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Not saying I agree with legally permitting this kind of thing, but just addressing your comment: If the government can throw you in prison for something, it be
by meowface 2y ago
Not saying I agree with legally permitting this kind of thing, but just addressing your comment:
If the government can throw you in prison for something, it better be for a good reason. If it's simply doing something "that doesn't harm anyone but is perceived as not conducive to social cohesion", that doesn't seem like a good reason. Many conservatives would say gay marriage, polyamory, tattoos, porn, foul language, and blasphemy are not socially cohesive. Insulting people or using slurs is not socially cohesive. Some countries imprison people for many of these things, but I'm glad the US doesn't.
- umvi 2y agoI agree with you, but I would rephrase it as "people should have the freedom to do certain harmful things without going to jail for it". For example, insulting someone, or self harming. Even things that "don't harm anyone" actually do, it's just the scale is too small to be measurable at the individual level. For example, substance abuse. If one people does it, it's hard to measure the harm to society. But if 300M people do it, it's easy.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoMany people's instinct was to go here, which is maybe why our current society tips over into permissiveness. But a good balance can be reached without becoming brutal totalitarians. One example is alcohol, a lot a lot of countries struggle with controlling it. Technically it's a victimless crime. It's easy for people to see how it affects society though. In some places banning it will be impossible due to local preference, but governments have creative ways to reduce usage. It's not totalitarian to run a campaign to try to reduce people's alcohol consumption, or to add taxes onto it which are shown to reduce consumption and related incidents.