4 ms·

If people are willing to buy, others are willing to make a profit. As people have free will, I see absolutely no ethical issue here.

mhurron 12y ago
Well yes, it can be that simple, if you have no ethics yourself. The ethics of investing in say companies that do animal testing for instance isn't a question of if people will buy those products, it is a question of do you want to fund that action. This is the same thing. Do you have a moral issue with marijuana? If you do, is it really ethical to fund a company that sells it?
- refurb 12y ago
  Well yes, it can be that simple, if you have no ethics yourself. Or it can be that simple if you believe ethics are a personal choice. It was ethics and morality that got us the War on Drugs, prohibition and a ban on gay marriage. You can't say "those ethics don't matter, but my ethics do".
ezy 12y ago
Eh. One of the many libertarian lies is that all uncoerced transactions are somehow value-neutral. For example, it's certainly a valid question whether it's ethical to support a weapons manufacturer, for example, no matter who's buying. In this particular case, I think this is an ethical positive. I would classify MJ funding as a net good, as it will encourage legalization -- prevent a lot of wasted resources and people.
- jerf 12y ago
  An uncoerced transaction must result in each person getting something they personally value more than what they are giving up or the trade will not take place, meaning that if you measure society by how much people believe they have, all free transactions produce a net gain. That's not "libertarianism", that's just micro-econ 101. (Any who deny the basic correctness of microecon 101 are so far lost to me that any discussion between us is pretty much useless.) That doesn't mean that if you use another measure that all such transactions have a net positive value to society, though, and I don't feel even remotely non-Libertarian for saying that... where "libertarianism" would come in would be in arguing about what those standards should be and who gets to pick them. A libertarian will be far more inclined to accept the two participant's personal valuation and let micro-econ function with less constraint, but not 100%; 100% would make them anarcho-capitalists, an even rarer breed of person.
  - aqme28 12y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding what's being discussed. Two people trading money for guns is a net gain specifically for those two people, but is not necessarily a societal gain.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - jerf 12y ago
      Read my message again, more closely.
      - aqme28 12y ago
        If you're referring to "...if you measure society by how much people believe they have...", I still don't agree with you. Transactions can cause externalities that can be a negative for third parties. If you're referring to something else, then I'm curious.
        jerf 12y ago
        (X -> Y) !-> X. Or, in English, "Saying if X then Y is not a claim that X is 'true'". So, if you measure society by how much people believe they have, then blah blah blah, is NOT a claim that such a measurement is "correct"... to the extent that a measurement even can be "correct" or "incorrect", rather than "useful" or "useless". Had you kept reading, you would have seen an acknowledgement of that in my next paragraph (which is still there if you'd like to check, HN posts can't be edited after an hour). Incidentally, it's going to be very hard to understand any sort of serious analysis of anything above the level of brute propaganda if you read (X -> Y) as a claim that X is true... you ought to consider the possibility you've been misreading lots of things for a long time. No sarcasm.
  - bluecalm 12y ago
    >>meaning that if you measure society by how much people believe they have, all free transactions produce a net gain. Let me stop you right here. Ever heard of notion of social dilemma ? Your assertion is just incorrect. 2 people may believe they have gained, others around will believe they have lost. Often overall that will be a net loss.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Well, investing in weapons is not necessarily at odds with that, given the frequency with which weapons are employed to coerce transactions. So you could be a libertarian and still decline to invest in such things without being intellectually dishonest.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > One of the many libertarian lies is that all uncoerced transactions are somehow value-neutral. Its not so much a lie as true-by-definition that all uncoerced transactions are, at worst, value-neutral if you make: (1) the assumptions of the rational actor model, (2) the definition that "uncoerced" means "no person not actively consenting experiences any negative utility as a result of the transaction". OTOH, what is debatable is how much relevance this has to real world transactions wherein actors do not adhere to the assumptions about them in the rational actor model, and, even when they do, real transactions very often do have negative externalities somewhere, so few completely meet the definition of "uncoerced".
  - bluecalm 12y ago
    >>(1) the assumptions of the rational actor model, (2) the definition that "uncoerced" means "no person not actively consenting experiences any negative utility as a result of the transaction". You forgot: (3) the assumption that two actors deciding on transaction are alone in the universe. >>real transactions very often do have negative externalities somewhere, so few completely meet the definition of "uncoerced". Well, here it is almost. Still the two actors gain, they are not coerced. The problem is other people lose and there might overall loss in the system. You would need to redefine coercion to pretty big extent to cover for what is actually the problem.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > You forgot: (3) the assumption that two actors deciding on transaction are alone in the universe. No, I didn't. The definition of uncoerced in #2 ("no person not actively consenting experiences any negative utility as a result of the transaction") along with the rational actor model (#1) makes that unnecessary -- if any person other than the decision-makers in the transaction experiences negative net utility compared to the best alternative without consenting, the transaction is not uncoerced, and they won't consent to that without violating the assumptions of the rational actor model, so the decision-makers don't need to be alone in the universe for the statement to be true as long as #1 and #2 are assumed. All negative externalities are coercion, because people are forced to bear costs to which they do not consent.
Daishiman 12y ago
I'm guessing buying rhino horns is fine. Or for that matter buying any kind of mass-produced anything manufactured in some place in the middle of nowhere with no environmental regulations and people with little job security. It's obvious that the perfectly rational choice between starving today or getting a tumor 20 years from now is completely uncoerced.
id 12y ago
>As people have free will When did this become a fact?
- pmalynin 12y ago
  Let me clarify. People make a choice to buy marijuana or not to buy it. If a person decides to buy it and at the same time accepts the possible negative consequences that might arise from such activity, are free to do so. Assuming that those individuals do so in a manner that does not endanger others, there is no ethical issue at hand, that is there is no moral responsibility on the investors nor on the producers purely in the economic sense. Of course there are other venues where an "ethical" issue might arise stemming from addiction or else. But asuming rational people made the initial decision to engage in such activity there is no ethical issue as both parties agreed to a "moral contract" just as people do when they buy alcohol or tobacco. Do smokers not know the dangers their acitivty when they first decided to do so? To that I have a real life example: my biology teacher a few years back who thoroughly described the effects that smoking has (along with other drugs) and yet he admitted to smoking and he had absolutely no issue with slowly killing himself, he also paid higher insurance costs for the same reasons and once again had no issue with that because he made a rational decision. I have no desire to smoke but I recognize that others have the right to do so as long as it has no effect on myself nor the society (through higher insurance costs etc.).
- exelius 12y ago
  Free will is an assumption that we make because the opposite would render all discussion meaningless.
pfortuny 12y ago
Mmmh some jurists disagree. This is a very real and surprising example of the inherent difficulties of your position: dwarf-tossing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf-tossing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf-tossing

mhurron 12y ago

Well yes, it can be that simple, if you have no ethics yourself. The ethics of investing in say companies that do animal testing for instance isn't a question of if people will buy those products, it is a question of do you want to fund that action. This is the same thing. Do you have a moral issue with marijuana? If you do, is it really ethical to fund a company that sells it?

refurb 12y ago
Well yes, it can be that simple, if you have no ethics yourself. Or it can be that simple if you believe ethics are a personal choice. It was ethics and morality that got us the War on Drugs, prohibition and a ban on gay marriage. You can't say "those ethics don't matter, but my ethics do".

ezy 12y ago

Eh. One of the many libertarian lies is that all uncoerced transactions are somehow value-neutral. For example, it's certainly a valid question whether it's ethical to support a weapons manufacturer, for example, no matter who's buying. In this particular case, I think this is an ethical positive. I would classify MJ funding as a net good, as it will encourage legalization -- prevent a lot of wasted resources and people.

jerf 12y ago
An uncoerced transaction must result in each person getting something they personally value more than what they are giving up or the trade will not take place, meaning that if you measure society by how much people believe they have, all free transactions produce a net gain. That's not "libertarianism", that's just micro-econ 101. (Any who deny the basic correctness of microecon 101 are so far lost to me that any discussion between us is pretty much useless.) That doesn't mean that if you use another measure that all such transactions have a net positive value to society, though, and I don't feel even remotely non-Libertarian for saying that... where "libertarianism" would come in would be in arguing about what those standards should be and who gets to pick them. A libertarian will be far more inclined to accept the two participant's personal valuation and let micro-econ function with less constraint, but not 100%; 100% would make them anarcho-capitalists, an even rarer breed of person.
- aqme28 12y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding what's being discussed. Two people trading money for guns is a net gain specifically for those two people, but is not necessarily a societal gain.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - jerf 12y ago
    Read my message again, more closely.
    - aqme28 12y ago
      If you're referring to "...if you measure society by how much people believe they have...", I still don't agree with you. Transactions can cause externalities that can be a negative for third parties. If you're referring to something else, then I'm curious.
      - jerf 12y ago
        (X -> Y) !-> X. Or, in English, "Saying if X then Y is not a claim that X is 'true'". So, if you measure society by how much people believe they have, then blah blah blah, is NOT a claim that such a measurement is "correct"... to the extent that a measurement even can be "correct" or "incorrect", rather than "useful" or "useless". Had you kept reading, you would have seen an acknowledgement of that in my next paragraph (which is still there if you'd like to check, HN posts can't be edited after an hour). Incidentally, it's going to be very hard to understand any sort of serious analysis of anything above the level of brute propaganda if you read (X -> Y) as a claim that X is true... you ought to consider the possibility you've been misreading lots of things for a long time. No sarcasm.
- bluecalm 12y ago
  >>meaning that if you measure society by how much people believe they have, all free transactions produce a net gain. Let me stop you right here. Ever heard of notion of social dilemma ? Your assertion is just incorrect. 2 people may believe they have gained, others around will believe they have lost. Often overall that will be a net loss.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Well, investing in weapons is not necessarily at odds with that, given the frequency with which weapons are employed to coerce transactions. So you could be a libertarian and still decline to invest in such things without being intellectually dishonest.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> One of the many libertarian lies is that all uncoerced transactions are somehow value-neutral. Its not so much a lie as true-by-definition that all uncoerced transactions are, at worst, value-neutral if you make: (1) the assumptions of the rational actor model, (2) the definition that "uncoerced" means "no person not actively consenting experiences any negative utility as a result of the transaction". OTOH, what is debatable is how much relevance this has to real world transactions wherein actors do not adhere to the assumptions about them in the rational actor model, and, even when they do, real transactions very often do have negative externalities somewhere, so few completely meet the definition of "uncoerced".
- bluecalm 12y ago
  >>(1) the assumptions of the rational actor model, (2) the definition that "uncoerced" means "no person not actively consenting experiences any negative utility as a result of the transaction". You forgot: (3) the assumption that two actors deciding on transaction are alone in the universe. >>real transactions very often do have negative externalities somewhere, so few completely meet the definition of "uncoerced". Well, here it is almost. Still the two actors gain, they are not coerced. The problem is other people lose and there might overall loss in the system. You would need to redefine coercion to pretty big extent to cover for what is actually the problem.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > You forgot: (3) the assumption that two actors deciding on transaction are alone in the universe. No, I didn't. The definition of uncoerced in #2 ("no person not actively consenting experiences any negative utility as a result of the transaction") along with the rational actor model (#1) makes that unnecessary -- if any person other than the decision-makers in the transaction experiences negative net utility compared to the best alternative without consenting, the transaction is not uncoerced, and they won't consent to that without violating the assumptions of the rational actor model, so the decision-makers don't need to be alone in the universe for the statement to be true as long as #1 and #2 are assumed. All negative externalities are coercion, because people are forced to bear costs to which they do not consent.

Daishiman 12y ago

I'm guessing buying rhino horns is fine. Or for that matter buying any kind of mass-produced anything manufactured in some place in the middle of nowhere with no environmental regulations and people with little job security. It's obvious that the perfectly rational choice between starving today or getting a tumor 20 years from now is completely uncoerced.

id 12y ago

>As people have free will When did this become a fact?

pmalynin 12y ago
Let me clarify. People make a choice to buy marijuana or not to buy it. If a person decides to buy it and at the same time accepts the possible negative consequences that might arise from such activity, are free to do so. Assuming that those individuals do so in a manner that does not endanger others, there is no ethical issue at hand, that is there is no moral responsibility on the investors nor on the producers purely in the economic sense. Of course there are other venues where an "ethical" issue might arise stemming from addiction or else. But asuming rational people made the initial decision to engage in such activity there is no ethical issue as both parties agreed to a "moral contract" just as people do when they buy alcohol or tobacco. Do smokers not know the dangers their acitivty when they first decided to do so? To that I have a real life example: my biology teacher a few years back who thoroughly described the effects that smoking has (along with other drugs) and yet he admitted to smoking and he had absolutely no issue with slowly killing himself, he also paid higher insurance costs for the same reasons and once again had no issue with that because he made a rational decision. I have no desire to smoke but I recognize that others have the right to do so as long as it has no effect on myself nor the society (through higher insurance costs etc.).
exelius 12y ago
Free will is an assumption that we make because the opposite would render all discussion meaningless.

pfortuny 12y ago

Mmmh some jurists disagree. This is a very real and surprising example of the inherent difficulties of your position: dwarf-tossing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf-tossing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf-tossing