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Legalize It All

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Re: Legalize It All

#121

Post by spacemanmatt »

hyperpape wrote: post #112
gardano wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something I never understood (and admittedly never researched either). Isn't there something in the constitution about freedom of association?

Yes. However judges cannot preemptively strike down laws, even if they are blatantly unconstitutional. Someone with "standing" must bring a case, which typically(?) means that the law has been applied to them. So unconstitutional laws often stay on the books without being enforced, until either someone overreaches and tries to enforce them, or the legislature formally repeals them. I believe anti-miscegenation statue…

That is a lot like the American system after you factor in wealth inequality, the cost of legal representation, and non-enforcement against the wealthy.

Re: Legalize It All

#122

Post by malka »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #98
EliRivers wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course, just as the alcohol industry did. Nobody makes any money selling alcohol.

Well... to be pedantic, the alcohol isn't what you're paying for in most cases - it's the image, the lifestyle, the story. Would we see the same phenomenon with generic diacetylmorphine and artisinal heroin? That would certainly be amusing...

I can see it happenning for weed though.

Re: Legalize It All

#123

Post by zo1 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #74
hjhgjtyhgdfi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers unions spent $20 million on the 2012 election alone, no doubt funding candidates who were friendly to their pensions. I can go down the line and list off several more trade unions and their political spending. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=l1300 Why is there seemingly not a peep about this from those who oppose the private prison complex?

I'm curious: Do you believe teachers asking for more funding is ethically comparable to prisons demanding more prisoners?

Perhaps he's more pointing out the hypocrisy of attaching a scale/range of ethical values to something he determines to be an unethical act entirely, regardless of the ethical value of the reasons behind it.

Re: Legalize It All

#124

Post by Ygg2 »

tomp wrote: post #57
miguelrochefort wrote: post #23

Oh the hypocrisy. Drugs legalization being trendy, you play the libertarian card. Yet, when it comes to guns or privacy, the same arguments don't hold true anymore. Cherry picking at its best. Gotta love the HN crowd.

Drugs kill their users. Guns often kill others as well.

Guns kill more users than others.

Re: Legalize It All

#125

Post by munificent »

charonn0 wrote: post #111
jessaustin wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...compulsory free education... I'm not sure what aspect of this situation this comment is meant to address. We're not absolutists; we just want the State to do less evil shit. Perhaps there have been lots of egregious abuses by, I don't know (sorry but I'm not exactly sure what we're talking about), truant officers? Nevertheless those pale in comparison to the harms of Drug War enforcement.

It's a counterpoint to the drug war: a durable, decades-long intrusion on personal autonomy by the state that produces tangible benefits and improves the quality of life for society and the individual.

Free mass education is a requirement in a democratic society. It would be national suicide for a government to give people the vote without giving them any competence to go with it.

Re: Legalize It All

#126

Post by omegaham »

sreya wrote: post #119

This is unrelated but it would be nice if this site offered the ability to minimize sub-threads. I was genuinely curious about people's opinions as to how best legalize drugs in a responsible fashion. Instead I have to scroll through an obnoxious amount of comments bemoaning the short falls of the government long enough to lose interest.

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Re: Legalize It All

#127

Post by AnimalMuppet »

13of40 wrote: post #82
narrator wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stalin was by all accounts a dictator, but he operated differently. When the NKVD secret police would arrest someone who had made a political joke that somebody heard and reported, they weren't sent to freeze to death in a gulag in Siberia for the joke. No, they were forced to confess under torture to all sorts of laundry lists of ridiculous accusations of sabotaging production and acting as a spy for foreign governm…

> in the constitution of the Soviet Union there are all kinds of rights and legal protections and such > They just say that someone belongs to an illegal non-harmonious organization like Falun-Gong or whatever and that's illegal. It seems like governments are somewhat uniform in the laws they pass, but fundamentally fickle about which laws they choose to enforce. In my state, for example, it's a felony to be a member…

If the Communist Party were actively trying to overthrow the United States government, you might see it enforced...

Re: Legalize It All

#128

Post by mikeash »

narrator wrote: post #61
shmerl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that interesting that dictatorship doesn't hesitate to openly attack dissent? That's actually expected from it.

Stalin was by all accounts a dictator, but he operated differently. When the NKVD secret police would arrest someone who had made a political joke that somebody heard and reported, they weren't sent to freeze to death in a gulag in Siberia for the joke. No, they were forced to confess under torture to all sorts of laundry lists of ridiculous accusations of sabotaging production and acting as a spy for foreign governm…

> Kind of funny statistic, but the U.S has more people incarcerated as a percentage of the population than the Soviet Union ever did.

Is that true? The number of Americans in prison is somewhat over two million. It's hard to find numbers for the USSR, but the conservative number I was able to find for the peak of the gulag system in 1950 is about 2.5 million, and that's out of a population a little over half the size of the current US population. Others claim the true numbers were much greater.

Note: not defending the US in any way here. Our prison population is absurd. The fact that the numbers are even this close is unacceptable. This is really just nitpicking.

Re: Legalize It All

#130

Post by cooper12 »

mertd wrote: post #120
cooper12 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really as much of a necessity? In my opinion most people learn the bare minimum required for exams, and then regurgitate it. I only remember tidbits of history and a little Shakespeare from my school days. Even in college most of my professors just read off powerpoints and I was forced to learn anything useful at all for my career on my own time. Schools force people to learn things they aren't interested in li…

You are also ignoring the social aspect of education and just focusing on the learning part.

I did mention it, and when most people speak of education they are usually referring to the learning aspect.
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