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Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

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Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#71

Post by Forgeties79 »

ReptileMan wrote: post #49
Forgeties79 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me make a parallel argument: We shouldn’t ban drinking and driving. It doesn’t even help, because people do it anyway. You seem to be setting the bar at “if anyone violates the law then the law is a failure and should be revoked.” But that’s why we have court systems. They don’t just determine if someone broke the law, but also what to do when people inevitably do. You’re operating in a world where the only restr…

Not quite. We regulate driving not drinking. The licence comes with strings attached. You don't take teen exam to become teen.

The point is the enforcement/adherence part. They are saying “people do it anyway, therefore we shouldn’t have the law.“ What you are arguing is actually more valid than their argument.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#72

Post by haritha-j »

My counterpoint would be that social media has a network effect. Its a lot harder for a parent to ban their own child from social media when all of their peers are on it, because it turns the child into a social outcast, at the worst years of someone's life to be a social outcast.

Also "do something, but not to the voters" is an invalid argument in this case. Anti-immigration policy is a good example of "do soemthing but not to the voters". This is do something to the only people in the voter's life that the voter cares about even more than themselves.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#73

Post by lapcat »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #69
lapcat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We shouldn’t ban drinking and driving. It doesn’t even help, because people do it anyway. > Do you see the trouble with the logic here? I think you misunderstood my comment. The second sentence was not intended to be an argument or justification for the first sentence. The first sentence stands alone: I think it's unprincipled to ban children from drinking. The second sentence is merely a corollary. Also, I think t…

Preventing children from smoking has entirely to do with the very well established and understood health impacts on children as they develop, same as alcohol. It is not because of secondhand smoke. The latter informs where we can smoke, such as (not) around a hospital.

> Preventing children from smoking has entirely to do with the very well established and understood health impacts on children as they develop, same as alcohol.

There are very well established and understood health impacts on adults too, for both smoking and alcohol.

> It is not because of secondhand smoke. The latter informs where we can smoke, such as (not) around a hospital.

Duh? I mentioned second-hand smoke in the context of "public smoking bans," by which I meant smoking in buildings and other public areas. That has nothing specifically to do with children. So it appears that once again you misunderstood my comment.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#74

Post by duskdozer »

rasmus-kirk wrote: post #18
omnicognate wrote: post #3

It would be a fun exercise to replace social media with alcohol in this article so that it argues we shouldn't ban children from drinking because drinking is bad for adults too.

I think this is a good point. What differentiates alcohol and social media? Well, social media is not physically addictive, but it's pretty clearly psychologically addictive. Along those lines it would be hard to argue that children should have unfettered access to social media. Social media is also _not_ like TV in that there's psychologists and algorithmic engineers working hard to make these types of apps as addic…

That is the real issue. The problem is that the things that cause the addiction and harm are the same things that are useful for generating profit and spreading propaganda. I'm not sure I see a viable solution that doesn't involve some people willingly giving up a very large amount of wealth or power.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#75

Post by haritha-j »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #23

Banning social media will never work, just as banning prostitution, drugs cigarettes and gambling don't work (in a broad scale). What we can do is change the public (and our) perception of it. Understanding you have a problem is always the first step in any N-step program for whatever addictive substance. Most adults don't see their own consumption and behaviour around social media as harmful or problematic or simply…

I would imagine banning something is a pretty good way to change the public perception of it.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#76

Post by lapcat »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #71
ReptileMan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. We regulate driving not drinking. The licence comes with strings attached. You don't take teen exam to become teen.

The point is the enforcement/adherence part. They are saying “people do it anyway, therefore we shouldn’t have the law.“ What you are arguing is actually more valid than their argument.

> They are saying “people do it anyway, therefore we shouldn’t have the law.

They, more precisely I, was not making such an argument, as I already explained in another comment.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#77

Post by Forgeties79 »

lapcat wrote: post #73
Forgeties79 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing children from smoking has entirely to do with the very well established and understood health impacts on children as they develop, same as alcohol. It is not because of secondhand smoke. The latter informs where we can smoke, such as (not) around a hospital.

> Preventing children from smoking has entirely to do with the very well established and understood health impacts on children as they develop, same as alcohol. There are very well established and understood health impacts on adults too, for both smoking and alcohol. > It is not because of secondhand smoke. The latter informs where we can smoke, such as (not) around a hospital. Duh? I mentioned second-hand smoke in t…

>duh?

Come on.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#78

Post by roxolotl »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #68
nomilk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are now enough statistics to prove that social media has a negative impact on the mental health of users Yes, but the point of the article is compared to what . I feel negative after 15 minutes on twitter (depending on the topic, of course), but I feel far less negative than if I'd tried getting similar info from legacy sources (10x slower, and with 10x the suits, lipstick, and ads). The point isn't that soci…

While I am prone to be against bans, I am curious how to deal with the biological problem of supernormal stimulus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus It is broadly accepted that you cannot educate a toddler or even young child to expect them to be able to self control all the time due to lack of brain development (frontal cortex or what have you). But what if a significant portion or maybe even all hu…

Is that not just slippery slope? If supernormal stimuli are broadcast across a population and we are helpless to prevent mind control then sure we should probably ban that. If the argument then is “yes but that’s exactly what TikTok is”. Well the US did actually manage to muster the political will to ban that for everyone. Of course it’s not being enforced because of reasons but it does seem like if the population believes they are being mind controlled the will is there.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#79

Post by lotsofpulp »

podgorniy wrote: post #62

> it’s easy to tax other people - the rich, bankers, benefits scroungers, energy executives Taxing the working class is the easiest: do vat tax, force income tax. Tere is no way taxing rich or executives is comparably easy. -- Let's not bother with taxing the rich to see what could happen when smallest number of people accumulate wealth in X times faster than anyone else. And don't tell me "it's natural order of thin…

> the working class is the easiest: do vat tax, force income tax. Tere is no way taxing rich or executives is comparably easy

Marginal land value tax rates. Use beneficial ownership data, and land ownership records, which should all be digitized by now, and apply a tax rate according to total ownership and “urban-ness” of the land. Since businesses have to pay also, it flows through to shareholders, and may serve as a counterbalance to businesses getting excessively large.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#80

Post by M95D »

ReptileMan wrote: post #45
n4r9 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone even studied the effect of forcing ten year olds to drink a daily litre of vodka?

This is just called being teenager in the Balkans. Eventually we turn out fine.

Did you consider that this might be part of why Balkans are so far behind the rest of Europe?
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