5 ms·

I think the more relevant point is: But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction.

I think the more relevant point is: But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction. Which is a good thing! This is an area full of scammers, if you can't set up your business legally, I'm very happy to hear it's more difficult for you to advertise it.

sigmoid10 5mo ago
I mean, you also can't advertise illegal drugs either. Doesn't seem to curb demand though. It may actually be more beneficial to allow these things more broadly, because then social safety features can be wedged in between consumers and suppliers more easily and they don't have to deal with a gigantic shadow market that already gets stigmatised to death by the rest of the population. Just accept that a certain percentage of the populations has screwed up dopamine households and try to keep them away from gangsters as best you can. That would probably help society as a whole more than banning everything and pretending the problem goes away if you close your eyes.
- VectorLock 5mo ago
  >Doesn't seem to curb demand though. Because its an addictive product. See also: gambling.
  - sigmoid10 5mo ago
    That's literally the content of this discussion? Or did you want to say something else?
    - VectorLock 5mo ago
      Is that what you meant by "dopamine households?"
      - sigmoid10 5mo ago
        What did you think this means? It's not like this is a riddle or a metaphor.
        VectorLock 5mo ago
        If its not a riddle or a metaphor, what is a "dopamine household" then?
        sigmoid10 5mo ago
        Again, what do you think it is? I don't see anything it could be besides what was written. You could call it endocrine imbalance or disrupted hormone household if you wanted to be less precise and skirt around the actual biological problem, but it still doesn't change anything.
        VectorLock 5mo ago
        >Again, what do you think it is? I don't know what it is, thats why I asked. Is the assertion that you're trying to make that drugs and gambling being addictive is a result of hormone imbalance in the addicts, rather than the addictive nature of those things?
        sigmoid10 5mo ago
        [dead]
- Maxatar 5mo ago
  >I mean, you also can't advertise illegal drugs either. Doesn't seem to curb demand though. Making drugs illegal does not eliminate demand, but it absolutely curbs it. The converse is also true, for example legalizing cannabis in Canada has significantly increased demand for it [1]. While it's true cannabis use had been gradually increasing for decades prior to legalization, there was a significant spike afterwards which has since levelled off. [1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231016/dq231016c-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231016/dq231...
  - deaux 5mo ago
    > The converse is also true It isn't true, at least not as a hard and fast rule. Post-legalization changes in demand differ greatly per country. It completely depends on contemporary cultural factors of the country in question.
    - Maxatar 5mo ago
      Your claim is far too open ended to interpret clearly. A change in demand post-legalization can absolutely be highly variable across different countries/cultures, but unless you can demonstrate a country that legalized cannabis and saw a decline in demand, then your as of yet unsubstantiated claim does not refute mine.
      - deaux 5mo ago
        No, all I need to demonstrate is a country that saw no significant increase, not necessarily a decline. From everything I know, the US states as well as the Netherlands that all decriminalized it in the 70s didn't see local use increase in significant numbers. Neither did it in Belgium who did the same in 2003. And before you go "decriminalization is not the same as legalization", in the "Making drugs illegal does not eliminate demand, but it absolutely curbs it." is clearly about drugs that have not been decriminalized at all.
  - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
    > The converse is also true, for example legalizing cannabis in Canada has significantly increased demand for it The relevant thing that link actually says is that more survey respondents admitted to cannabis use after legalization, the obvious problem being that before legalization they would be admitting to a crime, which will suppress response rates. The same link also points out that the legalization happened right before COVID and then you have a major confounder because even if cannabis use is actually up, you don't know if it's because of legalization or people turning to cannabis over stress from COVID. Moreover, the reported usage increased during COVID but started to decline in 2023. This implies that either the apparent spike was COVID, or that it was something like media reports about recent legalization acting as temporary free advertising and causing a temporary increase in usage. Neither of those is evidence of a sustained increase in demand. Meanwhile legal options do cause people to prefer legal sources over the black market, and then you get fewer people becoming addicts because the thing they thought they were buying was spiked with something significantly more addictive by a black market seller. Or the black market products have higher variation in the dose and then customers can't predict how much they're getting and occasionally take more than expected, leading to a higher rate of overdose and stronger dependency-inducing withdrawal.
- mikepurvis 5mo ago
  What's even the point of having laws at all if some people will just ignore them and do whatever they want, right?
- QuadmasterXLII 5mo ago
  The argument you are presenting is recycled from debates about newly banning things that have been legal for forever, but doesn’t make any sense at all as a response to people bemoaning disasters caused by an activity being newly legalized.
- PaulHoule 5mo ago
  It's nuanced. When I was a kid I really enjoyed Scarne's books about gambling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scarne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scarne which were written in an era when most of the gambling in the US was illegal and run by organized crime, Las Vegas was small, Atlantic City new, and New Hampshire the first state to get a lottery. Like prostitution, gambling needs a rather sophisticated criminal network, a parallel system of law-and-order, to be a workable, safe and reasonably fair business. Scarne started out his career, as a magician and card mechanic, as a sort of consultant who could keep games fair. Blacks in New York City, for instance, ran illegal street craps and ran a lottery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game quite similar to the "Pick 3" games you see in many states -- the latter got taken over by the Italian mafia. Gambling has a broad cross-cultural appeal and some people are going to do it no matter how you try to shut it down. In the US we went from having a few centers to widespread "riverboat" and tribal gambling to widespread casinos now to mobile gambling on sports and sometimes the equivalent of video slots. Of course there is the matter of degree. It's not going to wreck your life to drop $1 on the lottery a week and probably gives you more than $1 worth of fun. If you're addicted though it may be no fun at all. I can totally see where Nate Silver is coming from but I can also see the degenerate who drops 20 bets on a single game on the weekend as well as the person who thinks he is Nate Silver and he isn't. I think the Superbowl is a fair competition by player who are playing their hardest, but it breaks my heart as a sports fan when teams are not playing to win and that's why I can't stand watching the NBA despite loving going to second-tier college basketball games in person. And for drugs? I remember all the Lester Grinspoon talk about how prohibition is worse than the drugs themselves and that might have been true before 2000 but in the Fentanyl age I see people dropping like flies all around me -- but Marshall McLuhan said we are driving by looking in the rear view mirror and of course some people are going to be repeating things that were true in the last century.
  - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
    > but in the Fentanyl age I see people dropping like flies all around me Fentanyl is a response to prohibition. If you have to smuggle something it's a lot easier to move 10 kg of fentanyl and cut it with something near the point of sale than to move 10,000 kg of codeine from the point of manufacture. But then you have street dealers cutting it with who knows what in who knows what amount. They may use a 1000:1 ratio of unspecified hopefully-inert powder to fentanyl but don't mix it evenly so some customers get a 10000:1 ratio and others get 100:1 and become addicted or overdose. Or a dealer has one supplier who was already cutting it 50:1 so they were used to only cutting it another 20:1 so their customers don't complain, but then they start wanting larger quantities and find a new supplier without realizing they just bypassed the one who was pre-cutting it and are now getting uncut fentanyl. None of that happens if anyone can buy codeine at Walmart. Or for that matter if they can buy fentanyl and know exactly how much they're getting.
- caycep 5mo ago
  I think the laws are written assuming everyone is rational but it's pretty clear from neuroscience than dopaminergic/VTA pathway abnormalities addictions make one anything but rational; and they haven't been updated to reflect the science.
- kevin_thibedeau 5mo ago
  > then social safety features can be wedged in The bans and strict regulations are the social safety features.
  - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
    If gambling is legal but using violence against debtors is illegal then the legal casinos out-compete the illegal ones but cut you off when the banks won't extend you any more credit instead of giving you a loan with a lien against your kneecaps, and the money goes to companies that aren't using it to fund the expansion of protection rackets etc. If gambling is illegal then the profits go to organized crime and they don't follow any of the other laws either.
- paulddraper 5mo ago
  It does curb demand.
- singleshot_ 5mo ago
  The number of weed billboards in my town obliterates your opening assertion.
  - LorenPechtel 5mo ago
    Data from Amsterdam: Legalization did not increase use. Permitting advertising did. Prohibiting advertising took use back to baseline.

sigmoid10 5mo ago

I mean, you also can't advertise illegal drugs either. Doesn't seem to curb demand though. It may actually be more beneficial to allow these things more broadly, because then social safety features can be wedged in between consumers and suppliers more easily and they don't have to deal with a gigantic shadow market that already gets stigmatised to death by the rest of the population. Just accept that a certain percentage of the populations has screwed up dopamine households and try to keep them away from gangsters as best you can. That would probably help society as a whole more than banning everything and pretending the problem goes away if you close your eyes.

VectorLock 5mo ago
>Doesn't seem to curb demand though. Because its an addictive product. See also: gambling.
- sigmoid10 5mo ago
  That's literally the content of this discussion? Or did you want to say something else?
  - VectorLock 5mo ago
    Is that what you meant by "dopamine households?"
    - sigmoid10 5mo ago
      What did you think this means? It's not like this is a riddle or a metaphor.
      - VectorLock 5mo ago
        If its not a riddle or a metaphor, what is a "dopamine household" then?
        sigmoid10 5mo ago
        Again, what do you think it is? I don't see anything it could be besides what was written. You could call it endocrine imbalance or disrupted hormone household if you wanted to be less precise and skirt around the actual biological problem, but it still doesn't change anything.
        VectorLock 5mo ago
        >Again, what do you think it is? I don't know what it is, thats why I asked. Is the assertion that you're trying to make that drugs and gambling being addictive is a result of hormone imbalance in the addicts, rather than the addictive nature of those things?
        sigmoid10 5mo ago
        [dead]
Maxatar 5mo ago
>I mean, you also can't advertise illegal drugs either. Doesn't seem to curb demand though. Making drugs illegal does not eliminate demand, but it absolutely curbs it. The converse is also true, for example legalizing cannabis in Canada has significantly increased demand for it [1]. While it's true cannabis use had been gradually increasing for decades prior to legalization, there was a significant spike afterwards which has since levelled off. [1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231016/dq231016c-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231016/dq231...
- deaux 5mo ago
  > The converse is also true It isn't true, at least not as a hard and fast rule. Post-legalization changes in demand differ greatly per country. It completely depends on contemporary cultural factors of the country in question.
  - Maxatar 5mo ago
    Your claim is far too open ended to interpret clearly. A change in demand post-legalization can absolutely be highly variable across different countries/cultures, but unless you can demonstrate a country that legalized cannabis and saw a decline in demand, then your as of yet unsubstantiated claim does not refute mine.
    - deaux 5mo ago
      No, all I need to demonstrate is a country that saw no significant increase, not necessarily a decline. From everything I know, the US states as well as the Netherlands that all decriminalized it in the 70s didn't see local use increase in significant numbers. Neither did it in Belgium who did the same in 2003. And before you go "decriminalization is not the same as legalization", in the "Making drugs illegal does not eliminate demand, but it absolutely curbs it." is clearly about drugs that have not been decriminalized at all.
- AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
  > The converse is also true, for example legalizing cannabis in Canada has significantly increased demand for it The relevant thing that link actually says is that more survey respondents admitted to cannabis use after legalization, the obvious problem being that before legalization they would be admitting to a crime, which will suppress response rates. The same link also points out that the legalization happened right before COVID and then you have a major confounder because even if cannabis use is actually up, you don't know if it's because of legalization or people turning to cannabis over stress from COVID. Moreover, the reported usage increased during COVID but started to decline in 2023. This implies that either the apparent spike was COVID, or that it was something like media reports about recent legalization acting as temporary free advertising and causing a temporary increase in usage. Neither of those is evidence of a sustained increase in demand. Meanwhile legal options do cause people to prefer legal sources over the black market, and then you get fewer people becoming addicts because the thing they thought they were buying was spiked with something significantly more addictive by a black market seller. Or the black market products have higher variation in the dose and then customers can't predict how much they're getting and occasionally take more than expected, leading to a higher rate of overdose and stronger dependency-inducing withdrawal.
mikepurvis 5mo ago
What's even the point of having laws at all if some people will just ignore them and do whatever they want, right?
QuadmasterXLII 5mo ago
The argument you are presenting is recycled from debates about newly banning things that have been legal for forever, but doesn’t make any sense at all as a response to people bemoaning disasters caused by an activity being newly legalized.
PaulHoule 5mo ago
It's nuanced. When I was a kid I really enjoyed Scarne's books about gambling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scarne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scarne which were written in an era when most of the gambling in the US was illegal and run by organized crime, Las Vegas was small, Atlantic City new, and New Hampshire the first state to get a lottery. Like prostitution, gambling needs a rather sophisticated criminal network, a parallel system of law-and-order, to be a workable, safe and reasonably fair business. Scarne started out his career, as a magician and card mechanic, as a sort of consultant who could keep games fair. Blacks in New York City, for instance, ran illegal street craps and ran a lottery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game quite similar to the "Pick 3" games you see in many states -- the latter got taken over by the Italian mafia. Gambling has a broad cross-cultural appeal and some people are going to do it no matter how you try to shut it down. In the US we went from having a few centers to widespread "riverboat" and tribal gambling to widespread casinos now to mobile gambling on sports and sometimes the equivalent of video slots. Of course there is the matter of degree. It's not going to wreck your life to drop $1 on the lottery a week and probably gives you more than $1 worth of fun. If you're addicted though it may be no fun at all. I can totally see where Nate Silver is coming from but I can also see the degenerate who drops 20 bets on a single game on the weekend as well as the person who thinks he is Nate Silver and he isn't. I think the Superbowl is a fair competition by player who are playing their hardest, but it breaks my heart as a sports fan when teams are not playing to win and that's why I can't stand watching the NBA despite loving going to second-tier college basketball games in person. And for drugs? I remember all the Lester Grinspoon talk about how prohibition is worse than the drugs themselves and that might have been true before 2000 but in the Fentanyl age I see people dropping like flies all around me -- but Marshall McLuhan said we are driving by looking in the rear view mirror and of course some people are going to be repeating things that were true in the last century.
- AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
  > but in the Fentanyl age I see people dropping like flies all around me Fentanyl is a response to prohibition. If you have to smuggle something it's a lot easier to move 10 kg of fentanyl and cut it with something near the point of sale than to move 10,000 kg of codeine from the point of manufacture. But then you have street dealers cutting it with who knows what in who knows what amount. They may use a 1000:1 ratio of unspecified hopefully-inert powder to fentanyl but don't mix it evenly so some customers get a 10000:1 ratio and others get 100:1 and become addicted or overdose. Or a dealer has one supplier who was already cutting it 50:1 so they were used to only cutting it another 20:1 so their customers don't complain, but then they start wanting larger quantities and find a new supplier without realizing they just bypassed the one who was pre-cutting it and are now getting uncut fentanyl. None of that happens if anyone can buy codeine at Walmart. Or for that matter if they can buy fentanyl and know exactly how much they're getting.
caycep 5mo ago
I think the laws are written assuming everyone is rational but it's pretty clear from neuroscience than dopaminergic/VTA pathway abnormalities addictions make one anything but rational; and they haven't been updated to reflect the science.
kevin_thibedeau 5mo ago
> then social safety features can be wedged in The bans and strict regulations are the social safety features.
- AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
  If gambling is legal but using violence against debtors is illegal then the legal casinos out-compete the illegal ones but cut you off when the banks won't extend you any more credit instead of giving you a loan with a lien against your kneecaps, and the money goes to companies that aren't using it to fund the expansion of protection rackets etc. If gambling is illegal then the profits go to organized crime and they don't follow any of the other laws either.
paulddraper 5mo ago
It does curb demand.
singleshot_ 5mo ago
The number of weed billboards in my town obliterates your opening assertion.
- LorenPechtel 5mo ago
  Data from Amsterdam: Legalization did not increase use. Permitting advertising did. Prohibiting advertising took use back to baseline.