23 ms·

I think that that needs to be what I call “the dog shall not bark up the wrong tree” laws where an organization cannot spend its resources on influencing the la

I think that that needs to be what I call “the dog shall not bark up the wrong tree” laws where an organization cannot spend its resources on influencing the laws that manage its conduct. You can argue that it makes sense that these people understand the problem best so they should have some input into the decision-making process. However, I think that the most they should do is present the raw data of their operations sanitized of only the sensitive information that they are required to sanitize by law and no more. Otherwise, they are just government lobbyists lobbying for their advantage.

mycall 3y ago
Who would lobby your points? ACLU? Word out to ACLU with their Mobile Justice app. Should be on everyone's phone just in case.
- loudambiance 3y ago
  I just and looked for the app, and it isn't available on my device because it was made for an older version of Android :(
chongli 3y ago
Everything went wrong when lawmakers criminalized possession of drugs. All of this nonsense follows from a system where ordinary people are treated with suspicion and criminals are given exclusive access to a highly profitable market. Al Capone and his ilk taught us the disastrous consequences of prohibition a century. Yet we continue making the same mistake with different substances.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Strongly agree. How would you word an anti-Prohibition Constitutional amendment?
  - jurynulifcation 3y ago
    This is an interesting challenge. I guess the best way I can put it would be: "That no law shall be made preventing an informed and consenting adult from consuming whatever substance they so please." As a side tangent: Tennessee prevents the sale of raw milk. I can not go to a dairy farmer in TN, watch him produce a pail of milk, and pay him for the pleasure of considering that pail of milk to be mine. Why? This is probably the stupidest prohibition I have yet to see. If you want to prevent the general public from unwittingly consuming raw dairy, that makes sense. But why can I not purchase raw dairy that I know to be raw and produced in good condition? There is a work-around to this, where you are legally entitled to consume the dairy of any cow you own... and so some dairy farmers sell "shares" of their cow, which entitles you to its milk. I'm not wholly against such an arrangement but it does seem rather farcical in its mandatory character.
    - chongli 3y ago
      It is pretty silly. They could solve the problem by imposing strict liability on dairy sales. If the farmer sells you a pail of raw milk and you get sick from drinking it, that farmer is liable for it, no waivers. This is often how other dangerous products such as fireworks are regulated. The liability is a cost of doing business.
      - KingMachiavelli 3y ago
        Strict liability would always apply in that case, if you sell product X for the intent of purpose Y and doing Y with X causes injury then the seller of X is strictly liable. Strangely enough since raw milk is sold for "dog/animal use" that limits any liability for human consumption since it's explicitly sold for not human consumption.
        michaelt 3y ago
        If I sell motorcycles for the purpose of motorcycling, and motorcycling carries a substantial risk of injury, am I strictly liable?
- vander_elst 3y ago
  Portugal tried this approach and in practice it did not work very well ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru... ). The Netherlands are also going back on this.
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    Which approach? I hadn't noticed the comment you're responding to mention any approach.
  - loufe 3y ago
    The prevailing sentiment when this was brought up on HN a couple weeks ago was that the failure in Portugal is heavily impacted by severe budget cuts with respect to treatment. I would not say that proves, in and of itself, that this approach does not work very well.
    - HPsquared 3y ago
      Cuts in absolute terms, or failure to keep up with a surge in demand? (genuinely asking as I don't know, the latter situation is the case with the UK's NHS)
  - consp 3y ago
    The main reason the Netherlands is going "back on this" is that due to cuts in law enforcement over the past decade the gangs running the trade and manufacture have had free reign. This is mostly meant for foreign markets and less of a drugs-at-home issue. The Netherlands is mostly a throughout country with respect to trade, and drugs are no exception (with mdma production being the exception, but this is also mostly meant for export).
  - Out_of_Characte 3y ago
    The Netherlands arent changing their drug policy. We just have the problem of being an import/export country for not just goods but also drugs for the entirety of europe. Drug consumption by citizens is not changing.
- bruce511 3y ago
  They've also been good with the messaging on drugs. Colombian Drug Cartels right? If only we can go to war in South America we can fix it. But the majority of drug use are home-grown. [1]. Take marijuana out the picture (home grown) and Oxy, Prescriptions and other (home grown) drugs prevail. Criminalising weed is a failed policy, which thankfully is being slowly dropped. Less impressive is that the drug machine that created the oxy crisis is more or less ignored. [1] https://drugabusestatistics.org/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/
  - fatfingerd 3y ago
    The DEA is the same social problem as the cold war agencies. The US can't actually get rid of jobs of the correct prestige for these people and as long as they are kept they will continue to commit the US to a criminal path.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > But the majority of drug use are home-grown. The thing is, there are three categories of illicit drugs: - relatively harmless / have established use: a lot of the "home grown" drugs fall under this category, they are usually low-price as they are mass products. Marijuana and diverted pharma pills, mostly. - stuff that is extremely fucking dangerous, like fentanyl, its even more strong cousin carfentanyl, meth or self-made stuff like krokodil (gained from boiling codein cough medicine). Extremely simple to make in general, extremely potent, extremely hard to wean off. - stuff that fuels organized crime, aka cocaine (almost exclusively grown/refined in Southern America) and heroin (which comes to an overwhelming degree from Afghanistan's poppy farms). The large cartels almost exclusively focus on the latter, as there's a ton of money to be made smuggling that, which is a very real problem as the cartels can offer sums to corrupt officials even in Western countries that pay good money to border control staff. A boat full of cocaine can make hundreds of millions of dollars, while no one cares about a boat full of weed - not worth the effort.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Cocaine is not expensive... it's the black market effect that makes its street price high.
- pif 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - isaacremuant 3y ago
    So it's about the cartels now, huh? And you're really concerned by wellbeing and "life satisfaction" that you want to put people in jail because they consume a substance you don't. Prohibition style thinking. Arguably, The most dangerous criminal organizations in the world are probably the security agencies and forces which cause untold damage around the world and, incidentally, have ties with druglords like in Afghanistan. But I'm sure you'd support those over the individual's choice of what to do with their body regardless of what your Religious like belief that's you should get to decide what fulfills someone's life. Maybe reading certain books is something we don't need, right? The insult at the end just exposes you further. Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal, not the other way around, but stay classy.
    - pif 3y ago
      > Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal AND people keeping giving money to them.
      - isaacremuant 3y ago
        Because you force their hand to not have another choice. You removed the choice. I love how authortiarians think that they'll get exactly their way. Suddenly laws of supply and demand disappear and they can shape the world at their pleasure.
        pif 3y ago
        > I love how authortiarians Authoritarians? I'm talking about democracies! Where most people want marijuana, it gets legal. Where it doesn't, it's because people at large don't want it. That's it! People can protest, and we can and must discuss, but pouring money in organized crime for a non-need is not justifiable.
- swayvil 3y ago
  Step 1 : find something everybody wants. Step 2 : prevent them from getting it Step 3 : create an exclusive access channel Step 4 : profit I can think of a few instances where this model has been implemented in our society.
  - intelVISA 3y ago
    World Wide Web vs Cloudflare
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    This reads like the history of the US involvement in central and south America.
- karmajunkie 3y ago
  yes, crime was definitely invented because of 1920’s Prohibition. But for that dark episode of history, there would be no one trying to hide illicit doings behind the curtain of encryption, and the NSA/FBI/DEA/ATF/etc would definitely not be interested in reading encrypted traffic. Because, no crime, you see, so those agencies probably wouldn’t exist.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> laws where an organization cannot spend its resources on influencing the laws that manage its conduct So the FTC is barred from commenting on a competition bill? Or the DoD on a military measure?
- HDMI_Cable 3y ago
  Hmm, there should probably be some sort of guardrails in place: like these agencies can comment on the bill, but not actually influence it. Or, maybe this only applies to enforcement agencies, versus regulatory ones like the FTC.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > these agencies can comment on the bill, but not actually influence it How would you delineate these?
- noughtme 3y ago
  That would be ideal. Citizens should be deciding what they view as anti-comptetitive, or reasonable defensive actions, and the FTC and the DOD should act based on those decisions. In an ideal world.
  - immibis 3y ago
    i.e. democracy. That's what we have now. Citizens have decided that destroying the planet is good, actually.
- adastra22 3y ago
  Yes. Can you explain why that would be bad? It is not at all obvious.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Can you explain why that would be bad? It bars experts from deliberation. It would require debating space policy while keeping anyone from NASA. For a good amount of policy space, that limits debate and discussion to the uninformed. While an oil lobbyist would love NOAA kept out of Congress during climate debates, I’m not sure who that helps apart from the blowhards.
bboygravity 3y ago
self "regulated" Wallstreet maffia would like a word with you.

mycall 3y ago

Who would lobby your points? ACLU? Word out to ACLU with their Mobile Justice app. Should be on everyone's phone just in case.

loudambiance 3y ago
I just and looked for the app, and it isn't available on my device because it was made for an older version of Android :(

chongli 3y ago

Everything went wrong when lawmakers criminalized possession of drugs. All of this nonsense follows from a system where ordinary people are treated with suspicion and criminals are given exclusive access to a highly profitable market. Al Capone and his ilk taught us the disastrous consequences of prohibition a century. Yet we continue making the same mistake with different substances.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Strongly agree. How would you word an anti-Prohibition Constitutional amendment?
- jurynulifcation 3y ago
  This is an interesting challenge. I guess the best way I can put it would be: "That no law shall be made preventing an informed and consenting adult from consuming whatever substance they so please." As a side tangent: Tennessee prevents the sale of raw milk. I can not go to a dairy farmer in TN, watch him produce a pail of milk, and pay him for the pleasure of considering that pail of milk to be mine. Why? This is probably the stupidest prohibition I have yet to see. If you want to prevent the general public from unwittingly consuming raw dairy, that makes sense. But why can I not purchase raw dairy that I know to be raw and produced in good condition? There is a work-around to this, where you are legally entitled to consume the dairy of any cow you own... and so some dairy farmers sell "shares" of their cow, which entitles you to its milk. I'm not wholly against such an arrangement but it does seem rather farcical in its mandatory character.
  - chongli 3y ago
    It is pretty silly. They could solve the problem by imposing strict liability on dairy sales. If the farmer sells you a pail of raw milk and you get sick from drinking it, that farmer is liable for it, no waivers. This is often how other dangerous products such as fireworks are regulated. The liability is a cost of doing business.
    - KingMachiavelli 3y ago
      Strict liability would always apply in that case, if you sell product X for the intent of purpose Y and doing Y with X causes injury then the seller of X is strictly liable. Strangely enough since raw milk is sold for "dog/animal use" that limits any liability for human consumption since it's explicitly sold for not human consumption.
      - michaelt 3y ago
        If I sell motorcycles for the purpose of motorcycling, and motorcycling carries a substantial risk of injury, am I strictly liable?
vander_elst 3y ago
Portugal tried this approach and in practice it did not work very well ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru... ). The Netherlands are also going back on this.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Which approach? I hadn't noticed the comment you're responding to mention any approach.
- loufe 3y ago
  The prevailing sentiment when this was brought up on HN a couple weeks ago was that the failure in Portugal is heavily impacted by severe budget cuts with respect to treatment. I would not say that proves, in and of itself, that this approach does not work very well.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Cuts in absolute terms, or failure to keep up with a surge in demand? (genuinely asking as I don't know, the latter situation is the case with the UK's NHS)
- consp 3y ago
  The main reason the Netherlands is going "back on this" is that due to cuts in law enforcement over the past decade the gangs running the trade and manufacture have had free reign. This is mostly meant for foreign markets and less of a drugs-at-home issue. The Netherlands is mostly a throughout country with respect to trade, and drugs are no exception (with mdma production being the exception, but this is also mostly meant for export).
- Out_of_Characte 3y ago
  The Netherlands arent changing their drug policy. We just have the problem of being an import/export country for not just goods but also drugs for the entirety of europe. Drug consumption by citizens is not changing.
bruce511 3y ago
They've also been good with the messaging on drugs. Colombian Drug Cartels right? If only we can go to war in South America we can fix it. But the majority of drug use are home-grown. [1]. Take marijuana out the picture (home grown) and Oxy, Prescriptions and other (home grown) drugs prevail. Criminalising weed is a failed policy, which thankfully is being slowly dropped. Less impressive is that the drug machine that created the oxy crisis is more or less ignored. [1] https://drugabusestatistics.org/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/
- fatfingerd 3y ago
  The DEA is the same social problem as the cold war agencies. The US can't actually get rid of jobs of the correct prestige for these people and as long as they are kept they will continue to commit the US to a criminal path.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > But the majority of drug use are home-grown. The thing is, there are three categories of illicit drugs: - relatively harmless / have established use: a lot of the "home grown" drugs fall under this category, they are usually low-price as they are mass products. Marijuana and diverted pharma pills, mostly. - stuff that is extremely fucking dangerous, like fentanyl, its even more strong cousin carfentanyl, meth or self-made stuff like krokodil (gained from boiling codein cough medicine). Extremely simple to make in general, extremely potent, extremely hard to wean off. - stuff that fuels organized crime, aka cocaine (almost exclusively grown/refined in Southern America) and heroin (which comes to an overwhelming degree from Afghanistan's poppy farms). The large cartels almost exclusively focus on the latter, as there's a ton of money to be made smuggling that, which is a very real problem as the cartels can offer sums to corrupt officials even in Western countries that pay good money to border control staff. A boat full of cocaine can make hundreds of millions of dollars, while no one cares about a boat full of weed - not worth the effort.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Cocaine is not expensive... it's the black market effect that makes its street price high.
pif 3y ago
[flagged]
- isaacremuant 3y ago
  So it's about the cartels now, huh? And you're really concerned by wellbeing and "life satisfaction" that you want to put people in jail because they consume a substance you don't. Prohibition style thinking. Arguably, The most dangerous criminal organizations in the world are probably the security agencies and forces which cause untold damage around the world and, incidentally, have ties with druglords like in Afghanistan. But I'm sure you'd support those over the individual's choice of what to do with their body regardless of what your Religious like belief that's you should get to decide what fulfills someone's life. Maybe reading certain books is something we don't need, right? The insult at the end just exposes you further. Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal, not the other way around, but stay classy.
  - pif 3y ago
    > Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal Drug cartels exist due to those things being illegal AND people keeping giving money to them.
    - isaacremuant 3y ago
      Because you force their hand to not have another choice. You removed the choice. I love how authortiarians think that they'll get exactly their way. Suddenly laws of supply and demand disappear and they can shape the world at their pleasure.
      - pif 3y ago
        > I love how authortiarians Authoritarians? I'm talking about democracies! Where most people want marijuana, it gets legal. Where it doesn't, it's because people at large don't want it. That's it! People can protest, and we can and must discuss, but pouring money in organized crime for a non-need is not justifiable.
swayvil 3y ago
Step 1 : find something everybody wants. Step 2 : prevent them from getting it Step 3 : create an exclusive access channel Step 4 : profit I can think of a few instances where this model has been implemented in our society.
- intelVISA 3y ago
  World Wide Web vs Cloudflare
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  This reads like the history of the US involvement in central and south America.
karmajunkie 3y ago
yes, crime was definitely invented because of 1920’s Prohibition. But for that dark episode of history, there would be no one trying to hide illicit doings behind the curtain of encryption, and the NSA/FBI/DEA/ATF/etc would definitely not be interested in reading encrypted traffic. Because, no crime, you see, so those agencies probably wouldn’t exist.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> laws where an organization cannot spend its resources on influencing the laws that manage its conduct So the FTC is barred from commenting on a competition bill? Or the DoD on a military measure?

HDMI_Cable 3y ago
Hmm, there should probably be some sort of guardrails in place: like these agencies can comment on the bill, but not actually influence it. Or, maybe this only applies to enforcement agencies, versus regulatory ones like the FTC.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > these agencies can comment on the bill, but not actually influence it How would you delineate these?
noughtme 3y ago
That would be ideal. Citizens should be deciding what they view as anti-comptetitive, or reasonable defensive actions, and the FTC and the DOD should act based on those decisions. In an ideal world.
- immibis 3y ago
  i.e. democracy. That's what we have now. Citizens have decided that destroying the planet is good, actually.
adastra22 3y ago
Yes. Can you explain why that would be bad? It is not at all obvious.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Can you explain why that would be bad? It bars experts from deliberation. It would require debating space policy while keeping anyone from NASA. For a good amount of policy space, that limits debate and discussion to the uninformed. While an oil lobbyist would love NOAA kept out of Congress during climate debates, I’m not sure who that helps apart from the blowhards.

bboygravity 3y ago

self "regulated" Wallstreet maffia would like a word with you.