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The most harmful thing prohibition did was normalize flouting the law, I'd argue it also introduced in popular American culture the concept that an individual c
by Aloha 7y ago
The most harmful thing prohibition did was normalize flouting the law, I'd argue it also introduced in popular American culture the concept that an individual could judge the law and decide whether it was just or not.
- damnyou 7y agoI don't see that normalization as particularly harmful, given that the law is so often merely a tool of state oppression.
- username90 7y agoWhy do Americans even think that? Wouldn't it be better to just live in a country where the law is not used to oppress people?
- jeffdavis 7y agoIt's a defense-in-depth strategy: a written constitution with enunerated rights to avoid bad laws; divide power to isolate and extinguish bad laws; and allow citizens routes to evade enforcement in case we still end up with bad laws. Systems always fail. Handle the failures with something better than SIGABRT.
- username90 7y agoThat thinking might have made sense 300 years ago, but not today.
- jeffdavis 7y agoCan you explain?
- damnyou 7y agoI have very little confidence that human beings can actually create that sort of country — at most we can only aspire to it.
- username90 7y agoI grew up in Sweden, the laws here are mostly done to protect and help the people. Most countries I've seen in Europe works similarly. USA on the other hand feels like a very hostile place, everyone feels very distrusting of each other. I don't think that all that distrust is needed, it is better to cooperate more, you get so much for free for doing that.
- damnyou 7y agoSweden is, of course, infamous in the sex worker community for having its name attached to one of the more harmful forms of anti-sex work laws: https://medium.com/@aleknielsen/nordic-model-the-ongoing-criminalization-of-sex-workers-in-northern-europe-c1df02ba94ae https://medium.com/@aleknielsen/nordic-model-the-ongoing-cri... There are no utopias. European states are not better or worse, just differently bad than America.
- username90 7y agoI wouldn't call that law oppression, it might not be perfect but it isn't really a big deal either way.
- damnyou 7y agoIt's a really big deal to my sex worker friends, and what they experience absolutely is oppression.
- username90 7y agoWhy don't they just take another job if the law is so problematic? It is not like being a sex worker is necessary to live a good life, it is just another job. Not like alcohol which is a significant part of the social fabric for basically the entire society.
- Matticus_Rex 7y agoBecause blind obeisance to the law has been the source of many ethical travesties.
- jessant 7y agoFlouting laws is American tradition dating back to the British Navigation Acts. It is what the country was founded on.
- jdkee 7y agoI.e. "scofflaws" - a person who flouts the law, especially by failing to comply with a law that is difficult to enforce effectively.
- greggyb 7y ago> I'd argue it also introduced in popular American culture the concept that an individual could judge the law and decide whether it was just or not. It seems that this is a fundamental principle in US culture. The nation was born of a revolution. It was literally a triumph of humans and reason over entrenched authority and written law. (Obviously, these people were flawed. They were not infallible moral authorities. This is for anyone who wants to read me as a white-washer.) Specifically in the legal realm, jury nullification has a long history in British common law. This carried over into pre-revolution American law. It has also carried over to modern law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification_in_the_Unit...
- koenigdavidmj 7y agoI’d say that happened a couple hundred years earlier when we tossed a bunch of tea into the bay.