Willie Nelson sentenced to... sing.

[MaineShark]

You're drifting again.  I've said that governments "justify much of their encroachment upon liberty through outdated economic conjectures", meaning (political) socialism, a subset of which includes the "war" on certain plants / substances / "drugs".  This thread criticizes so-called libertarians who endlessly rehash the drugs issue as their #1 priority, neglecting the broader issues of liberty, and especially neglecting the likelihood that social and economic consequences of drug use in a free society would also be unpleasant.

Given that the "drug war" is the top method by which they destroy liberty, it makes good sense that many consider it the top priority to address.

Even contractual socialism constitutes a competitive disadvantage, a lot more so than the prohibition of alcohol, pot, heroin, etc.  Singapore isn't harmed by its prohibitions, and one can make a strong case that it is helped by it, creating a more suitable environment for family tourism, business, and high-tech research.  It is a champion of low taxes, low crime, low corruption, and the highest IQ scores in the world.

Someone doesn't understand cause and effect.  Let's presume that the four claims you make at the end there are all true, for the sake of argument.  Could those, perhaps, be causing its prosperity, rather than the drug ban?

In a free society, parents would have an even greater incentive to encourage their children to grow up healthy, smart, and productive.

Um, yes, so they wouldn't support nonsense like prohibition, because "healthy, smart, and productive" people don't.

I'm not out to "control" anybody, only to explain the economic reality of recreational drug use in a free society.

No, you're just promulgating your fantasies, not anything based upon reality.

You live in New England and mostly hang out with young libertarians, and you seem to be biased by your surroundings.

Hardly.  I've lived a variety of places, and I associate with an inordinately-wide cross-section of society due to being a business owner.

Even the most libertarian states in the world's most libertarian country have a very hard time legalizing even the least dangerous of taboo drugs, even under the condition of maintaining strict government controls!  (Or do you believe aliens are switching the ballot boxes in every polling place every time?)

What ballot boxes are you talking about, precisely?

You'll just claim that the current statistics are tainted by the effects of imprisonment and other government-caused bias (at least that's what I do when arguing against prohibitionists).  But, fine, I'll do 30 seconds of Googling...  Heavy Pot Users Report Lower Income And Education...  yuck dot-gov... Smoking Marijuana Lowers Fertility...

If that's the best you can do, then yes, I will say that you are using biased data.

I guess you'll just have to use a bit of common sense.  Terms like "stoner" or "crack baby" don't generally imply "future CEO".

I expect that the large number of CEO's who use drugs, probably don't call themselves "stoners."  Common sense says that you don't market yourself as a "stoner" if you want to be a CEO.  Just like I would call myself a "firearms instructor," not a "gun nut" if I were trying to obtain students.

Drugs and alcohol loosen one's grip on objective reality, and some can stay in one's system for days, making drug users less reliable employees, business partners, parents, insurance subjects, etc.

Again, where are your data?  Most Americans use drugs.  You, yourself, have admitted to drug use; are you unreliable?

See above.  Also, any demographic comparison between two groups needs to consider not only income but other things that contribute to long-term economic power, including: savings, life expectancy, family size, "soft power", etc.  A lot of coke-yuppies blow through a lot of cash and leave behind at most one token child.  A lot of "inbred redneck" types invest in their families, as well as in high-security assets (ex. land).

Except that, absent prohibition, "coke-yuppies" would not blow through a lot of cash, because cocaine would not be expensive.

A lot of families would boycott Wawa (for example) if their priest / Imam / neighborhood association leaders told them it was tolerating recreational drug use by its employees.

Would they?  Folks talk about boycotts, but they rarely follow through.

I might as well, because I like fast service and exact change.  How many people would boycott Wawa for having a drug testing policy for its employees?  Probably not even most pot-heads, because they tend to forget these kinds of things, especially when they get the munchies...

How many would shop there because it has access to a wider labor pool and, therefore, lower labor costs, yielding lower prices?  I bet most folks would forget about drug policies, if one store is even a few percent cheaper than the other.

What refutations?  All you've done is babble about Tylenol, the use of which currently isn't a likely target of massive ostracism within a free market society.

Um, no, I've refuted every single claim you've made.  And the best you've been able to come up with to counter, are government studies?

The substance of points about drug activism being an overused and shallow topic remains untouched.

Except where it was addressed in detail, over the course of multiple posts, right?

Joe

[Ed]

you didn't refute anything he said, you deflected by pretending to misinterpret his points

in a world where people can contract this stuff through CC&R, lots of people probably would move into drug-usage-limited areas. It isn't that controversial. What exactly do you have against people voluntarily following their preferences?

[MaineShark]

you didn't refute anything he said, you deflected by pretending to misinterpret his points

You may have missed it, since I didn't use small words.  Go back and re-read, with a dictionary handy.

in a world where people can contract this stuff through CC&R, lots of people probably would move into drug-usage-limited areas. It isn't that controversial. What exactly do you have against people voluntarily following their preferences?

Nothing.  But it won't happen most of the time, like he claims it will.  It will rarely happen, just like voluntary communes will rarely happen; neither makes good economic sense, so those who make those decisions will place themselves at a disadvantage.

Joe

[Ed]

in the one city where the private market has replaced zoning (Houston) the entire city is run by CC&R. All over this country CC&R's & HOA's control a hell of a lot more than what people ingest/smoke.

Drug usage is widely viewed in a negative light. You really think people wouldn't live in communities restricting the use of such? That is, not that don't let you go to places where drugs are used or sold, but within the residential area, when you're there, you're restricted. Based on popular opinion I think that a lot if not most people would opt for such residential communities. Few people would want to raise a family where your next door neighbor could do some E and hold a rave or freak out on meth... well, at least I would imagine most wives sure as hell would refuse such kind of housing. (when it comes to housing/residences, it's pretty much the wife's decision).

[MaineShark]

in the one city where the private market has replaced zoning (Houston) the entire city is run by CC&R. All over this country CC&R's & HOA's control a hell of a lot more than what people ingest/smoke.

Texas law requires you to join a HOA if a majority of your neighbors want to form one.  So that's not even vaguely free market.  Try again.

Drug usage is widely viewed in a negative light. You really think people wouldn't live in communities restricting the use of such? That is, not that don't let you go to places where drugs are used or sold, but within the residential area, when you're there, you're restricted. Based on popular opinion I think that a lot if not most people would opt for such residential communities.

Drug usage, an activity which the overwhelming majority engages in, is "widely" viewed in a negative light?

Personally, if I engage in some activity, I don't tend to do so, because I view it negatively.

Few people would want to raise a family where your next door neighbor could do some E and hold a rave or freak out on meth... well, at least I would imagine most wives sure as hell would refuse such kind of housing. (when it comes to housing/residences, it's pretty much the wife's decision).

Sexist, a bit?

I'm assuming that "E" refers to "Ecstasy," a slang term for 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (abbreviated MDMA)?  The drug that makes folks mellow and in love with the world?  Could you possibly have picked a worse example of a drug someone would be worried about their neighbor taking?  What'll I need to do, lock my door so I don't have to listen to him telling me how much he loves everyone in the neighborhood?

Joe

[Ed]

oh jeez

OK clearly I meant "drugs" as in "recreational drugs" are widely viewed in a negative light. Recreational drugs are frequently referred to as just "drugs", like "Hey kids, don't do drugs"

There's no way you could not have understood that. If you're going to pretend you can't discern the basics of colloquial speech based on conversational context, then you're admitting you can't really reasonably participate in a debate.

[MaineShark]

OK clearly I meant "drugs" as in "recreational drugs" are widely viewed in a negative light. Recreational drugs are frequently referred to as just "drugs", like "Hey kids, don't do drugs"

There's no way you could not have understood that. If you're going to pretend you can't discern the basics of colloquial speech based on conversational context, then you're admitting you can't really reasonably participate in a debate.

I didn't fail to understand that.  I was directly addressing your claim, knowing that it was in reference to recreational drugs, and responding the same.

How did you fail to realize that?

The majority of Americans use recreational drugs.  Ethyl hydrate is popular.  There's a certain alkaloid found in some plants in the nightshade family that is also a quite popular recreational drug.

Joe

[littlehawk]

I like whip cream cans. nitrous, baby.

[Ed]

oh please

yeah drinking is the exception - but even then most people recognize that too much can become a problem. And yes, there is that exception, and even if you claim they're being "inconsistent", tough noogies, because they still think that way.

Yes, things like pot, cocaine, meth, E, PCP usage, etc. is looked down upon. It's considered dangerous, taboo, whatever you want to call it.

Are you really going to sit there and tell me that this is not so? What the hell are you even arguing? It's just a fact of life. Pot's probably viewed the least badly, still viewed negatively, as a childish or slacker-ish thing. Maybe PCP viewed as the worst. But whatever the small differences, there it is. If you're gonna tell me that this isn't so in terms of popular opinion, then you're just being silly.

All this kid is saying is we could predict that a lot if not most people probably would opt to live in some kind of place that had sme kind of restrictions on recreational drug use.
I mean, shit, pot smokers would probably split off and make their own subdivisions allowing pot and restricting harder drugs after a few run ins with eccentric behavior from harder drug users.

[littlehawk]

bennies, downers, black mollys, ludes...they're all here Joe, book em.

[MaineShark]

yeah drinking is the exception - but even then most people recognize that too much can become a problem. And yes, there is that exception, and even if you claim they're being "inconsistent", tough noogies, because they still think that way.

Yes, things like pot, cocaine, meth, E, PCP usage, etc. is looked down upon. It's considered dangerous, taboo, whatever you want to call it.

Are you really going to sit there and tell me that this is not so? What the hell are you even arguing? It's just a fact of life. Pot's probably viewed the least badly, still viewed negatively, as a childish or slacker-ish thing. Maybe PCP viewed as the worst. But whatever the small differences, there it is. If you're gonna tell me that this isn't so in terms of popular opinion, then you're just being silly.

Yup.  Obviously, all Americans view marijuana poorly.  That's why half of them have used it?

All this kid is saying is we could predict that a lot if not most people probably would opt to live in some kind of place that had sme kind of restrictions on recreational drug use.

Yes.  And that's unsupported by any evidence.

Joe

[Ed]

yeah tons of people HAVE used pot, but that doesn't mean they're still a-OK with it when they get older. We were all young once

and we're not just talking about pot

well that's the evidence we're citing, what we're talking about - the current popular opinion on recreational drugs. There's no reason to expect that a different governance scheme would hugely change people's opinions on what is more of a personal lifestyle matter.

[MaineShark]

yeah tons of people HAVE used pot, but that doesn't mean they're still a-OK with it when they get older. We were all young once

Alex says, once a pot-head, always a pot-head...

and we're not just talking about pot

Um, yes, that's exactly what we were talking about.  Go back and actually read the thread.  Start from the beginning.

well that's the evidence we're citing, what we're talking about - the current popular opinion on recreational drugs. There's no reason to expect that a different governance scheme would hugely change people's opinions on what is more of a personal lifestyle matter.

Given that the entire opinion seems to rest solely on legality and nothing else, yes, there's an extraordinarily-strong reason to expect that the opinion would change dramatically if the government stopped banning drugs.

Joe

[Alex Libman]

(I'll start with an older MaineShark message that I skipped.)

That will be decided in the free market by the insurance companies and all of the other contractual agreements I've mentioned above.

It's already been determined, scientifically.  There is no evidence that anyone, in the history of the world, has ever overdosed on marijuana.  Acetaminophen is the most-overdosed drug in the US and several other countriesm ad the leading cause of acute liver failure in the Western world (even above alcohol).  It's a horribly-dangerous substance.  Keeping pet rattlesnakes is safer than keeping Tylenol in the house.

"If you want scientific values, stop dealing with human beings, right... now.  Human values are not always scientific."   

To clarify...  Healthy human adults are "Rational Economic Actors", in the sense that they can seek to maximize their own personal well-being in accordance with their personal values, and taking into account the reality around them, like the need to deal with other "Rational Economic Actors".  This is the basis of my theory of Natural Rights.  However, individual values that people choose to pursue can be based on many different aspects of the human experience, many of which are emotional and illogical.

A person may choose to smoke because she enjoys it, knowing full well of the consequences that has for her health.  Likewise, another person can choose to only reside and do business in buildings that prohibit smoking, even if a rational assessment of second hand smoke dangers would not warrant this sort of behavior.  The marketplace can provide a peaceful but separate coexistence for those two people, but the convenience of each of those lifestyles will be subject to the economic realities around them.  If you're the only smoker in a town populated by smoke-haters, or vice versa, you may have to pay extra or travel farther to satisfy your desires.

The same will apply to pot, Tylenol, pet rattlesnakes, or anything else.  You can use scientific arguments to encourage people to base their values on logic, but it is their Right to have a pro-Tylenol / anti-pot bias, as most people do today.  Insurance companies would be more rational in evaluating those risks, and some may create incentives for safer Tylenol dispensers and other overdose prevention tech.  Employers would weigh the consequences of Tylenol and pot while looking out for their bottom line.  Etc.

Like I keep saying, the marketplace will decide the exact social pressures that would encourage or discourage the use of Tylenol, pot, or anything else.  It is clear, however, that some degree of pot prohibition will inevitably continue to exist.

Given what a huge fraction of the population has used it, I expect you really don't have any clue what you're talking about.

I've used Microsoft Office, and even inhaled the VBA... but that doesn't mean I want my children to use it! 

I've done some pretty destructive hacking in my teens, most notably a certain "white power" BBS (via a known MajorBBS / Worldgroup vulnerability) - something that I regret today, and I most certainly would require my employees to sign a code of ethics that prohibits this sort of behavior.

Even some people who smoke pot once in a while may choose to move into a drug-free neighborhood, because other economic incentives make that desirable, and go to a "pot friendly hotel" on the other side of town every other weekend to relax.  Etc.

So, something between a quarter and half the population of the US are forever "potheads," in your theory?

I clearly said "according to some people", while explaining why some people would be very strict about contractual drug prohibitions in their neighborhood / university / business charter agreements.

If you want a rational language, stop speaking English, right... now.  English is not rational.

One has to pick one's battles, but putting quotes and commas in their rational place has no ill side-effects.

As far as your original "analogy," as I noted, it is not analogous.  The behaviors you describe are not the same (kissing romantically, versus mouth-to-mouth resuscitation).  You could compare real mouth-to-mouth to a CPR demonstration (where the intent in one is to save the victim's life, and in the other is to demonstrate technique), but you'll find that the difference in motives doesn't actually matter.  If you imagine that a romantic kiss and CRP have anything in common, I'm going to take a wild guess that you've either never done one, never done the other, or never done either.

Good luck explaining that to a line of pedophiles who're about to show up at your door asking how much you're charging to play CPR with your 12-year-old.   

Its effectiveness as an antipyretic is questionable.  Ibuprofen has demonstrably better effectiveness, and is far safer.

You may be right, but I'm just observing the marketplace.  Take that up with the doctors.


(Gotta run, will finish later.)

[Ed]

no it doesn't rest entirely on legality - or do you mean the public's opinions rest solely on legality? What I'm saying is that most people in the public in general don't have a positive view on recreational drug usage outside of alcohol or cigarettes. Numerous polls and votes (in various countries) support this, though mainly I'm speaking from my personal experience living in society. Now wether they believe such BECAUSE said drugs are illegal would be a lot harder to gauge, though in my experience that's not the case. The sad fact of the matter is vice is a pretty pernicious aspect of the human condition and something that I've found most people are rational enbough to realize should be avoided and/or viewed with suspicion/negatively.

the OP may have been about pot but the claim that people would live in separated communities is broad enough that other recreational drugs come into play. And again, people already do such in co-op buildings and HOAs*

I don't really care what Alex says** - even if a lot of people have used pot, doesn't mean they don't now when they're older feel that it's a slacker's or childish way of having fun

*the thing you said about HOA's in Texas is true, but they can't enforce any CC&R that wasn't in the original deed. That stuff is put in by the developer deliberately based on what he thinks his customers want. So the control that the HOA's can have is something people voluntarily vote and live under for with their dollars

**oh OK, now I see he was speaking in terms of how some people see it. Yeah there are probably some people who are that shrill about it