601–610 of 1001 posts
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And how about payment for surgery for coronary artery disease/type 2 diabetes medications/etc?
I guess for you that might be an upside of the American Healthcare system - fat people pay more for health insurance, and have to pay money out of pocket for their surgery and medications.
Not even sure under what circumstances it is true, post-Obamacare.
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Radical individualism leads to absurd ideas like "I have the right to harm myself if I choose". Heh, nope. This is the ridiculous liberal "notion" of "right", which is incoherent and absurd. The very idea of "right" presupposes an objective good. Harming oneself (drugs, suicide, whatever) is objectively evil. You cannot have a right to an evil thing.
It's not absurd. It's your body, you can do what you want with it. There's been plenty of evil done by do-gooders, who are so certain in their rectitude about what's best for others, that they feel justified in imposing that rectitude upon them.
I can’t hit people with it, I can’t transport it onto private property, I can’t use it to yell all night, I can’t sell organs, the list is endless.
Anything we do, we do with our body, and every law ever applies to what I do with my body. The question is: do we think the costs of law the restriction outweigh the benefits? You may think so, but you have to argue for it, you can’t just invoke a principle which has never existed.
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The ex of someone I know is both a user and a dealer. He opted to be homeless over getting clean. Sadly here in the states there is little you can do if an adult chooses a self destructive path - calls to sheriff/police did nothing - “nothing we can do until he commits a crime”. Where “crime” is something other than the drug use/possession. This individual has always been self absorbed and useless. His daughter asked…
Radical individualism leads to absurd ideas like "I have the right to harm myself if I choose". Heh, nope. This is the ridiculous liberal "notion" of "right", which is incoherent and absurd. The very idea of "right" presupposes an objective good. Harming oneself (drugs, suicide, whatever) is objectively evil. You cannot have a right to an evil thing.
It's better if people who are suffering from issues that have no chance of relenting continue to suffer indefinitely.
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The ex of someone I know is both a user and a dealer. He opted to be homeless over getting clean. Sadly here in the states there is little you can do if an adult chooses a self destructive path - calls to sheriff/police did nothing - “nothing we can do until he commits a crime”. Where “crime” is something other than the drug use/possession. This individual has always been self absorbed and useless. His daughter asked…
Radical individualism leads to absurd ideas like "I have the right to harm myself if I choose". Heh, nope. This is the ridiculous liberal "notion" of "right", which is incoherent and absurd. The very idea of "right" presupposes an objective good. Harming oneself (drugs, suicide, whatever) is objectively evil. You cannot have a right to an evil thing.
Yes
The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power. Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created…
This is a fascinating view on the sedative crisis. The lack of shame from "normal" people feels very real. Complete inaction to the staggering and ever increasing death count rate and bodies piling on the ground IS utterly shameful, but not for 2023 USA. I've noticed as well that when I've spoke to friends and family about open drug use and markets I become the one who's "out of line." Do we as a free society have no…
I brought my kid to a pumpkin patch for Halloween last year and this lady told her kids to simply cut in line so they can go do some fun thing first. I thought to myself "crap, I can't say anything because you know what'll happen." My elderly father didn't have that inner voice and told the lady to get her kids to the back of the line. Well, as I expected, lady totally went bananas, whipped out her cellphone, shouting "you don't talk to my kids!" calling my old man a racist... everything under the sun.
We're expected to simply sit back, mind our own business, and ignore bad/destructive behavior. If you believe in the social contract you're out of line.
Alcohol, being at once one of the worlds most dangerous hard drugs, one of the worlds premium luxury markets, and a common everyday cultural component across large swathes of humanity, is proof that society can and does incorporate the regular leisure usage of mental intoxicants as an ethically acceptable standard of living. If you are happy to walk down your street and purchase a bottle of wine or craft beer, then y…
Alcohol as a "luxury market" is really just a marketing gimmick. It's dressed up to be palatable and to entice people. Dealers gotta make money. "Society" isn't really a unit. Plenty of people would happily make alcohol illegal if they had power. It's not ethically acceptable to drink in a lot of communities (even in the U.S.). Some countries prohibit alcohol present day. My point is that the status of alcohol as "et…
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Radical individualism leads to absurd ideas like "I have the right to harm myself if I choose". Heh, nope. This is the ridiculous liberal "notion" of "right", which is incoherent and absurd. The very idea of "right" presupposes an objective good. Harming oneself (drugs, suicide, whatever) is objectively evil. You cannot have a right to an evil thing.
It's not absurd. It's your body, you can do what you want with it. There's been plenty of evil done by do-gooders, who are so certain in their rectitude about what's best for others, that they feel justified in imposing that rectitude upon them.
I also said nothing about do-gooders. I never said I supported do-gooders. What sorts of legal measures ought to exist is a prudential judgement. In this case, it's clear that drug use should be criminalized.
I used to strongly support making drugs legal. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want. But what I've seen in San Francisco has made me think differently. Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment. The problem will stick around because politicians care more about how things look. They'll s…
One important observation is that drug use is largely downstream of homelessness. Being homeless is awful, and drives people to self-medication/-numbing. (Of course some homelessness is caused by prior drug addiction but I’ve seen compelling analysis suggesting it’s mostly the other way around.) SF primarily has a cost-of-living problem, which produces a homelessness problem, which produces a drug problem. Programs t…
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I understand. But what is the solution? Just wait for them to all die? Here in San fransciso we have 3 overdose death per day. That is 40% spike from last years. In 2017 we had 222 overdose death for entire year and we reached that number by march 15h this year. [1] https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/2021%2005_OCME%20...
The solution that seems most likely to work IMO seems to be a European-style welfare state. All drugs have long been decriminalized in Portugal and you don’t see that kind of thing on the streets of Lisbon. But I don’t see that happening any time soon in the USA.
Decriminalization doesn’t mean just do whatever you want in public.
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The ex of someone I know is both a user and a dealer. He opted to be homeless over getting clean. Sadly here in the states there is little you can do if an adult chooses a self destructive path - calls to sheriff/police did nothing - “nothing we can do until he commits a crime”. Where “crime” is something other than the drug use/possession. This individual has always been self absorbed and useless. His daughter asked…
What's the saying... "My body, My choice" ? Well, some people will choose, willingly, to waste their life away living on the streets from one high to the next. The difference between most types of poverty and this, is that they *chose* this path. Bodily autonomy has powerful upsides, as well as downsides. Here's one of the downsides. If they wanted to 'get out', I'd be there to help them if I knew them. But they have…
In an ideal world, I guess these things would all be prevented and/or prosecuted, rather than the drugs themselves, of course, so as best to preserve bodily autonomy. I think you can make the case that the Oregon experiment is showing how in practice that doesn't happen.