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The guns mentioned in this article are not very useful in either one of those 3; at best in the 'peripheral' aspects of the drug business. Apart from that, the

by roel_v 13y ago

The guns mentioned in this article are not very useful in either one of those 3; at best in the 'peripheral' aspects of the drug business. Apart from that, the reasons are different for all 3: - prostitution: grounds for prohibition are based on 2 'prongs' as it were: the moral aspect, it's quite clearly a matter of fact that a large amount of people find prostitution per se morally reprehensible. Secondly there is the argument that many prostitutes are being forced into their work. Empirical evidence shows in countries around the world that legalizing prostitution does not (completely) take away human trafficking and sex slavery. So, the argument is, if we prohibit prostitution, there will be less of that sort of suffering. - betting: this is based on a protect-people-against-themselves theory. Since betting is addictive to some people, these have been many cases in the past where people were driven to ruin by it. Furthermore, there are many 2nd degree victims - the families and children of gambling addicts, society at large for the damage they do to fund their addiction, etc. So again the reasoning is - let's prohibit gambling, then these will go away. - drugs: well this is actually similar to betting; its effect might also compromise somebodies' health, but the fundamental reason is protecting people against themselves from something of which they cannot quite assess the effects when they start on it, and are unable to detach themselves from when they get into problems. Then again, I think you and anybody else with a 'normal' intelligence are/is perfectly capable of coming to these conclusions yourself, and you were just deliberately being obtuse; but just to get this pseudo-anarchistic discussion out of the way before it really gets started, I thought I'd point out the obvious.

tomp 13y ago
> Empirical evidence shows in countries around the world that legalizing prostitution does not (completely) take away human trafficking and sex slavery. So, the argument is, if we prohibit prostitution, there will be less of that sort of suffering. But does legalizing at least reduce human trafficking and sex slavery? If so, then the inverse follows: by allowing prostitution, there is less of that sort of suffering. Prohibiting gambling: same thing - gambling happens regardless of whether it's legal or not. If it's legal, the government can at least tax it significantly. Prohibiting drugs: I don't think that the government is smarter than me; cars are dangerous, and scalpels are dangerous, but we don't prohibit them, we simply require people to educate themselves first before they can use them. I think the same could be done with drugs; in fact, it would be better than the current situation where noone really knows what effect drugs have. > you were just deliberately being obtuse Well, up until this point I thought your comment was very thoughtful, but here it went from good to terrible; you know, people with "normal" intelligence can disagree as well. Unfortunately I already up-voted you.
- roel_v 13y ago
  Look, I'm not defending any of those positions, frankly I think most of them are stupid, so I'm certainly not going to get sucked into a position arguing for them. But is it really worth it to ask 'hmm, why would prostitution be illegal?'. There have been 1000's of man-years of work put into that - start at scholar.google.com, then continue in your local universities' library, and one could spend every waking hour the next 40 years studying past discourse on it and still not be done. Those questions have been rehashed and researched 1000's of times deeper than anything we could every write here. Masquerading the questioning of the obvious as a question does not add to the vast majority of discussions. But yay, let's reduce every news item to 'hmm, does morality really exist?', and drown the actual new things about those items in tangential hemming and hawing, because putting a little bit of effort into trying to get some basic knowledge about a subject before partaking in a public discussion is too much work. Normally I wouldn't even has responded if it weren't for this "you know, people with "normal" intelligence can disagree as well" Of course, that's the whole point of my comment, that it doesn't take much empathy to see why some people would feel it just that society enforces a prohibition of those 3 things! If even I can understand why some people feel that way (of course you'd have to know me IRL to get the implications of stressing that), it shouldn't be hard or even take effort for a 4-9's proportion of the general population to do so. By using a glib 'I don't see, within my moral framework, why they should be illegal, therefore it's stupid that they are' argument, the GP is denying exactly that. Then again I'm just a grumpy misanthrope so what I do know...

by roel_v 13y ago

tomp 13y ago

> Empirical evidence shows in countries around the world that legalizing prostitution does not (completely) take away human trafficking and sex slavery. So, the argument is, if we prohibit prostitution, there will be less of that sort of suffering. But does legalizing at least reduce human trafficking and sex slavery? If so, then the inverse follows: by allowing prostitution, there is less of that sort of suffering. Prohibiting gambling: same thing - gambling happens regardless of whether it's legal or not. If it's legal, the government can at least tax it significantly. Prohibiting drugs: I don't think that the government is smarter than me; cars are dangerous, and scalpels are dangerous, but we don't prohibit them, we simply require people to educate themselves first before they can use them. I think the same could be done with drugs; in fact, it would be better than the current situation where noone really knows what effect drugs have. > you were just deliberately being obtuse Well, up until this point I thought your comment was very thoughtful, but here it went from good to terrible; you know, people with "normal" intelligence can disagree as well. Unfortunately I already up-voted you.

roel_v 13y ago
Look, I'm not defending any of those positions, frankly I think most of them are stupid, so I'm certainly not going to get sucked into a position arguing for them. But is it really worth it to ask 'hmm, why would prostitution be illegal?'. There have been 1000's of man-years of work put into that - start at scholar.google.com, then continue in your local universities' library, and one could spend every waking hour the next 40 years studying past discourse on it and still not be done. Those questions have been rehashed and researched 1000's of times deeper than anything we could every write here. Masquerading the questioning of the obvious as a question does not add to the vast majority of discussions. But yay, let's reduce every news item to 'hmm, does morality really exist?', and drown the actual new things about those items in tangential hemming and hawing, because putting a little bit of effort into trying to get some basic knowledge about a subject before partaking in a public discussion is too much work. Normally I wouldn't even has responded if it weren't for this "you know, people with "normal" intelligence can disagree as well" Of course, that's the whole point of my comment, that it doesn't take much empathy to see why some people would feel it just that society enforces a prohibition of those 3 things! If even I can understand why some people feel that way (of course you'd have to know me IRL to get the implications of stressing that), it shouldn't be hard or even take effort for a 4-9's proportion of the general population to do so. By using a glib 'I don't see, within my moral framework, why they should be illegal, therefore it's stupid that they are' argument, the GP is denying exactly that. Then again I'm just a grumpy misanthrope so what I do know...