5 ms·

> Was this the outcome society wants me to have? Unfortunately, yes. Drug enforcement and sentencing may be on a slow decline, but moralizing every perceived c

by pragmar 10y ago

> Was this the outcome society wants me to have? Unfortunately, yes. Drug enforcement and sentencing may be on a slow decline, but moralizing every perceived character defect is on the rise. There's no more effective way to do this than than through policies that not only punish the convicted, but add liability to any landlord or employer that would ordinarily feel that you've paid your debt to society.

cubano 10y ago
Really? Listen I am as cynical as the next guy, but I cannot see why society would want to take a 51yo divorced man, living alone and with 2 very successful grown children, whom had, against all odds, chiseled out a well-paying job and a good measure of professional esteem after many years of rejections, and strip him of absolutely everything he owned and built just because he walked down a street with a substance that our government gives to soldiers and pilots to help them perform their tasks better. I wasn't hurting anyone...wasn't stealing...my boss loved my productivity and the high-quality of my work. I'll ask again...who is the victim of this "crime"??? I'll go back to the original thesis of the OP and say that why the fuck should people like me even TRY to find gainful employment when all society wants to do is rip it away from us for not conforming to often-arbitrary norms? Perhaps many of you want to moralize here because, frankly, that's the only rebuttal that allows you to comfortably go back to your chosen life and feel unaffected by the plight of the millions like me whom have given up on trying to find work, but consider one thing...it's not the drugs per se that makes one a "bad" person, it's whatever crappy, hurtful, and illegal things one does to others in the course of one's use that makes one a dirtbag and a "menace to society." Not everyone acts that way. Stupid is as stupid does.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  I don't think pragmar agrees with the world-view he described! He was just describing the unfortunate existence and prevalence of this world-view. Tech seems to have a larger percentage of people who approve of (or at least don't condemn) drug use than many other industries, so there's at least some reason for hope. Good luck.
- camgunz 10y ago
  Look I'm the first to argue against the ridiculously punitive US criminal justice system. It's easily responsible for more violence than every other "criminal" element in the country, and is probably the deepest irony in our society. That said, I disagree with the libertarian argument against drug use. Drug laws, aside from their fundamental purpose at enfranchising drug companies and imprisoning Black men, are supposed to prevent a race to the bottom where everyone feels pressure to enhance their performance with dangerous drugs. You can handle meth? I don't doubt it. I also don't doubt that only 1 in 10,000 can (or whatever it actually is), so in the same way I think we restrict the use of things like cars, cranes, guns, planes, etc., we restrict the use of drugs. I'm sorry for what's happened to you. Our drug laws are terrible. But legalization isn't the answer.
  - cubano 10y ago
    I want to make it perfectly clear...I am NOT in any way trying to avoid my personal responsibility in this painful experience. My primary crime was being careless, and I am sure paying one hell of a price for it. Living in this shelter trying to find work with no clothes, even after I supposedly paid my debt to society, sure feels like I’m nowhere near done with the punishment. What is deeply maddening, however, is the fact that the police violated my liberties and right to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure. It was an open and shut case according to my public defender and the whole thing was recorded on his body cam, but I quickly realized that I would have spend significantly more time in jail waiting for a trial to beat it then I would by taking a "deal" where the case was dropped to a misdemeanor. At the core of it, my inability to create loving relationships at this point in my life, the kind that could have helped me bail out in time to not to lose my job, handicaps me in a big way, and surely is a driver of my substance use as well. I have learned a great deal about addiction in my 35 years of using and there is little doubt that the core cause of my use is relationship-based dysfunction. And yes...I can and do handle meth as I use it almost exactly like caffeine. I worked for 10 months here in Vegas and my boss never even knew I had moved here from Florida...that describes perfectly how little I changed my daily routine. In that time, I built Facebook and Twitter bots using the latest APIs, decoded and reimplemented an online version of a very complex standalone Medispan pharmaceutical drug database schema, designed/implemented a high-performance PHP MVC framework (and much the code for the actual applications), and designed/implemented a seamless, secure API interface for our Ionic 2 mobile app. Also wrote a standalone subscription-based cart and billing module using the Stripe API. Oh and I am most proud of the Fastlane integration for the Ionic apps that I personally developed (thank God for the cognitive enhancement for this!) the MS and OSX server scripts to totally automate the creation and submission of 100s of branded mobile apps for all our pharmacy clients. Last I heard, our competition hired two PhD Computer Science professors to attempt to catch up as we totally blew by them with the systems I designed. But I fully expect no one to believe me, because, of course, “drug addicts” such as myself are simply worthless pieces of shit that have no place in society besides, perhaps, working as minimum wage laborers. This is the life I live. I don’t recommend it.
- Qantourisc 10y ago
  Actually there is on victim here: other web-developers. The same reasons we do not allow drugs in competitive sports: soon everyone has to do them to be able to compete. Edit: unless it was for medicinal uses, rather then performance. That aside, the laws are still unjust.
- pragmar 10y ago
  I should clarify. My comment was in regards to the views of society, broadly, and the political class in particular. What I was trying to say--the justice system that elected representatives have constructed speaks to a cruel, vindictive thread in the national psychology. Furthermore, the system is not a "mistake," it was created with purpose. I don't approve the current, puritan flavor of justice. What happened to you wasn't right. > I'll go back to the original thesis of the OP and say that why the fuck should people like me even TRY to find gainful employment when all society wants to do is rip it away from us for not conforming to often-arbitrary norms? I could not agree more.

by pragmar 10y ago

cubano 10y ago

Really? Listen I am as cynical as the next guy, but I cannot see why society would want to take a 51yo divorced man, living alone and with 2 very successful grown children, whom had, against all odds, chiseled out a well-paying job and a good measure of professional esteem after many years of rejections, and strip him of absolutely everything he owned and built just because he walked down a street with a substance that our government gives to soldiers and pilots to help them perform their tasks better. I wasn't hurting anyone...wasn't stealing...my boss loved my productivity and the high-quality of my work. I'll ask again...who is the victim of this "crime"??? I'll go back to the original thesis of the OP and say that why the fuck should people like me even TRY to find gainful employment when all society wants to do is rip it away from us for not conforming to often-arbitrary norms? Perhaps many of you want to moralize here because, frankly, that's the only rebuttal that allows you to comfortably go back to your chosen life and feel unaffected by the plight of the millions like me whom have given up on trying to find work, but consider one thing...it's not the drugs per se that makes one a "bad" person, it's whatever crappy, hurtful, and illegal things one does to others in the course of one's use that makes one a dirtbag and a "menace to society." Not everyone acts that way. Stupid is as stupid does.

throwaway729 10y ago
I don't think pragmar agrees with the world-view he described! He was just describing the unfortunate existence and prevalence of this world-view. Tech seems to have a larger percentage of people who approve of (or at least don't condemn) drug use than many other industries, so there's at least some reason for hope. Good luck.
camgunz 10y ago
Look I'm the first to argue against the ridiculously punitive US criminal justice system. It's easily responsible for more violence than every other "criminal" element in the country, and is probably the deepest irony in our society. That said, I disagree with the libertarian argument against drug use. Drug laws, aside from their fundamental purpose at enfranchising drug companies and imprisoning Black men, are supposed to prevent a race to the bottom where everyone feels pressure to enhance their performance with dangerous drugs. You can handle meth? I don't doubt it. I also don't doubt that only 1 in 10,000 can (or whatever it actually is), so in the same way I think we restrict the use of things like cars, cranes, guns, planes, etc., we restrict the use of drugs. I'm sorry for what's happened to you. Our drug laws are terrible. But legalization isn't the answer.
- cubano 10y ago
  I want to make it perfectly clear...I am NOT in any way trying to avoid my personal responsibility in this painful experience. My primary crime was being careless, and I am sure paying one hell of a price for it. Living in this shelter trying to find work with no clothes, even after I supposedly paid my debt to society, sure feels like I’m nowhere near done with the punishment. What is deeply maddening, however, is the fact that the police violated my liberties and right to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure. It was an open and shut case according to my public defender and the whole thing was recorded on his body cam, but I quickly realized that I would have spend significantly more time in jail waiting for a trial to beat it then I would by taking a "deal" where the case was dropped to a misdemeanor. At the core of it, my inability to create loving relationships at this point in my life, the kind that could have helped me bail out in time to not to lose my job, handicaps me in a big way, and surely is a driver of my substance use as well. I have learned a great deal about addiction in my 35 years of using and there is little doubt that the core cause of my use is relationship-based dysfunction. And yes...I can and do handle meth as I use it almost exactly like caffeine. I worked for 10 months here in Vegas and my boss never even knew I had moved here from Florida...that describes perfectly how little I changed my daily routine. In that time, I built Facebook and Twitter bots using the latest APIs, decoded and reimplemented an online version of a very complex standalone Medispan pharmaceutical drug database schema, designed/implemented a high-performance PHP MVC framework (and much the code for the actual applications), and designed/implemented a seamless, secure API interface for our Ionic 2 mobile app. Also wrote a standalone subscription-based cart and billing module using the Stripe API. Oh and I am most proud of the Fastlane integration for the Ionic apps that I personally developed (thank God for the cognitive enhancement for this!) the MS and OSX server scripts to totally automate the creation and submission of 100s of branded mobile apps for all our pharmacy clients. Last I heard, our competition hired two PhD Computer Science professors to attempt to catch up as we totally blew by them with the systems I designed. But I fully expect no one to believe me, because, of course, “drug addicts” such as myself are simply worthless pieces of shit that have no place in society besides, perhaps, working as minimum wage laborers. This is the life I live. I don’t recommend it.
Qantourisc 10y ago
Actually there is on victim here: other web-developers. The same reasons we do not allow drugs in competitive sports: soon everyone has to do them to be able to compete. Edit: unless it was for medicinal uses, rather then performance. That aside, the laws are still unjust.
pragmar 10y ago
I should clarify. My comment was in regards to the views of society, broadly, and the political class in particular. What I was trying to say--the justice system that elected representatives have constructed speaks to a cruel, vindictive thread in the national psychology. Furthermore, the system is not a "mistake," it was created with purpose. I don't approve the current, puritan flavor of justice. What happened to you wasn't right. > I'll go back to the original thesis of the OP and say that why the fuck should people like me even TRY to find gainful employment when all society wants to do is rip it away from us for not conforming to often-arbitrary norms? I could not agree more.