29 ms·

Taking cannabis is the users mistake to make. Having an abortion is the woman's mistake to make. In fact, doing X to Y's own body is Y's mistake to make. Sud

Taking cannabis is the users mistake to make. Having an abortion is the woman's mistake to make. In fact, doing X to Y's own body is Y's mistake to make. Suddenly a whole class of distracting political questions vanish.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago
They're only possible to dismiss as "distracting political questions" if you buy into a political framework that sees personal freedom as the default, and exceptions requiring justification. If you instead frame the neutral state as "Everybody does the exact best thing", with personal freedom being the exception requiring justification, it leads to an entirely different worldview. And then that side of reasoning fractalizes based around what the exact best thing is. Applying libertarian (left or right) axioms when trying to understand the reasoning of authoritarians simply does not work.
- catlover76 3y ago
  I think there is a fairly reasonable argument to be made that they are distracting because there are more pressing practical problems facing society, such as climate change, national security concerns, etc.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  I am quite surprised by how in the last 20 years libertarian has become a dirty word.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    I have found that people adopting the term "libertarian" is commonly associated with attitudes like "I get to do what I want to do, and the rest of you are on your own." Such people often seem to make common cause with authoritarians: they'll sacrifice other people's liberties in order to ensure their own. This is not my understanding of libertarian philosophy, but I've heard many self-described libertarians seeming to endorse it. I believe that's why "libertarian" has become a dirty word, to the many people who would find themselves worse off in a world that has lots of liberty for a specific set of people, but less for many others.
BizarroLand 3y ago
IF you replace "mistake" with "choice" I would agree with you completely. Something what might be terrible for you might be wonderful for someone else. I would actually go so far as to say that we decriminalize all drugs. I say that as a non-user of "drugs", as in, heroin/cocaine/lsd, the kind of stuff they taught us about in DARE. If you or someone else wants to become a cokehead or a heroin addict, then you should have a method and a path to do so that allows for the safest way to do that with the least amount of life-damaging consequence possible for you. Would legalizing heroin turn the world into an opium den full of depravity? No. It used to be legal in America and was even sold as a cough syrup that also came with a healthy dose of marijuana and cocaine, and America did not suddenly become or stop being anything other than what it was. Some things are going to be done by people no matter what barriers are put into place to stop them. Murderers murder. Alcoholics get DUIs, and even with cigarettes costing $10 a pack poor people still smoke them. If you accept that as a universal rule you can then pivot to find methods to take as much harm out of the inevitability of the event as possible, not only for the person doing the event but also for the people caught in their wake. For instance, the illegalization of marijuana has caused hundreds of thousands of children to grow up whose fathers are in prison for the non-violent offense of getting high, and has caused even more poor children to grow up in households where their funds were taxed by the harrowing expenses of probation and having a parent who would be automatically excluded from the majority of good paying jobs for the crime of consuming a plant that the second worst president in human history, Richard Nixon, didn't approve of. Those are social costs that we all have to pay every single day, that is the world our grandparents left for us. Legalizing marijuana and other drugs would put an abrupt end to that social tax, and even though the consequences will continue to be felt for generations, if we stop re-filling the bucket then eventually it will empty, and wouldn't that be a sight worth working towards seeing?
- psychphysic 3y ago
  I call it a mistake not because disagree necessarily but that making unwise decisions is the lynchpin of liberty.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

They're only possible to dismiss as "distracting political questions" if you buy into a political framework that sees personal freedom as the default, and exceptions requiring justification. If you instead frame the neutral state as "Everybody does the exact best thing", with personal freedom being the exception requiring justification, it leads to an entirely different worldview. And then that side of reasoning fractalizes based around what the exact best thing is. Applying libertarian (left or right) axioms when trying to understand the reasoning of authoritarians simply does not work.

catlover76 3y ago
I think there is a fairly reasonable argument to be made that they are distracting because there are more pressing practical problems facing society, such as climate change, national security concerns, etc.
psychphysic 3y ago
I am quite surprised by how in the last 20 years libertarian has become a dirty word.
- jfengel 3y ago
  I have found that people adopting the term "libertarian" is commonly associated with attitudes like "I get to do what I want to do, and the rest of you are on your own." Such people often seem to make common cause with authoritarians: they'll sacrifice other people's liberties in order to ensure their own. This is not my understanding of libertarian philosophy, but I've heard many self-described libertarians seeming to endorse it. I believe that's why "libertarian" has become a dirty word, to the many people who would find themselves worse off in a world that has lots of liberty for a specific set of people, but less for many others.

BizarroLand 3y ago

IF you replace "mistake" with "choice" I would agree with you completely. Something what might be terrible for you might be wonderful for someone else. I would actually go so far as to say that we decriminalize all drugs. I say that as a non-user of "drugs", as in, heroin/cocaine/lsd, the kind of stuff they taught us about in DARE. If you or someone else wants to become a cokehead or a heroin addict, then you should have a method and a path to do so that allows for the safest way to do that with the least amount of life-damaging consequence possible for you. Would legalizing heroin turn the world into an opium den full of depravity? No. It used to be legal in America and was even sold as a cough syrup that also came with a healthy dose of marijuana and cocaine, and America did not suddenly become or stop being anything other than what it was. Some things are going to be done by people no matter what barriers are put into place to stop them. Murderers murder. Alcoholics get DUIs, and even with cigarettes costing $10 a pack poor people still smoke them. If you accept that as a universal rule you can then pivot to find methods to take as much harm out of the inevitability of the event as possible, not only for the person doing the event but also for the people caught in their wake. For instance, the illegalization of marijuana has caused hundreds of thousands of children to grow up whose fathers are in prison for the non-violent offense of getting high, and has caused even more poor children to grow up in households where their funds were taxed by the harrowing expenses of probation and having a parent who would be automatically excluded from the majority of good paying jobs for the crime of consuming a plant that the second worst president in human history, Richard Nixon, didn't approve of. Those are social costs that we all have to pay every single day, that is the world our grandparents left for us. Legalizing marijuana and other drugs would put an abrupt end to that social tax, and even though the consequences will continue to be felt for generations, if we stop re-filling the bucket then eventually it will empty, and wouldn't that be a sight worth working towards seeing?

psychphysic 3y ago
I call it a mistake not because disagree necessarily but that making unwise decisions is the lynchpin of liberty.