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The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

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Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#151

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

majormajor wrote: post #47
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feudal Europe was feudal Europe because it was a Malthusian state. Economic growth was quickly eaten by population growth. Libertarianism doesn't seem any more likely to increase the rate of reproduction relative to the rate of economic growth.

The comparison comes from how, recently, economic growth has largely been captured by an increasingly small subset. The who/what of the eating of the economic growth matters less than its being eaten.

Sure. But the reason the lot of the average person was bad was because of the Malthusian equilibrium. Because economic growth was eaten immediately by population growth basicly everyone was at subsistence; elites capturing a disproportionate share of the resources didn't decrease average welfare. It moderately decreased the population, but the rest lived at subsistence. As the elites created the science and economics that allowed us to escape, however temporarily, from the Malthusian condition, I find it very hard to begrudge them for actions that didn't even decrease average welfare.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#152

Post by IPbanned »

blackbagboys wrote: post #130
rayiner wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not people have that right outside the US doesn't mean it's our problem to enforce that right. Those people have their own countries, with their own governments organized for their benefit. As an immigrant, this is one of those things that still perplexes me about Americans despite my having grown up here. Nobody in Bangladesh thinks they should care as much about people in Africa as they do about their ow…

Frequently it seems that caring about immigrants or refugees in the abstract is an oblique way of attacking your fellow citizens. Additionally, if government officials are supposed to be governing the nation for the benefit of all mankind rather than looking after the interests of the people whom they theoretically represent, we might as well dispense with the pretense of representative government and try to formulat…

It's a direct way of attacking your "fellow citizens" (i.e. classes beneath the elites and intellectuals) by displacing them with mass immigration of violent, uneducated, unassimilable foreigners.

When China does it to Tibet, it's called genocide.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#153

Post by IPbanned »

hackuser wrote: post #6

Know your source: Cato is an advocate for libertarianism, at least as envisioned by its funders, founded in part by Charles Koch, and still heavily funded and controlled by him (and I think by his brother). I don't mean that in a partisan way; you might love them, hate them, or not care one way or the other, but it's always useful to know who is talking.

Know your community: Hacker News is run by Bilderbergers.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#154

Post by aorth »

Interesting! I'm from California but haven't lived there in ten years and I thought marijuana was already legal there. Turns out that it's only medicinal use of marijuana that is legal (2010), but there is a ballot proposition for wider legalization on the upcoming November, 2016 elections.

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_64,_Marijuana...

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#155

Post by majormajor »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #151
majormajor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison comes from how, recently, economic growth has largely been captured by an increasingly small subset. The who/what of the eating of the economic growth matters less than its being eaten.

Sure. But the reason the lot of the average person was bad was because of the Malthusian equilibrium. Because economic growth was eaten immediately by population growth basicly everyone was at subsistence; elites capturing a disproportionate share of the resources didn't decrease average welfare. It moderately decreased the population, but the rest lived at subsistence. As the elites created the science and economics…

I don't think that, in the context of moving to a libertarian-as-pitched-in-the-USA state, "didn't even decrease average welfare" would hold true.

A massive amount of publicly funded services would be cut. So if we take as a given the ability of these elites to capture the cost savings of that for themselves, you end up with the average worker receiving no more money (since it's been captured) yet receiving fewer services (since the public ones were cut).

All the leverage[0] is in the hands of the owners, not the workers.

[0] excluding leverage such as "there are more of us so we can outvote you" and "there are more of us so we could revolt" - the first is presumed to have not happened, for whatever reason, by the assumption of the existence of this libertarian state, and the second would be a violation of the property rights that USA-libertarians hold so central.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#156

Post by knieveltech »

hackuser wrote: post #132
Kadin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> came to work jobs no one else would take This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop. So the fact that jobs that "no one else would take" exist and are being taken by ille…

>> came to work jobs no one else would take > If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take Typically, that statement also refers to jobs that are perfectly legal, but most Americans wouldn't take anyway. For example, many of the experienced people reading this wouldn't drive a cab, deliver pizzas, work…

Check your assumptions, friend. Pizza delivery drivers in decent areas routinely make more a year than college professors and other more prestigious-but-ultimately-low-paying gigs.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#157

Post by IndianAstronaut »

zkhalique wrote: post #78

I would express the same sentiment about illegal immigrants. This is to all the people who support Donald Trump's rhetoric about deporting all 11 million undocumented immigrants. These people fled the drug gangs and violence that our war on drugs helped create (think fleeing ISIS) and came to work jobs no one else would take and make a better life for their family. Yes technically they broke a law. If you're going to…

Another important note is every worker is also a consumer. Every worker will consume food, movies, construction services, etc.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#158

Post by enraged_camel »

hueving wrote: post #123
linkregister wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ad hominem fallacy is simply a guideline to evaluate the logical consistency of an argument. It's not a magic spell you can use to discount a premise. Indeed, blind use of "fallacies" is just an appeal to ancient Greek authority! For non-expert HN commenters, we have to use authority, preexisting bias, and past actions of the speaker to give us more information without fully delving into the article. Unless you'r…

>The ad hominem fallacy is simply a guideline to evaluate the logical consistency of an argument. Precisely. So an argument is not logically consistent if it's just attacking the messenger instead of the content. Here's a hint: if your argument in any way relies on discounting the messenger, it's pretty weak and you should not make it. How many times have you been swayed by someone that says, "Well I would disregard…

>>Precisely. So an argument is not logically consistent if it's just attacking the messenger instead of the content. Here's a hint: if your argument in any way relies on discounting the messenger, it's pretty weak and you should not make it.

Incorrect. Ad hominem can be non-fallicious.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

When a statement is challenged by making an ad hominem attack on its author, it is important to draw a distinction between whether the statement in question was an argument or a statement of fact (testimony). In the latter case the issues of the credibility of the person making the statement may be crucial.

The statement that Cato Institute is a libertarian organization is a statement of fact, and may indeed be relevant when judging their credibility.

Re: The Effect of State Marijuana Legalizations

#159

Post by forthefuture »

hackuser wrote: post #132
Kadin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> came to work jobs no one else would take This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop. So the fact that jobs that "no one else would take" exist and are being taken by ille…

>> came to work jobs no one else would take > If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take Typically, that statement also refers to jobs that are perfectly legal, but most Americans wouldn't take anyway. For example, many of the experienced people reading this wouldn't drive a cab, deliver pizzas, work…

It's just not true that Americans wouldn't take these jobs.

If Americans won't take jobs at $2 an hour that doesn't mean Americans are big assholes who leave food on the table, it means that companies are big assholes that want to profit seek at the cost of legal employment. If you actually noticed a shortage of employees in these jobs, their salaries would necessarily go up to attract more. This is the natural process of the labor market.

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