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If you believe that you own your own body, then it would make sense. I wonder what people will say in 100 years. Will they laugh at us for letting people with t

If you believe that you own your own body, then it would make sense. I wonder what people will say in 100 years. Will they laugh at us for letting people with the label "government" lay claim on how we use our own bodies? I would think so.

pekk 13y ago
Perhaps they will all be incredibly conservative and religious. It's a cheap trick to claim that your own view is the view of the future.
- nasmorn 13y ago
  Our view today is by definition the conservatism of tomorrow. If my children want to be religious they would have to be progressive religious because I am going to be the conservative atheist.
- TelmoMenezes 13y ago
  Or maybe it's just optimism and the belief that society tends towards increasingly more rational behaviour. Unless there are some dramatic scientific findings in the future, the case against cannabis is flimsy at best -- especially when compared with other legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.
  - rodgerd 13y ago
    It's certainly opimisim. A quick look at the history would suggest there's no particular reason to believe that things always get better.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      By any reasonable account, things have been getting better for at least several centuries now. Infant mortality is down, birth rates drop as prosperity increases, advances in farming technology have rendered world hunger a logistics problem, literacy rates are improving and access to education (traditional or otherwise) has never been better. Fewer people are being burned as witches (particularly in developed and developing countries). Entire diseases have been eradicated and more will soon be eradicated. Tolerance of alternative lifestyles, once relegated to small pockets of geography and history, is spreading. Slavery continues to be on the decline. The collapse of the Roman Empire was by most accounts a setback, as was the the Black Death and two brutal world wars (though even after those we resisted the temptation of widespread nuclear, chemical or biological warfare). It really is quite difficult to find broadly negative trends. Even the loss of the Roman Empire becomes a temporary setback if you zoom your timeline out more. The Romans were doing better then the Babylonians (well, some of them were at least), and we are doing better than they were at their height. Things get better because that is what humans do; we stand on the shoulders of giants. Stubborn incremental improvement.
      - splatcollision 13y ago
        I like the way you think, the cut of your jib, etc. That's how I view open source – as a culmination of millennias-worth of incremental changes and improvements.
noonespecial 13y ago
If I may float a counter argument (that I personally don't happen to support but fully appreciate): As we move towards socialized medicine, your body becomes less "yours" and more part of the collective. If society pays for the results of how you use your body, it seems logical that they should have some say in that use.
- ahallock 13y ago
  I can see that as a possibility, though a rather dystopian one. Resistance is futile.
- tomjen3 13y ago
  That is one of the reasons I dislike socialized medicine. The state allows one and only one solution, so you have to get into it, whereas you can likely buy a little more expensive "fat" insurance and not have to change your body (or, just as likely fit people get a rebate).

pekk 13y ago

Perhaps they will all be incredibly conservative and religious. It's a cheap trick to claim that your own view is the view of the future.

nasmorn 13y ago
Our view today is by definition the conservatism of tomorrow. If my children want to be religious they would have to be progressive religious because I am going to be the conservative atheist.
TelmoMenezes 13y ago
Or maybe it's just optimism and the belief that society tends towards increasingly more rational behaviour. Unless there are some dramatic scientific findings in the future, the case against cannabis is flimsy at best -- especially when compared with other legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.
- rodgerd 13y ago
  It's certainly opimisim. A quick look at the history would suggest there's no particular reason to believe that things always get better.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    By any reasonable account, things have been getting better for at least several centuries now. Infant mortality is down, birth rates drop as prosperity increases, advances in farming technology have rendered world hunger a logistics problem, literacy rates are improving and access to education (traditional or otherwise) has never been better. Fewer people are being burned as witches (particularly in developed and developing countries). Entire diseases have been eradicated and more will soon be eradicated. Tolerance of alternative lifestyles, once relegated to small pockets of geography and history, is spreading. Slavery continues to be on the decline. The collapse of the Roman Empire was by most accounts a setback, as was the the Black Death and two brutal world wars (though even after those we resisted the temptation of widespread nuclear, chemical or biological warfare). It really is quite difficult to find broadly negative trends. Even the loss of the Roman Empire becomes a temporary setback if you zoom your timeline out more. The Romans were doing better then the Babylonians (well, some of them were at least), and we are doing better than they were at their height. Things get better because that is what humans do; we stand on the shoulders of giants. Stubborn incremental improvement.
    - splatcollision 13y ago
      I like the way you think, the cut of your jib, etc. That's how I view open source – as a culmination of millennias-worth of incremental changes and improvements.

noonespecial 13y ago

If I may float a counter argument (that I personally don't happen to support but fully appreciate): As we move towards socialized medicine, your body becomes less "yours" and more part of the collective. If society pays for the results of how you use your body, it seems logical that they should have some say in that use.

ahallock 13y ago
I can see that as a possibility, though a rather dystopian one. Resistance is futile.
tomjen3 13y ago
That is one of the reasons I dislike socialized medicine. The state allows one and only one solution, so you have to get into it, whereas you can likely buy a little more expensive "fat" insurance and not have to change your body (or, just as likely fit people get a rebate).