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Oh the hypocrisy. Drugs legalization being trendy, you play the libertarian card. Yet, when it comes to guns or privacy, the same arguments don't hold true any
by miguelrochefort 11y ago
Oh the hypocrisy.
Drugs legalization being trendy, you play the libertarian card. Yet, when it comes to guns or privacy, the same arguments don't hold true anymore.
Cherry picking at its best. Gotta love the HN crowd.
- jessaustin 11y agoHN is not a monolith. I'm sure someone here wants to take my guns but not my 'shrooms (and vice versa), but for the most part those issues are not intrinsically connected. You'll see more of a crossover at other sites, but that just reflects the two longstanding modes of acceptable USA political discourse.
- dang 11y ago> Gotta love the HN crowd. Please don't do this here. The "crowd" includes you, and such generalizations are mostly bias.
- miguelrochefort 11y agoAm I wrong to assume that most people here: - Want to legalize drugs. - Want to ban guns. - Want a right to privacy.
- dang 11y agoYou may be right, but yes you're wrong to assume it. People assume all kinds of things about HN, and there's a huge amount of bias involved. But my point is that it's in bad taste to diss a community you belong to, while participating in it, as a rhetorical status move. People do this all the time, but we've noticed that it's reliably a marker of low-quality comments, so we're going to start asking them not to.
- jjuhl 11y agoSounds good to me. But go ahead and flame/downvote/hate on my oppinion as a member of the HN community. After all I'm just one person with an opinion.
- soylentcola 11y agoSample size of one (and incredibly oversimplified for such complex topics) but... - I don't think ingesting chemicals or compounds should be illegal but there's probably a benefit to some level of restriction on their sale and use - I don't think guns should be made illegal but there's probably a benefit to some level of restriction on their sale and use - I think there should be certain guarantees in terms of privacy but there's probably an argument to be made that these rights can be restricted in some cases for some individuals (ie: in the course of prosecuting a crime) Either way, it's hard to make blanket statements about complex issues so you get appropriately wishy-washy responses.
- sbov 11y agoWhy does it even matter? Why people believe what they believe is more nuanced than "freedom". Freedom is certainly is a factor but not the only. Stereotyping everyone in a community is easy but ultimately lazy and somewhat pointless. Unless you're running for office.
- exprI 11y agoWhilst I am very liberal (classical sense) on many issues, including guns, you can't compare drugs with guns. Much more meaningful to compare hand guns with explosives and other weapons, and drugs with alcohol and generally self-harm.
- miguelrochefort 11y agoThere is essentially no difference between drugs and guns. - Guns can be used for self-harm. - Drugs can be used to harm others. Why aren't people ready to accept that people will die?
- sbov 11y agoCan't you use the same argument to equate drugs, guns, cars, sticks, water, and imperialistic wars? I mean, they all can be used to harm people.
- talles 11y agoPencils can be used to harm others. There's a big difference between "can be used to" and "is designed to".
- harshreality 11y agoSeveral "hard" drugs are designed to put users out of their right minds and into a state where they're more likely to hurt others. Same with alcohol, which despite its long cultural history, mainly serves as part of a socialization ritual and could be replaced with something else that's not as harmful. Perhaps we should try prohibition... again? Cars with top speeds above 85mph are designed specifically to do something (in the USA at least) that society deems harmful. Number of cars ever driven at high speed on tracks or long private roads is minimal and not relevant. Self defense and hunting are valid reasons to harm other[ creature]s. It does not follow that something should be banned just because it's designed to harm others. In terms of what various things are designed to do, relative to what society considers acceptable, it makes more sense to keep guns legal than to keep fast speed-limit-exceeding cars legal, or to legalize hard drugs.
- joshkpeterson 11y agoProhibition has caused more harm than good, lack of gun control has caused more harm than good, outlawing encryption would cause more harm than good. There is nothing logically inconsistent about holding these views.
- frozenport 11y agoI think the claim is that these views aren't held for utilitarian reasons, rather they are held for ideological reasons (ie freedom). In fact, if we want a pure utilitarian viewpoint we ma find the East Asian model where you get shot for selling drugs to yield the most quantifiable value.
- joshkpeterson 11y agoNo, nobody is talking about banning guns for ideological reasons. These are all positions based on pragmaticism, and they have great arguments to back them up. The best, actually.
- onnoonno 11y ago... for narrow definitions of 'quantifiable value'.
- callinyouin 11y agoI don't think it's cherry picking or hypocrisy at all. The topics you mentioned are complex and largely unrelated. Just because a "legalize it" attitude towards drugs might be considered libertarian doesn't mean one needs to take the libertarian view on guns or privacy. Life is not black and white. A rational person thinks critically about their choices and opinions, and does not decide on something simply because it fits in with some category.
- miguelrochefort 11y ago> Life is not black and white. A rational person thinks critically about their choices and opinions, and does not decide on something simply because it fits in with some category. A rational person seeks consistency and doesn't treat every instance of the same problems as different problems deserving their own interpretation and stance toward. I'm slowly starting to grasp why the system is so complex. People with the resources to make important decisions lack the intellectual rigor necessary to reach a general understanding of things. That's how we end up with legal systems exceeding the complexity of spacecraft software.
- tomp 11y agoDrugs kill their users. Guns often kill others as well.
- harshreality 11y agoAlcohol often kills people other than the drinkers.
- Ygg2 11y agoGuns kill more users than others.
- burkaman 11y agoThe author of this article is quite pro-gun. Read his excellent article: http://archive.is/JM57Y http://archive.is/JM57Y I don't know his position on privacy. And, as others have said, there's no reason for anybody to constrain themselves to one political label. You can agree with libertarians on some things and authoritarians on others, without subscribing to the underlying philosophies of either one.