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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

#41

Post by jcalvinowens »

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.

> Drugs, sex, gambling, bigamy, etc; basically laws based on Christian morality

I'm curious what you say to the argument that manufacturing and profiting off extremely addictive and harmful drugs (ie meth or heroin) is a victumful crime?

Many people get "hooked" on drugs like this, and it often ruins them both physiologically and financially. How can you justify ignoring such people as victims? Especially if they were young or even children when they started?

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

#42

Post by com2kid »

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. 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.

This is a very dangerous line of thinking. You end up with a totalitarian nanny state that doesn't let anyone go outside or do anything with any degree of risk.

There have been science fiction stories written about that very future!

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

#43

Post by drawkbox »

humanrebar wrote: post #39
drawkbox wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no way to work off a debt that big. But adding 30k plus per year to that debt (probably much higher for his luxury suite) is even worse. His debt to society is being paid with more debt to society.

What Bernie should have to do is work for x amount of years at a lowly job, or some job that he'd never take in life to earn back as much as he can during his sentence outside of the prison (not talking about a debtors prison but fraud). Financial fraud would re-think if they needed to work at McDonalds for years after during their sentence rather than their comfy suite. It is not like they wouldn't also be marked just like a normal locked up criminal is.

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

#45

Post by tristan_juricek »

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.

A few different police departments in California are trying out camera systems. I've only heard about Rialto, but I know they're being tried out in the Bay Area, and I think wider Los Angeles.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/04/california-poli...

These aren't "GoPro" systems, so I wouldn't expect stunning HD.

I'm not sure about access at all though.

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

#46

Post by gnaritas »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #41
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.

> Drugs, sex, gambling, bigamy, etc; basically laws based on Christian morality I'm curious what you say to the argument that manufacturing and profiting off extremely addictive and harmful drugs (ie meth or heroin) is a victumful crime? Many people get "hooked" on drugs like this, and it often ruins them both physiologically and financially. How can you justify ignoring such people as victims? Especially if they wer…

OK, first, leave children out of this discussion. That's a play on emotions and doesn't belong in a discussion about what consenting adults should or shouldn't be allowed to do. As with all things children related, we can have different laws for them; giving children drugs is victimizing them as they're not capable of making those choices legally or emotionally.

Now, to your point. No one forced anyone to try drugs; I reject any notion that you're your own victim. If you choose to put something in your body, that's a choice, you were not victimized by anyone. That it can and does often ruin people both physiologically and financially are called consequences of your actions. No one forced you, there is no victim here.

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

#47

Post by drawkbox »

gnaritas wrote: post #35
drawkbox wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We disagree on the detail and metric used to define it but I agree we are locking up way to many people and the punishment is cruel and unusual if it goes beyond the crime i.e. non-violent crime resulting in being locked up with criminals who are violent to me is cruel and unusual punishment and a rights violation.

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

#48

Post by gnaritas »

drawkbox wrote: post #47
gnaritas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We disagree on the detail and metric used to define it but I agree we are locking up way to many people and the punishment is cruel and unusual if it goes beyond the crime i.e. non-violent crime resulting in being locked up with criminals who are violent to me is cruel and unusual punishment and a rights violation.

I agree completely with that, and did in my first response. Non violent criminals should never see prison.

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

#49

Post by humanrebar »

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…

> Also, ironically, bigamy is not a violation of christian morality;

While the Old Testament contains many examples of polygamy, all of them are neutral or bad examples. Jesus strongly implies that a man should have one wife and Paul explicitly says so, at least for leaders of the church.

From a practical standpoint, widespread polygamy (which usually means polygyny) can lead to imbalances in marriage opportunity between the rich and poor, men and women, young and old, etc. Banning bigamy is a way to regulate the marriage market, in a way. If tax evasion is harmful to society, polygamy is harmful to ugly, poor men.

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

#50

Post by btown »

girvo wrote: post #15
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.

Is it a tough job? You bet. Are they unfairly vilified? Not a chance: police should be held to a higher moral standard than the general public, as they're the ones enforcing it. The best part of them wearing a GoPro is that everyone wins: civilians get to feel much safer, and police get to show that they're not as bad as they're made out to be. The issue arises when the cops have that introduced, and accusations of e…

I largely agree, but to act as a devil's advocate, what about cases when a police officer needs to resort to more heavy-handed methods when their life is in danger? In a dangerous area, a camera cannot capture the entire environment that a police officer must take in, contextual clues to a possibly dangerous situation drawn from a career of near brushes with disaster. So you might see corner cases where a police officer either (a) disregards their gut feeling to exercise caution and speed when apprehending a suspect because they fear being captured on camera, and the officer is injured as a result, or (b) follows their gut feeling, exercises due caution and speed, perhaps is rough on a criminal who has violent intent, and then must allow the criminal to go free even if that caution was necessary, because the jury was more sympathetic to the video of so-called "brutality" than they were to the officer's justifiable mental model of the situation, which cannot be presented so elegantly.

Would this system work for less dangerous areas? Probably. For more dangerous areas, I wouldn't want to be a police officer and have this forced upon me. Because corner cases here can be deadly.

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