4 ms·

>Nearly anywhere in the Western world, one can find highly illegal drugs with no more than a few phone calls. Nearly anywhere in the world one can go to prison

by tw04 6y ago

>Nearly anywhere in the Western world, one can find highly illegal drugs with no more than a few phone calls. Nearly anywhere in the world one can go to prison for life for possessing enough of those highly illegal drugs. Why would the average person risk their freedom over cryptocurrency? If you convert the digital asset into a physical asset enough times or for nice enough goods, EVENTUALLY someone is going to ask where the money came from. You're also making a pretty bold assumption that the governments actually want drugs stamped out. I don't think that has EVER been the case, that's just been the story. It's used as a means of suppressing people of color and poor people. When was the last time you heard of a Wall Street banker going to prison for coke?

eloff 6y ago
> You're also making a pretty bold assumption that the governments actually want drugs stamped out. I don't think that has EVER been the case, that's just been the story. It's used as a means of suppressing people of color and poor people. When was the last time you heard of a Wall Street banker going to prison for coke? That's really trying to frame the world through a lens of racial or class bias. It's not the reality. You're the one making the unsubstantiated bold claim here.
- Forbo 6y ago
  >“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ It is the reality.
- tw04 6y ago
  >That's really trying to frame the world through a lens of racial or class bias. It's not the reality. You're the one making the unsubstantiated bold claim here. The war on drugs was literally a war on black people and "hippies" by the admission of Nixon's domestic policy chief. So no, I'm not making unsubstantiated claims. https://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon https://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-n... >At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. "You want to know what this was really all about?" he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
  - eloff 6y ago
    And then it's been continued since then for the same reason by every president and Congress on both sides of the aisle? Of course not, even if it started like that, and that's a big if hinging solely on the ramblings of a single discredited bureaucrat. That motive just cannot explain the last fifty years of the war on drugs. The reality must be much more complex.
    - tw04 6y ago
      >And then it's been continued since then for the same reason by every president and Congress on both sides of the aisle? Of course not, even if it started like that, and that's a big if hinging solely on the ramblings of a single discredited bureaucrat. Yes. The incarceration rates reflect it. Blacks are DISPROPORTIANATELY penalized by drug offenses, it's not even close.
      - 6y ago
- retrac 6y ago
  Why is China even harsher with their drug laws than America? Why is Sweden, perhaps one of the most egalitarian European countries, stricter than most of the EU? I mean sure, some of the domestic American situation is like that. The disparate penalties for cocaine and crack cocaine come to mind. Reminds me a bit of alcohol prohibition. Alcohol consumption was through the roof. It was a real social problem. The weight of the "solution" was borne on the backs of the working class persecuted by the law and people who got gunned down in mob violence. While the middle class got booze prescribed by their doctors, and the elites were of course above the law. But that wasn't exactly the intent of the temperance movement. A lot of perfectly intelligent, worldly and moral people support some degree of drug criminalization because they believe they're more harmful than the prohibition side effects. No conspiracy there.
Forbo 6y ago
It also makes for an excellent source of dark money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...
scsilver 6y ago
There are applications for refugees, even wealthy ones, to use blockchain asset storage. A worldwide ledger means that I just need to get myself and my family out with iut brains in tacked and then I could access my savings from the country that took me in. A few thousand dollars stored under your "cloud" mattress is a nice modern backup plan if you arent of a particularly liked group

by tw04 6y ago

eloff 6y ago

> You're also making a pretty bold assumption that the governments actually want drugs stamped out. I don't think that has EVER been the case, that's just been the story. It's used as a means of suppressing people of color and poor people. When was the last time you heard of a Wall Street banker going to prison for coke? That's really trying to frame the world through a lens of racial or class bias. It's not the reality. You're the one making the unsubstantiated bold claim here.

Forbo 6y ago
>“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ It is the reality.
tw04 6y ago
>That's really trying to frame the world through a lens of racial or class bias. It's not the reality. You're the one making the unsubstantiated bold claim here. The war on drugs was literally a war on black people and "hippies" by the admission of Nixon's domestic policy chief. So no, I'm not making unsubstantiated claims. https://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon https://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-n... >At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. "You want to know what this was really all about?" he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
- eloff 6y ago
  And then it's been continued since then for the same reason by every president and Congress on both sides of the aisle? Of course not, even if it started like that, and that's a big if hinging solely on the ramblings of a single discredited bureaucrat. That motive just cannot explain the last fifty years of the war on drugs. The reality must be much more complex.
  - tw04 6y ago
    >And then it's been continued since then for the same reason by every president and Congress on both sides of the aisle? Of course not, even if it started like that, and that's a big if hinging solely on the ramblings of a single discredited bureaucrat. Yes. The incarceration rates reflect it. Blacks are DISPROPORTIANATELY penalized by drug offenses, it's not even close.
    - 6y ago
retrac 6y ago
Why is China even harsher with their drug laws than America? Why is Sweden, perhaps one of the most egalitarian European countries, stricter than most of the EU? I mean sure, some of the domestic American situation is like that. The disparate penalties for cocaine and crack cocaine come to mind. Reminds me a bit of alcohol prohibition. Alcohol consumption was through the roof. It was a real social problem. The weight of the "solution" was borne on the backs of the working class persecuted by the law and people who got gunned down in mob violence. While the middle class got booze prescribed by their doctors, and the elites were of course above the law. But that wasn't exactly the intent of the temperance movement. A lot of perfectly intelligent, worldly and moral people support some degree of drug criminalization because they believe they're more harmful than the prohibition side effects. No conspiracy there.

Forbo 6y ago

It also makes for an excellent source of dark money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

scsilver 6y ago

There are applications for refugees, even wealthy ones, to use blockchain asset storage. A worldwide ledger means that I just need to get myself and my family out with iut brains in tacked and then I could access my savings from the country that took me in. A few thousand dollars stored under your "cloud" mattress is a nice modern backup plan if you arent of a particularly liked group