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Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

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Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#131

Post by illuminate »

trhtrsh wrote: post #113
marcos123 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how humans tend to fully forget about things that happened only 100 years prior. Back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, some 50% of the American population was addicted to opiates in one form or another, usually without even realizing it (due to there being no failed drug laws yet, and no laws regarding the listing of ingredients on common "elixirs"). And yet, we didn't live in some apocalyptic wastelan…

http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Legislation/default... "The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 was passed after a legally marketed toxic elixir killed 107 people" 1908, when over-the-counter headache pills might kill you: http://books.google.com/books?id=nssSAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA4-PA6...

I'm pro-decriminalization but anti-snake oil tonics. Legalization allows you to test for purity/adulterants.

http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/news/2010/01/001.shtml

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#132

Post by dreamdu5t »

sethrin wrote: post #97
dreamdu5t wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is a protection racket. Laws against weed violate the sovereignty of hte individual. It's absurd that the primary argument is tax revenue. Really shows how whacked politics and American's conception of government is.

What is "individual sovereignty"? Rights are granted not by God, not by some internal edict. They come from the society you inhabit. The world of sovereign individuals is wonderful in objectivist fantasies. In reality, it results in anarchy, for a brief moment before one strongman clubs another over the head, and two other people decide to team up against their neighbors. Even casting aside the concept of civilizatio…

"Rights are granted not by God, not by some internal edict. They come from the society you inhabit."

Individual sovereignty was granted to you by God. You were born with it. It's a self-evident fact. Any denial of such requires you to employ your own will over your body. Any denial of individual sovereignty proves it. Your comment is the result of the ownership of your own body.

"You were nearly correct: government is a natural monopoly on the use of force."

Government does not have a natural monopoly on force because they do not sell it. To have a monopoly you need a market. Government is not a group you hire to defend your rights, instead government forces you to be their subject and pay for their protection. Forcing someone to pay for your protection is a protection racket.

I've never read Ayn Rand and I am not an Objectivist. Espousing objectivism is not a prerequisite for defending the natural rights of life, liberty, and property.

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#133

Post by lukeschlather »

cnp wrote: post #83
pstuart wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously more people will try it if it is legal, but it's pretty ubiquitous now and most adults have already had the chance to sample and decide. As for the "cost to society", I have to imagine that any damage from use (and there's not much evidence for it) would be countered by the decrease in real damage done by the War on Drugs.

Exactly. And I would further argue that the possibility is very high that it will actually decrease alcohol consumption, which as we all know is immeasurably harmful.

It's quite measurable, and is in fact measured.

Marijuana is the one that is immeasurably harmful. The biggest benefit of legalization is that it will allow us to make good measurements of the effects.

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#134

Post by sliverstorm »

swah wrote: post #50
bobzimuta wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all substances need to be legalized. There's no reason for the government to promote the use of drugs, however it should stay out of our personal choices as much as possible. Borrowing from Portugal's drug policy, decriminalize possession of personal amounts of drugs and focus on rehabilitation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#Laws_an...

But then you get the paradox of being able to consume but not produce.

How is that a paradox? There's a lot of things you can consume but not produce.

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#135

Post by sliverstorm »

Retric wrote: post #127
trhtrsh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500% tax is isn't 4x revenue. Either the consumer pays the tax, so its 4x the product cost, or the vendor pays it, and prices the tax into the sale price, so the tax us 83% of revenue. Take an example: water costs 2cents/gallon. a 500% tax would make water 10cents a gallon. That would be enough to promote agressive conservation, but not prohibitively expensive. Soda costs $1/pint, for 500% markup. Yet it's not prohib…

Municipal water costs in the US average around .0015 cents a gallon. Flushing your toilets with .0075 cents per gallon would not be prohibitive, growing crops with .0075 cents per gallon water would be. However, far more water goes to growing crops than flushing toilets. PS: There are actually huge swings in water costs in different areas, which does impact water use significantly.

growing crops with .0075 cents per gallon water would be

Only because everybody else is growing with 0.0015 cents a gallon. If everybody was growing with 0.0075 cents per gallon, food would be more expensive, but we wouldn't suddenly be unable to feed ourselves.

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#136

Post by sethrin »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #132
sethrin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "individual sovereignty"? Rights are granted not by God, not by some internal edict. They come from the society you inhabit. The world of sovereign individuals is wonderful in objectivist fantasies. In reality, it results in anarchy, for a brief moment before one strongman clubs another over the head, and two other people decide to team up against their neighbors. Even casting aside the concept of civilizatio…

"Rights are granted not by God, not by some internal edict. They come from the society you inhabit." Individual sovereignty was granted to you by God. You were born with it. It's a self-evident fact. Any denial of such requires you to employ your own will over your body. Any denial of individual sovereignty proves it. Your comment is the result of the ownership of your own body. "You were nearly correct: government i…

God isn't real. Neither is individual sovereignty. Just ask Napoleon, or Hitler, or any man ever executed. Individual sovereignty is not the same thing as free will.

You don't require currency to be a market, but you do, in fact, pay taxes. You also pay with your productivity and everything that you do which does not benefit solely yourself. Do read up on the definitions of "market", "natural monopoly," and "sovereignty."

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#137

Post by sethrin »

smsm42 wrote: post #101
sethrin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "individual sovereignty"? Rights are granted not by God, not by some internal edict. They come from the society you inhabit. The world of sovereign individuals is wonderful in objectivist fantasies. In reality, it results in anarchy, for a brief moment before one strongman clubs another over the head, and two other people decide to team up against their neighbors. Even casting aside the concept of civilizatio…

They don't come from the society - otherwise there's nothing wrong with slavery, if only society condones it. If you want to claim the society is wrong and slavery is bad, you need to find some reason why. If the reason of "I don't like it" does not sound convincing to you, you'd have to find some principles that lie beyond the customs of the society. It doesn't have to be God's will, but it has to be something. Soci…

I am in principle willing to concede that, but I don't think it necessary. I am not willing to put the rights of the individual over the rights of the collective. Individuals do not reproduce -- we are not bacteria. There is a point where promoting individual rights is not useful where the species is concerned.

The concepts of "fairness" and "equality", are both fundamental to good societies. They also can only be defined within the context of a society: fairness and equality for one individual (or a sociopath) is whatever the hell he likes. You don't need the argument for individual rights in order to decry slavery, though it helps. Where societies are not fair or equal, they are not good. When individuals are not beneficial to the society they are in, they are not good. There are other measures of morality, but none so fundamental.

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#138

Post by Retric »

sliverstorm wrote: post #135
Retric wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Municipal water costs in the US average around .0015 cents a gallon. Flushing your toilets with .0075 cents per gallon would not be prohibitive, growing crops with .0075 cents per gallon water would be. However, far more water goes to growing crops than flushing toilets. PS: There are actually huge swings in water costs in different areas, which does impact water use significantly.

growing crops with .0075 cents per gallon water would be Only because everybody else is growing with 0.0015 cents a gallon. If everybody was growing with 0.0075 cents per gallon, food would be more expensive, but we wouldn't suddenly be unable to feed ourselves.

All things being equal if water averaged .0075 cents per gallon it's because there was less of it. So, we would still use some of it to grow crops, but we would not be growing as much food.

PS: We are used to abundance, but there really are hard limits out there.

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#139

Post by smsm42 »

sethrin wrote: post #137
smsm42 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't come from the society - otherwise there's nothing wrong with slavery, if only society condones it. If you want to claim the society is wrong and slavery is bad, you need to find some reason why. If the reason of "I don't like it" does not sound convincing to you, you'd have to find some principles that lie beyond the customs of the society. It doesn't have to be God's will, but it has to be something. Soci…

I am in principle willing to concede that, but I don't think it necessary. I am not willing to put the rights of the individual over the rights of the collective. Individuals do not reproduce -- we are not bacteria. There is a point where promoting individual rights is not useful where the species is concerned. The concepts of "fairness" and "equality", are both fundamental to good societies. They also can only be de…

Collective can not have rights different from the rights of people, since collective is nothing but people - it just word saying "many people". So you're saying "I'm not willing to put rights of individual over the rights of other individuals". OK, that sounds fine, but nobody is asking you to.

>> There is a point where promoting individual rights is not useful where the species is concerned.

Useful to whom? Species is just another word saying "a lot of people". I'm sure to some of these people suppressing right of some other people would be very beneficial. So what?

>>> The concepts of "fairness" and "equality", are both fundamental to good societies.

People understand very different things when they say "fairness" and "equality". Some people think it's "fair" that somebody can not work a day in his life and still get money, shelter, services, education and many other goods paid by somebody else who works 14 hours a day. Some think it's not. Some think it's not "fair" that some people have millions and live in luxury and some have trouble with paying for their basic needs - and others think it's completely "fair". Same with equality - equality of what? The only way people can be truly equal if they are identical clones living identical lives in identical circumstances. This can not happen. So equality needs to be qualified - what we want to be equal? The society can do nothing with these definition - these things mean different things for different people, and always will. Politicians use this to lure people into voting for them, but in their speeches they just mean "vote for me please".

>>> When individuals are not beneficial to the society they are in, they are not good.

Sorry, this is baloney. Individual has absolutely no obligation to be "beneficial" to other people. Treating people only as resources or sources of benefits for oneself is immoral and such treatment - if you're talking about sociopaths - is usually a sure sign of some pathology in emotional/moral sphere. It is not a fundamental measure of moral, it is a fundamental measure of immorality. This is what leads to societies where millions of people get murdered, because they were declared "not useful for society".

Re: Washington voters approve legalized marijuana

#140

Post by sethrin »

smsm42 wrote: post #139
sethrin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in principle willing to concede that, but I don't think it necessary. I am not willing to put the rights of the individual over the rights of the collective. Individuals do not reproduce -- we are not bacteria. There is a point where promoting individual rights is not useful where the species is concerned. The concepts of "fairness" and "equality", are both fundamental to good societies. They also can only be de…

Collective can not have rights different from the rights of people, since collective is nothing but people - it just word saying "many people". So you're saying "I'm not willing to put rights of individual over the rights of other individuals". OK, that sounds fine, but nobody is asking you to. >> There is a point where promoting individual rights is not useful where the species is concerned. Useful to whom? Species…

You're ignoring what I'm saying about biology. Imagine a scenario where an action benefits one person to the exclusion of all others: one man survives as King of the Universe, and the rest of humanity shuffles off this mortal coil more or less willingly.

Can this situation be considered "good"?

If not, why not?

My argument is that ultimate good and evil are predicated on the survival of the species. If you can rate individual rights as being the ultimate good, then you are saying that the survival of the species is less good.

If you do not think that individual rights are the ultimate good, then we are just arguing about a matter of degree, not primacy. Also, from there any topic that I can relate to being necessary to the collective survival is an automatic win, but don't let that worry you overly.

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