261–270 of 274 posts
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You're right, they're much more likely to have a prescription opiate habit.
If you're poor and black, it's a crime a and should be sternly punished, if you're rich and white, it's youthful experimentation and should be glossed over. Easy.
Relevant: https://twitter.com/kjhealy/status/781557015843856385
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How so? Libertarianism allows for the control to shift to local governments where citizens can have more power over their society. It's not the absence of government but a framework to protect individual liberty. You'd still have government functions locally.
I've heard libertarian describe many viewpoints to be honest, so people's gut reaction can be quite confusing. On the one hand, I've heard the term "libertarian" applied to what could also be called a classic liberal position (ala Adam Smith), which favors minimal government interference but recognizes the need for government structure for many things. (In which case, a decentralized government could be part of such…
Yes there are factions of it just like other parties, but the core is that ideas are good if they don't infringe on other people's rights. Making a law which compels someone to provide a service to another is anti-liberty and most libertarians would not support it. Even then, many might support that measure at the local level because state rights is a big component and democracy is respected.
Anyway, what I like about libertarianism is that it provides a framework which is basically the Constitution at the core. Republicans and Democrats have no framework in how they go about things and we're in a big mess at many levels. There's been very little leadership and vision. If you look at what the two parties have done over the last few decades - they aren't that much different in practice and people are getting frustrated.
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A counter-example is Portugal, that had a severe heroin problem in the 80s and solved it by decriminalizing all drugs. It is true that cocaine and heroin are very serious drugs that can do a lot of harm. It is also true that prohibition and the prosecution of users only seems to make matters worse. For some scientific evidence in cartoon format :) : http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/
Drugs are still illegal and dealers and traffickers are still put in prison. People as user are brought to specific court called "Discussion Panels." Repeated users are given various forms of treatment. Recreation users can also have community service and fines. Never work in USA though since the Police work with the Healthcare system and so if a offender stops going to treatment at their doctor's office the office c…
If they know it's a drug house, then why not shut it down instead of arresting an endless stream of customers?
It just feeds my inner (morbidly obese) cynic. I have a sneaking suspicion that these drug laws are about more than preventing harm.
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…
> 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…
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…
I've never taken an economics class so forgive me, but hypothetically, what would the effects be if everyone was given citizenship today? All jobs in agriculture, construction, services, etc. would require minimum wages and benefits and the costs of many basic things would increase drastically. Imported produce would be much cheaper than domestic, making it ineffective for farmers here to compete. That would severely…
Aren't all jobs meant to require minimum wages and benefits now? Just kidding, of course not! We have immigrants to do those jobs!
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I think we shouldn't base our arguments for legalization on tax revenues. I hope the tax revenue will go down as more states (I hope) will legalize. I oppose the use of sin taxes to fund our government. I hope most people would agree with me on that.
I actually think that taxes functioning as user fees on things with significant social costs is the ideal policy approach to internalize the externalities at play.
We can't even agree on cap and trade which is so watered down that it essentially gives polluters a free pass. Can we really have a serious discussion about 'user fees on things with significant social costs"?
Maybe we ought to disincentivize marijuana use. I agree. I don't know what to do with that money. However, I strongly believe that we should not take that money and use it for anything beneficial to the society or to the tax collector. Doing so will mean we will no longer disincentivize what we said we'd disincentivize. It just becomes a tax on a minority.
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It is my opinion that it should definitely be illegal to smoke (anything) on public property. Landlords should be able to choose (via terms in a lease) whether or not it is okay to smoke on their property.
Just to nitpick, I shouldn't be allowed to smoke a cigar around a campfire on BLM land?
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OTOH once marijuana is legal it is just another crop and I would expect to price to drop to near zero. Combined with the fact that you hardly need kilograms of it, I wouldn't get too excited about future tax revenue.
I would argue otherwise. Alcohol (especially wine) is very easy and cheap to make at home but the Liquor Control Board of Ontario still managed to pull in $1.8 billion last year taxing it.
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Sure, speeding might be a misdemeanor, but no one in their right mind will continue doing it of they see police lights in their rear view mirror. Similarly, illegal immigration may be a misdemeanor, but you can't continue doing it after you're caught. Deportation is not meant to be punative, it is simply the mechanism needed to bring you back in compliance with the laws you've knowingly broken.
The "pay a fine, get a work permit" solution will put you into a compliant status too. Whether deportation is meant to be punitive or not, it is harsh. Not just for the deported person, but also their employer, family, landlord, etc. This gets back to my point, does the crime deserve a harsh punishment or not is something that our society doesn't agree on.
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I agree, the law just makes things worse by increasing the number of people we call criminals. However as a counter example, even if the murder rate didn't change by de-criminalizing murder, I'd still argue that there should be a law against it.
This is a false equivalence. Pot smoking is victimless (at most, your landlord will need to get rid of the smell for the next non-smoking tenant). Murder has, by definition, serious consequences for someone else. In a legal system whose premise is that one should be free to do anything so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others, it it consistent to legalise pot and keep murder illegal.
The parent question asked for a counter example of where the law makes no difference in the offence.
The parent question appeared to me to be making that statement irrespective of what the law was. So I just picked the most extreme form of law I could think of.