4 ms·

It is always easy to blame the execution rather than the policy, if you are ideologically biased to believe in the policy.

• wobbly_bush 3y ago
  Isn't the opposite also true?
  • brightlancer 3y ago
    > Isn't the opposite also true? Not PP, but the onus is always on the person or group making the affirmative claim. It _might_ be that the policy is sound but the execution is in error, but we should not _assume_ that the policy is sound.
    • Aeolun 3y ago
      I’m kind of of the opinion that we shouldn’t hold addicts to account for their addictions. By the time they’re addicted they’re not rational actors any more. By the same count we don’t judge the mentally unwell and children as if they’re well-functioning adults.
      • lmm 3y ago
        OK, so what does that concretely mean as a policy? "Not judge", fine - does that mean no arrests, no involuntary holds, not touching them? We used to take the view that we could confine people for things that weren't their fault when there was an overwhelming public interest (e.g. people with infectious diseases).
      • inferiorhuman 3y ago
        By the same count we don’t judge the mentally unwell and children as if they’re well-functioning adults. Sure we do (or we did up until recently). Bill Clinton famously presided over the execution of a man missing a chunk of his brain to appear tough on crime during his presidential campaign.
      • caddemon 3y ago
        Children and those deemed mentally unwell in a legal sense lack various individual freedoms though. There's always some trade off.
      • ali_m 3y ago
        I don't think it's that simple. No one acts 100% rationally all of the time. In this respect, addicts, children, and the mentally unwell differ from the rest of us by degree - they may have diminished responsibility for their own actions, but I don't think it makes sense to try to draw a sharp line where you're either responsible for your own actions or you're not. Recovery from addiction requires assuming responsibility for one's actions.
    • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      > Not PP, but the onus is always on the person or group making the affirmative claim. But they're both making an affirmative claim. One says that legalization is better and all these addicts are an error in execution. The other says that criminalization is better and all this widespread disrespect for the law and erosion of civil liberties and mass incarceration and cartel murder squads are an error in execution. In general the burden should be on the party who wants make something illegal.
  • fooker 3y ago
    No, this is the Russel's teapot logical paradox. The onus is on you to prove your positive statement. If you like and implement a policy, you can't hand wave a failure blaming random stuff.
• troutwine 3y ago
  Sure, and if you're ideologically opposed to a policy you can make a comment like this. What's needed is data on many alternative approaches, what policies _and_ executions taken as one promote better outcomes? Over what timeframes? Otherwise it's just all shouting into a windstorm.
  • brightlancer 3y ago
    "I'm rubber and you're glue, it's harder to make an argument that saying it's just about you."
  • jjcon 3y ago
    No, we should take policy results at face value. If it failed if failed, if it succeeded it succeeded. No need to play no true scotsman.
    • troutwine 3y ago
      That’s… what I’m arguing? There’s a hard problem to be solved with uncertain paths toward a solution — or uncertainty of what “solved” means in this case, maybe, depending on whether endemic is an acceptable outcome — and every attempt at a solution that doesn’t work out, or doesn’t work out sufficiently well, is data added to the project of getting better outcomes for all. I’m not entirely sure what you’ve read in my comment but I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t view things plainly. I would also challenge your implicit notion here that there is a binary pass/fail solution to societal levels of drug addiction. Like any seriously hard problem there are policies that have been proposed and implemented around that world that have some positive outcomes in some regards and negatives in others. Incarceration (the Drug War) theoretically makes serious drug addiction absent from public life, a positive, but with the result of growing the police state, a negative. Vice versa for Oregon’s policy, now that it’s run for a while. I think we’re recently finding that Portugal’s approach which Oregon based their policy on also does not have better than expected outcomes, although the data is early yet.
    • creata 3y ago
      Taking results at face value is silly when your sample size is 1.
• livinginfear 3y ago
  Looking on from the UK, the only answer American liberals seem to have for the failures of American liberalism is that America just wasn't liberal enough.
  • tivert 3y ago
    That's the only explanation for policy failures when you're right by definition.
  • Nursie 3y ago
    The UK that dismisses or suppresses its own reports into drug policy and fires its leading experts because their views are not politically expedient, that UK? I think even if we don't know what is the right way to go about drug policy, we can probably agree that sticking your head in the sand and pretending there's no debate to be had is probably not the best approach.