Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging • Hacker News Board

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#791

Post by rewmie » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:04 AM UTC

K0balt wrote: post #520

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…

> The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power.

It sounds like you are advocating for the virtues of oppression and the subjugation of anyone or anything that does not fit your norm.

> (...) many people unfortunately need an authority figure (...)

Let me stop you right there, and make it quite clear to you how profoundly idiotic and prejudicial your personal opinion is.

As you seem to advocate that people unfortunately need an authority figure, I'm sure you will acknowledge your need to be put in your place when you step out of line with this blend of nonsense, and simply succumb to the shame you should be rightfully feeling for your regrettable opinion.

If not, perhaps you can start to understand why your opinion makes absolutely no sense.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#792

Post by pfannkuchen » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:04 AM UTC

forgingahead wrote: post #764

nonethewiser wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. > I don't need more people being shamed for being gay Well he never said anything about being gay. Perhaps you’re reading some other concerns into his comment. Imagine two worlds where there is no murder. The first has no murder because no one feels inclined to murder. The second has no murder because there are very strong rules which stop people who…

Japan is highly homogenous - their immigration policy would be decried by many liberals in the West as "racist". It is a massive factor in how their society is run, and why they are so high-trust that they don't need strong enforcement mechanisms (in some cases. Don't be a Western car exec there for example). There is a show on Netflix called "Old Enough!". It's worth watching to see how some of the high-trust works…

Are other Asians, like Koreans or Taiwanese, allowed to immigrate to Japan? I thought just no one was allowed to immigrate easily, and that they basically have no immigration as a result. Is there a specific prohibition based on race?

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#793

Post by dehrmann » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:04 AM UTC

K0balt wrote: post #520

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…

I've worked with a number of people from rich European countries. Sometimes, they'd extol the virtues of their social programs, and I'd ask what keeps people from just mooching of them. The answer was always some combination of pride, shame, and sense of common purpose.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#794

Post by Takennickname » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:06 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #713

K0balt wrote: post #520

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…

It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. I don't need more people being shamed for being gay, for wearing the wrong outfit or for not fitting in. Shame just doesn't work well at a practical level. To say nothing of the superpower that gives the shameless. Meanwhile, I find your alternative of "well if we don't have shame, we'll just have to make explicit laws about it" to be not a bad thing at…

[flagged]

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#795

Post by rewmie » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:09 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #726

HWR_14 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. I don't need more people being shamed for being gay, for wearing the wrong outfit or for not fitting in. Shame just doesn't work well at a practical level. To say nothing of the superpower that gives the shameless. Meanwhile, I find your alternative of "well if we don't have shame, we'll just have to make explicit laws about it" to be not a bad thing at…

This was in the comment you’re replying to. It covers your reply > Devaluing shame instead of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed As the other comment said, you’re also discussing “being shamed” whereas the original comment is about “feeling shame”. Similar but far from identical.

> As the other comment said, you’re also discussing “being shamed” whereas the original comment is about “feeling shame”. Similar but far from identical.

No, not really. OP clearly advocates for "the need of an authority figure" to force his personal views onto others he feels are lacking in the way of morals. OP's puerile take on "shame" is just a thinly veilled desire to oppress everyone and anyone around them that does not comply with his personal views.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#796

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:09 AM UTC

Terr_ wrote: post #785

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's as opposed to the significant costs of keeping someone in prison, which is significantly more than they would be earning if they were free. It's worse than that. If someone is working a productive job, even if they don't make much, they're doing something useful. Someone has their dishes washed or their floors swept and there is a surplus that accrues not only to the worker but also the rest of society. If s…

> even if they don't make much, they're doing something useful. While I agree that the prison-scenario costs are probably underestimated and underappreciated... If we're going to try to measure the "doing something useful" part, we should also consider the other side of "doing something destructive to other people and property" part. Someone could hold down a job and be cutting catalytic converters out of other peopl…

The underlying assumption being that the only alternatives are prison and crime.

Suppose nonviolent criminals get sentenced to restitution and community service and only go to prison if they fail to complete their community service. Now you want to go out stealing catalytic converters and you're going to find that doing a bunch of free labor while giving half the wages from your paid labor to your victims is a lot less profitable than just doing honest work.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#797

Post by tayo42 » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:10 AM UTC

NotSuspicious wrote: post #590

brightlancer wrote: post #186

Rubbish. Folks made the exact same arguments about alcohol and marijuana. Specifically with alcohol, anyone can walk into a treatment center without fear that they'll be arrested for the mere _use_ of a substance. (Marijuana has very low risk and rates of addiction, physical or psychological.) If "hard" drugs are legalized, then they will likely be treated the same as alcohol and pot and tobacco: highly regulated, so…

> Folks made the exact same arguments about alcohol and marijuana. Maybe those people were right? Prohibition decreased the amount of people addicted to alcohol and the number of people who beat their wives. If we had a more hard-line response to alcohol instead of the half-in/half-out wishy-washy nonsense that was Prohibition enforcement maybe less people would have their lives ruined by alcohol to this day. Singapo…

Singapore mignt have intense laws. It also takes care of its citizens with universal Healthcare and subsidized housing. People are are in less dire situations and don't need to turn to crime.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#798

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #746

_8j50 wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame works very well. I so hate it when people use "gay" to invoke some sort of a culture war side-choosing spell. The original comment is about feeling shame not being shamed. If you believe being gay is wrong the yes you should feel shame, if you don't then the question is not relevant for you. The original commenter is more right than any of us can conceive. So many societal problems would be solved if people had…

> So many societal problems would be solved if people had raised their kids to learn to feel shame. Trumpism, gun worship, climate change denial, post-truth mindset, anti-vaxx, treason, insurrection, racial hatred and discrimination,etc... As you say, shame works very well. I'm baffled as to why you would assume that people who hold beliefs different from your own would raise their children without leaning upon the v…

[deleted]

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#799

Post by pfannkuchen » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

happymellon wrote: post #778

rayiner wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean shame doesn’t work? America is a country that literally can’t reproduce itself without importing people from countries where mothers shame children for not having children in a timely manner. America had 100,000 people die of drug overdoses last year, whereas societies that shame people for drug use have far lower rates of overdoses. Middle eastern and south Asian countries that shame people for pre-…

> Middle eastern and south Asian countries that shame people for pre-marital sex largely managed to avoid the AIDS epidemic that gripped similarly poor countries in other regions. Are you serious? Pre-marital rape is a massive issue there, as is underage rape, and rape "to just teach those women a lesson".

I think they take a different approach though, where women are guarded by the family from being in situations where males, who are known and accepted to be violently sexually aggressive, might harm them. Then women who end up in such situations anyway are considered fair game, more or less.

I imagine, though, that while the numbers for various rape types are probably relatively high compared to other countries, those crimes still affect a tiny minority of women and wouldn’t move the broader needle on HIV rates. I would guess that date rape is also extremely lower than in the west due to courtship practices being very different (which would work against high HIV rates).

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#800

Post by telchior » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

K0balt wrote: post #520

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…

> The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame

Shame is admittedly a very powerful tool for social conformity. During the few centuries that you seem to view as the good old days, it was used to great effect for blocking many different behaviors. Among those: not dressing in quite the right way; having dark skin; insufficient patriotism; insufficient aggression in men; the desire for autonomy in women; homosexuality, or for that matter basically any acknowledgement that humans are an innately sexual species.

And then society broke, gosh darn it!

The problem with bringing back those good old days of shame, but of course just in the way that's nice and beneficial, is that a huge number of people believe that all of the above listed shameful behaviors of yesteryear should still be shameful. Shame is the mechanism that various conservatives are using, at this very instant, in trying to brand all gay people as groomers, or all people who get abortions as murderers and/or worthless sluts.

So, in my humble opinion, it ain't happening; how are you going to get any kind of agreement about what behaviors are good to shame? Pandora's box has been opened for half of humanity, who all generally agree that non-harmful behaviors should not be shamed, while things like flagrant violations of election law or finance law should be; while the other half continues to vociferously insist that non-harmful social behaviors are the only real priority and the golden days would come back if only we could all hate the deviants again.