Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

motherjones.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 201 posts

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#161

Post by SeanLuke »

Steko wrote: post #44
don_draper wrote: post #34

He says his article is not partisan and I believe it is not meant to be, but there are political lessons to be learned. The market left alone doesn't always pick the best product, leading to the best outcome for society. Devout readers of Ayn Rand should take heed.

Kevin Drum is an unabashedly left leaning blogger but he's of the Matthew Yglesias flavor that values intellectual integrity over beating the right. This piece was outstanding and he's consistently one of the highlights of my RSS feed each morning.

I believe Kevin Drum is one of the more broadly respected bloggers in the blogosphere. He is liberal, yes, but is famously cautious, thoughtful, and considerate. In fact, it's a bit odd for him to be at Mother Jones now: his temperament seems more apropos for his previous post, on the front page of Washington Monthly.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#162

Post by baddox »

ricardobeat wrote: post #157
baddox wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain. The government is the only one I can think of.

Organized crime, drug dealers, etc. often kill people for small offenses, "honor" crimes, ratting out, snooping or just for fun. Haven't you seen any mafia/yakuza movies? Real life is much, much worse.

Drug dealers in the form you're talking about can only exist when there is drug prohibition, and it's highly unlikely that a society based on polycentric law would prohibit drugs. The economics of a lot of organized crime also can be explained government.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#164

Post by baddox »

sophacles wrote: post #90
baddox wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how, pray tell, is a government solution (which is not only monopolistic, but uses violence rather than shady business tactics to maintain its monopoly) any better?

How is me depriving you of your ability to live (you know, get food, etc) via economic harm any different in violence than a government depriving you of your ability to live (via guns)? Is it because slow painful deaths by starvation, caused by a guy with a grudge are what you want for the world? Is it because that threat isn't really different other than the totemic difference of the removal of the word govermment (…

You need to define "depriving you of your ability to live." If you mean stealing someone's food or annexing their farm land, then I'm absolutely against that. If you mean choosing to not give someone some of your food, or causing someone's business to fail because your competing business is more successful, or choosing to not employ the, because they are unqualified or underperforming, then I find no blame. I do not believe that I have a moral, legal, or societal obligation to provide for anyone or everyone, but more importantly, I do not believe that a society where people are forced to do so under threat of violence (i.e. every government in history) will have less poverty.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#165

Post by eru »

dutgriff wrote: post #163

I like how the graphs that show the correlation of lead and crime is on two largely different time frames. Yes they have similar patterns but you can match anything up if you mess with the x and y axis enough. The dates should match...

Why should the dates match, if you want to talk about a delayed effect?

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#166

Post by zolbatar »

dutgriff wrote: post #163

I like how the graphs that show the correlation of lead and crime is on two largely different time frames. Yes they have similar patterns but you can match anything up if you mess with the x and y axis enough. The dates should match...

I believe they are trying to show how there is a delay between ingesting all the lead and it having a noticeable effect.

I.e. it will take years for the the lead to have an effect. It's not instantaneous.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#167

Post by DomreiRoam »

Steko wrote: post #44
don_draper wrote: post #34

He says his article is not partisan and I believe it is not meant to be, but there are political lessons to be learned. The market left alone doesn't always pick the best product, leading to the best outcome for society. Devout readers of Ayn Rand should take heed.

Kevin Drum is an unabashedly left leaning blogger but he's of the Matthew Yglesias flavor that values intellectual integrity over beating the right. This piece was outstanding and he's consistently one of the highlights of my RSS feed each morning.

Do you know blog/people to follow leaning right that value also intellectual integrity? I noticed it is possible to find left of liberal media that includes facts references. But most of the right media at some point use the "market is right" or "less gouvernement is good" without arguments or sources and I find it quite annoying. So if you know smart right media in English or French please give the references.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#168

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

onetwothreefour wrote: post #100
baddox wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some private litigation firms will probably always be bloated and inefficient, but that's just great news to their competitors. It's no different than private retail stores: some are inefficient, but the more efficient ones tend to do better (or pressure the inefficient ones to improve).

Please direct me to these efficient lawyers. I think everyone in the world would like to become their customer. It's pretty clear to me that you have never been involved with "private litigation".

The beauty of libertarian ideas are that you don't have to have ever been involved in anything to understand them. In fact, it helps if you haven't. http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#169

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

baddox wrote: post #145
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because libertarians are the only people who express their ideas to other people. Express them like this? yeah. Well, libertarians and Jehovah's witnesses.

> Express them like this? On Hacker News comments? What in the world are you going on about?

Topic drift is one thing and it's fine in internet discussions, but not turning everything to about an idée fixe

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#170

Post by javert »

sophacles wrote: post #118
javert wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no semantic oddities. It's just that "regulation" is context dependent, even in everyday English. When people scream "oh no regulation," they mean "no rights-violating/improper laws," but there are other cases where "regulation" just means "laws." It's not as if Rand claimed to be "against regulation" and left it as that, which would be pointless and sloppy. In talking about politics, as elsewhere, she was…

So is a law banning certain allergens from food a regulation or a protection from violence for those to whom the allergen is poison? What about law requiring those who give others food to warn them about potential allergens? What about a law requiring that warning to be stated in a clear, easy to read manner (rather than hidden fine print)? (say the allergen is soy, which is not an obvious ingredient in say, ice crea…

I don't know what point of mine you are trying to disagree with, or what you are getting at. You seem to be missing the forest for the trees.

Everything you have asked about has a very straightforward answer, but you lack the philosophical context to see that.

It's like asking a chemist to explain molecular bonds, when you don't even know that atoms exist.

As I've said, the proper principle of government is to protect individuals from the initiation of force by others.

Since the reasons for this principle are out of the scope of this discussion, yes, you could certainly find some way to appear to pick on it and score points, yet actually fail to do so successfully.

Nonetheless, correctly applying this principle means that if something is always a poison to everyone, it's not a legitimate product. There is no legitimate use. Producing it and selling it is simply initiating force.

On the other hand, if something is a legitimate food, it's fine to sell it.

There is a separate question about allergens. It is an allergic person's responsibility to make sure they don't ingest allergens.

The government forcing people to label things is an initiation of force and a violation of rights.

Absent such regulation, there would still be plenty of food producers who make information about food content publicly available, since it is needed by their customers who have allergies, and for other reasons.

In the cases where food producers do not publish their ingredients (in which case, probably nobody should consume the food...), people with allergies would just be out of luck.

Post reply on HN