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

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

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 161 posts

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

#61

Post by dethstar »

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…

Not only that, people consuming illegally acquired drugs are empowering drug cartels and here's the kind of situations it leads to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3nIfE0AUys

P.S The video contain very explicit images and commentary.

Here's a roughly translated quote to give you an idea: "During December there were 14 girls between 11-12 year old raped"

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

#62

Post by gnaritas »

humanrebar wrote: post #52
gnaritas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;…

You didn't leave religion or sex out of the discussion, so getting ticked off at someone else's pandering seems a bit hypocritical.

I didn't get ticked off, and religion and sex are relevant, children are not as I've been clear about "between consenting adults" for precisely this reason.

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

#63

Post by joesmo »

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"

No need to dwell on hypotheticals. We can revisit this when the government starts paying for our healthcare. Regardless, this is a financial issue where the logical punishment is a fine, not prison.

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

#64

Post by gnaritas »

abcabc321321123 wrote: post #55
gnaritas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>stealing from your fellow citizens who are paying their taxes. You are confusing who is stealing from whom.

No I'm really not; taxes are perfectly constitutional. Call it theft if you like but you're just being ridiculous.

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

#65

Post by alecdibble »

btown wrote: post #50
girvo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 offi…

What if the officer is being filmed by a cellphone camera? There is an even greater chance of the incident being taken out of context. Especially if the police cameras are in a standard location for most officers (say pen pocket), then that fact can be used extensively and easily in video analysis.

Secondly, I very very rarely here of juries being "too hard" on police. The current culture is that most police can't be touch even if everyone knows they did it AND has evidence. In a lot of cases, they are untouchable unless their peers want to throw them under the bus or a separate, usually federal service looks into the matter.

There are people that, while wearing a camera in a dangerous situation, can remain calm, cool, and collected. If anything, that should be one of the first requirements of becoming a cop, not an argument against cameras.

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

#66

Post by arg01 »

gnaritas wrote: post #3

America has a prison industrial complex and corrupt justice system problem. There wouldn't be black markets for drugs if we stopped jailing people for victimless crimes to begin with. No victimless crime should result in criminal charges. Going to jail should never be a possibility when there's no victim.

I'd assume you do agree that excessive speeding constitutes a crime as a it raises the chances of inflicting injury on others. If there was a statistical link between a drug and increasing the chance of the user committing violence would you still consider drugs victimless?

I raise the point as someone who is quite happy to support marijuana and alcohol use, but believe the definition of victimless is not an easy one.

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

#67

Post by dragonwriter »

humanrebar wrote: post #49
eqdw wrote: post #38

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. 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 bet…

> From a practical standpoint, widespread polygamy (which usually means polygyny) can lead to imbalances in marriage opportunity

So can widespread monogamy in certain circumstances. In fact, that's pretty much why polygamy usually manifests as polygyny -- in societies with norms favoring men fighting, or engaging in other high-risk activities and protecting women (and children, usually, but while that's important to the motivation, its irrelevant to the effect), after certain types of events, such as large scale (for the community affected) conflict, an exclusive monogamy rule means most women have no mates and prevents a society from rebounding (and makes it more likely that there culture will die out).

This is also probably why in history polygamy loses acceptance as a general norm as the scale of society gets larger and these kind of events affecting a whole society become less common.

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

#68

Post by drawkbox »

humanrebar wrote: post #58
drawkbox wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

The point isn't paying off his debt (neither are fines, by the way). The points include justice, deterrence, and rehabilitation, depending on your moral viewpoint. Also, what you describe is basically indentured servitude, which is a pretty old-fashioned form of punishment.

I am not talking about debtors prison, that is someone who goes to prison to pay off debts because they are in over their head and becomes a servant. I am talking about rehabilitation for a crime committed against others who worked hard for their money. There is a difference.

If you run a ponzi scheme, you are incurring large debtors prison type effects on others (taking their rights they earned -- they lose their hard earned money and have to work harder to get it back). The punishment should be the same for ponzi fraudsters at that level. They need to work throughout their sentence at a job to feel what they have done to others. They would also maybe get more insight out of it and rehabilitate more in life feeling the effects of what they have done. I am talking about cases for high profile fraud, again not debt prison for non-criminals but more like a fine that fits the crime just as we do today with that not costing us room and board.

What would be better for a guy like Bernie Madoff? Sitting in an everything provided cushy prison after stealing everyone's money or having to work back that debt through a job in society? He'd get alot more rehabilitation seeing how hard it is for the duration of his sentence. It will never happen but it is more closely rehabilitation than sitting in a prison costing tax payers even more. It would also keep him away from other high profile criminals. Locking him up and costing yearly to do so might make some feel good but it is a net loss further in many cases.

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

#69

Post by Yaa101 »

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.

It's a dream to think that law was enacted to put an end to those kinds of troubles.

Law is made by the representatives to keep the problems in tact for various reasons by various people in the chain.

Politicians do not want to solve all problems and find out that since they solved the problems, they are not needed anymore.

The military and arms industrial complex certainly do not want to solve the problems, if they actually do, how will they get budget enlargements and lucrative deals?

The intelligence industrial complex thrives on laws that forbid things like drugs, if drugs werent lucrative and made expensive by these laws, then how would they finance their little and big schemes without having to be accounted for it?

Nobody in the rich class, the political class, the military class and the intelligence class is interested in solving these matters

Get real people!!

Law isn't about morality, it's about oportunity, don't let anybody try to fool you that it is about morality.

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

#70

Post by jcalvinowens »

gnaritas wrote: post #46
jcalvinowens wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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;…

> OK, first, leave children out of this discussion. That's a play on emotions

I'm not meaning to play emotions; however, I don't think you can just write it off: if all drugs were legalized, you would see use among youth increase (just as you would likely see an increase in any other subset of the population).

> If you choose to put something in your body, that's a choice, you were not victimized by anyone.

For me, very physiologically addictive substances are a different category: in that case, you have somebody with full knowledge of the danger and addictiveness of the drug knowingly enticing others to start using it with the end goal of causing them to become addicted and making a lot of money off of them. I see that as a very low form of extortion.

I will not try meth because, despite whatever curiosity I have about the drug's effects, I know I am probably not capable of willing my way out of a very real physical addiction. Somebody less educated and rational is much more likely to say, "Sure, I'll try it once", and go downhill from there. For me, that person is being victimized. Sure, they made the decision, but it was an uninformed one.

Now, I have no idea how to solve that problem. I think that the US's ridiculous drug policy probably ruins more lives than the drugs would if they were legal. But whenever I think about blanket legalization, I can't escape feeling uneasy about the above.

Post reply on HN