under torture to all sorts of laundry lists of ridiculous accusations of sabotaging production and acting as a spy for foreign governments and being the ringleaders of vast insurgent organizations, etc. Meanwhile, in the constitution of the Soviet Union there are all kinds of rights and legal protections and such. Kind of funny statistic, but the U.S has more people incarcerated as a percentage of the population than the Soviet Union ever did.

North Korea is a Stalinist state. They have elections and refer to themselves as a democratic people's republic. China does not have elections or refer to themselves as democratic.

Also, China is much more straightforward in prosecuting descent. They just say that someone belongs to an illegal non-harmonious organization like Falun-Gong or whatever and that's illegal. Send them to prison. No fancy trumped up charges or subterfuge needed.

Re: Legalize It All

#62

Post by ivanca »

hjhgjtyhgdfi wrote: post #45
knodi123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it makes as much money as Uber instead of Walmart? Just because it's not the biggest doesn't mean it's not big.

Uber is a a high-growth startup as you may be aware, and will far eclipse its 2015 revenue this year. Even so, comparing the revenues of the "massively profitable" prison company that's been around since 1983 with a single Silicon Valley startup that just got off the ground a few years ago is quite a stretch and a false equivalence.

....And burger king exists since 1953 and "only" makes $1.06B of revenue per year, so what?

3 billion dollars is more than many small countries make in an entire year (nominal GDP)

Re: Legalize It All

#64

Post by kbenson »

shmerl wrote: post #46
narrator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I find interesting (INTERESTING, not necessarily moral or otherwise) about China is that when they want to do something controversial they are open and straight forward about it. They openly attack and arrest groups that they find disruptive to the social order. In America, the leadership has to invent all sorts of crafty subterfuge to accomplish their goals of persecuting and imprisoning groups that they c…

Why is that interesting that dictatorship doesn't hesitate to openly attack dissent? That's actually expected from it.

Because it's very easy for them to control the narrative and spin their actions to their benefit, minimizing the negative associations with their actions. That they aren't probably means they want it seen this way, and I agree that's interesting.

Re: Legalize It All

#65

Post by jules »

krylon wrote: post #3

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course…

As it is there is a huge financial incentive for the criminals to get people hooked on drugs. Hard drugs should be freely provided by the government to take that incentive away. This also gives it the opportunity to help addicts who want to kick their addiction. It also dismantles the criminal organisations behind it, reducing crime that way, and it means that drug addicts can somewhat participate in normal society instead of having to steal to pay for their addiction.

Re: Legalize It All

#66

Post by dang »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gotta love the HN crowd. Please don't. The "crowd" includes you, and such generalizations are mostly bias.

Am I wrong to assume that most people here: - Want to legalize drugs. - Want to ban guns. - Want a right to privacy.

You may be right, but yes you're wrong to assume it. People assume all kinds of things about HN, and there's a huge amount of bias involved.

But my point is that it's in bad taste to diss a community you belong to, while participating in it, as a rhetorical status move. People do this all the time, but we've noticed that it's reliably a marker of low-quality comments, so we're going to start asking them not to.

Re: Legalize It All

#67

Post by seizethecheese »

joantune wrote: post #12

I'm not sure about legalizing it all, but me and the world is pretty sure about decriminalizing it, just watch what happened here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbWpXYOg4OQ TL;DR: Highly successful strategy of not marginalizing (both socially and legally) and actually helping addicts: cuts costs, cuts problems, decreases addicts.

The problem with decriminalization without legalization is that it addresses demand but not supply. Black market supply is where a lot of the harm from prohibition materializes.

Re: Legalize It All

#69

Post by [deleted] »

hjhgjtyhgdfi wrote: post #13
Delmania wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? What, and disrupt the massively profitable prison industry?

The largest private for-profit prison (CCA) has $1.7 billion in revenue. Apple makes $233 billion in revenue. Exxon has $268 billion in revenue. Walmart makes $482 billion in revenue.

[deleted]

Re: Legalize It All

#70

Post by jessegreathouse »

hjhgjtyhgdfi wrote: post #13
Delmania wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? What, and disrupt the massively profitable prison industry?

The largest private for-profit prison (CCA) has $1.7 billion in revenue. Apple makes $233 billion in revenue. Exxon has $268 billion in revenue. Walmart makes $482 billion in revenue.

Apple, Exxon and Walmart add value.
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