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America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

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Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#31

Post by drawkbox »

gnaritas wrote: post #28
drawkbox wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but defining victimless definitions would be a nightmare and ripe for abuse, violence is easy to define. Drugs are only violent if they are illegal, rape is violence, gambling is sometimes legal-- noone should ever be locked up for gambling -- it is not violent. Morals should not be used, civil rights and not affecting others rights should be the metric. You start involving morals, a bunch of religions have differ…

I could make the same argument about violence by talking about mental abuse. And as I said, morals are already involved, these crimes exist because of morals, not because they hurt people. The fact is, victimless is as easy to define as violence is or easy enough to have a pretty clear line. Consuming drugs hurts no one but the consumer. Having 5 wives hurts no one as long as they all consented. Gambling your own mon…

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I think much of that type of thinking is what led to the black markets we have even though you use a smart way of defining victim. It can be interpreted all sorts of ways though. Civil rights and violence is much easier to define. Also as time goes on and systems change, the definition of victim might change i.e. in war, terrorism etc. If it is based solely on violence and civil rights then there is a clear line. But good discussion, sometimes in discussions people have different points of view and that is ok.

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#32

Post by gnaritas »

bjdixon wrote: post #16
test1235 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... then maybe people will realise how unfairly vilified the police are, and what a tough job it actually is.

This exactly. Really tough and often thankless job. As shown in Rialto everybody wins when the police wear cameras. Complaints down 88%, use of force down 60% http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/04/california-poli...

> Complaints down 88%, use of force down 60%

Which really just shows how much better cops behave when they know they're being watched and justifies complaints about their corruption.

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#33

Post by gnaritas »

test1235 wrote: post #7
samstave wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every cop should be required to were a gopro on their chest. Anyone who has any encounter with a cop should have protected rights to access and review that video as material evidence in their case.

... then maybe people will realise how unfairly vilified the police are, and what a tough job it actually is.

Police are not unfairly vilified; they deserve vilification because they protect their own even when guilty. This is wrong.

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#34

Post by eqdw »

samstave wrote: post #4
DerpDerpDerp wrote: post #2

And maybe we could do something about our policing problem at the same time... What, with using national (military) spying apparatus to go after drug dealers, police seizing assets from private citizens who they often don't accuse of a crime, the rampant militarization of domestic police forces... Well, it's nice to dream.

Every cop should be required to were a gopro on their chest. Anyone who has any encounter with a cop should have protected rights to access and review that video as material evidence in their case.

With a battery life of <2 hours, they're gonna need a different camera /s

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#35

Post by gnaritas »

drawkbox wrote: post #31
gnaritas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could make the same argument about violence by talking about mental abuse. And as I said, morals are already involved, these crimes exist because of morals, not because they hurt people. The fact is, victimless is as easy to define as violence is or easy enough to have a pretty clear line. Consuming drugs hurts no one but the consumer. Having 5 wives hurts no one as long as they all consented. Gambling your own mon…

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I think much of that type of thinking is what led to the black markets we have even though you use a smart way of defining victim. It can be interpreted all sorts of ways though. Civil rights and violence is much easier to define. Also as time goes on and systems change, the definition of victim might change i.e. in war, terrorism etc. If it is based solely on violence and civ…

Yes, we can agree to disagree. Violence is also murky to define, I feel you're glossing over that a bit. All kinds of abuse exists that don't involve physical violence that are quite easily argued as violence.

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#36

Post by gnaritas »

baddox wrote: post #27
delucain wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax evasion hurts society as a whole by reducing available resources for the programs that aid our country, and failure to provide child support harm the children and mothers that the child support was intended for in much the same way. Neither of these are victimless crimes. Victimless crimes are typically things that only harm the person/people involved in the crime, i.e. prostitution, recreational drug use, or gam…

> Tax evasion hurts society as a whole by reducing available resources for the programs that aid our country That argument only works if taxation provides a net benefit to society.

Tax evasion hurts society as a whole because you're free loading off the system and stealing from your fellow citizens who are paying their taxes.

This argument is valid regardless of whether taxes benefit society or not.

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#37

Post by humanrebar »

wavefunction wrote: post #11
humanrebar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Can everyone come to an agreement about what counts as a victim? 2. Maybe no victimless crime should result in jail time, but there are a lot of penalties for "victimless" crimes (tax evasion, illegal production of controlled substances) that justly result in fines. EDIT: OK. I typed too quickly with the child support bit. In retrospect, that was a bad example. I also added scare quotes to emphasize that justice c…

Tax evasion and failure to provide child support are perfect examples of crimes with real victims. The perpetrator is victimizing society, and their own child in these cases. Do you have some better examples you would like to use?

I was unclear, but I didn't necessarily agree with those examples, so I added scare quotes. My point was that there should be some crimes that result in fines but not jail time.

Better examples? Practicing medicine without a license (assuming good medicine otherwise). Trespassing (assuming no other damages). Criminal endangerment (assuming no actual harms). Production of controlled substances. Ownership (not use) of unlicensed firearms.

Again, I don't necessarily agree that those are all victimless. The point is that they are arguably benign crimes that shouldn't necessarily require jail time.

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#38

Post by eqdw »

gnaritas wrote: post #17
drawkbox wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Victimless is hard to define. By victimless I think you mean non-violent really. Even if there is a victim, if there was no violence, putting the perpetrator into a jail/prison will create more violence. Also repeat offenses of non-violent crimes might be needed but most can be solved economically. For instance take someone who does some financial crime, why lock them up and have the public on the hook for 30k per ye…

No, I meant what I said. Victimeless, and no it's not at all hard to define. Drugs, sex, gambling, bigamy, etc; basically laws based on Christian morality that try and tell you it's wrong to do things that only involve consenting adults. Non-violent is another category, but I agree with you on that category, prison should be for the violent.

> No, I meant what I said. Victimeless, and no it's not at all hard to define. Drugs, sex, gambling, bigamy, etc; basically laws based on Christian morality that try and tell you it's wrong to do things that only involve consenting adults.

I generally agree with you, and do not at all believe Christian morality is a good basis for laws. That said, I have to play devil's advocate

> Drugs

In a world where the government provides health care as a service (which is where we're trending, eventually), abusing your own health does have a victim: the taxpayer. Granted, we don't like to think about it this way, and when we do it's usually for political showmanship instead of a real reason. But in the same way, building/living in a house that isn't up to fire or earthquake standards is a 'victimless' crime..... until my house catches on fire and burns down the whole block

> gambling

Gambling is often predatory to the poorer classes of society. Depending on how you're defining victim, low-income-earners could be seen as victims of gambling

> bigamy

Bigamy is historically correlated with misogyny. Also, ironically, bigamy is not a violation of christian morality; there are myriad examples of one-man-many-woman relationships in the Bible

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#39

Post by humanrebar »

drawkbox wrote: post #23
pstuart wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud is non-violent but people are hurt by it.

So would you rather have the fraudster go to jail costing the tax payers 30k per year, or have them out and working to make back that money? If you like the former then fraudsters allow the entire taxpayer base to absorb their fraud with a fee on top to keep them locked up (more losses), that will happen either way but it would be nice if they were working for that back rather than locked up. If you commit fraud you…

Should Bernie Madoff have gone to jail? I think so. There's no way he would have worked off his debt.

Re: America Has a Black-Market Problem, Not a Drug Problem

#40

Post by gnaritas »

eqdw wrote: post #38
gnaritas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I meant what I said. Victimeless, and no it's not at all hard to define. Drugs, sex, gambling, bigamy, etc; basically laws based on Christian morality that try and tell you it's wrong to do things that only involve consenting adults. Non-violent is another category, but I agree with you on that category, prison should be for the violent.

> No, I meant what I said. Victimeless, and no it's not at all hard to define. Drugs, sex, gambling, bigamy, etc; basically laws based on Christian morality that try and tell you it's wrong to do things that only involve consenting adults. I generally agree with you, and do not at all believe Christian morality is a good basis for laws. That said, I have to play devil's advocate > Drugs In a world where the governmen…

> In a world where the government provides health care as a service (which is where we're trending, eventually), abusing your own health does have a victim: the taxpayer.

An almost fair point... if and only if we get there, I'm not yet convinced we will, however drug use is not drug abuse. To call it a health issue it'd first have to affect your health negatively. If it does, that can be seen by the doctor and noted and then maybe you can be taxed higher to compensate, but use is not abuse.

Also, serious abuse could save tax payers money by killing you. So just because something affects your health negatively doesn't mean it costs more over your lifetime.

> Gambling is often predatory to the poorer classes of society. Depending on how you're defining victim, low-income-earners could be seen as victims of gambling

I reject the notion that you can be your own victim. If you choose to make decisions that hurt you, you must suffer the consequences; it is not the state's place to protect you from yourself. Jumping out of a perfectly good air plane is legal, and has a very high chance of killing you compared to other hobbies but we don't outlaw that.

> Bigamy is historically correlated with misogyny.

Not a reason to make it a crime. I'm allowed to hate things.

> Also, ironically, bigamy is not a violation of christian morality; there are myriad examples of one-man-many-woman relationships in the Bible

It's a violation of modern Christian morality; times change and so do the church's sense of morals.

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