12 ms·

Who would have expected that outcome? Lets look back in history to see how well prohibition has worked in the past. The exact same result happened back in the

by jussij 12y ago

Who would have expected that outcome? Lets look back in history to see how well prohibition has worked in the past. The exact same result happened back in the 1920's with the prohibition of alcohol. The 1920's prohibition resulted in nothing more than the rise of the Mafia. Back in the 1920's there was similar waste of government money fighting alcohol, only to see the rise in the power of the Mafia. Move forward to today's 'war on drugs' and once again government is wasting massive amounts of public money trying fighting a loosing war. The harder the fight the richer the drug kings become. But now the states decide to go softer on a 'war on what ever' and guess what, the 'drug kings' once again start to loose money. Nothing more than history repeating :(

baldfat 12y ago
The only thing that makes me hesitate this popular view: 1) There was a mafia in Italy and US long before Prohibition and after Prohibition 2) The violence and deaths of police officers in the US started to rise in 1900 and peaked at 1921 and declined for another 30 years. 3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. 4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History [1] Police deaths in London and NYC (I could use other markers just this was a lazy first choice http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2586786/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2586786/ [2] US Crime Rate (Which I would argue is flawed since the recording of crimes prior to 1960s was not tracked in the same way as records are now kept after JFK assassination http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0109/US-crime-rate-at-lowest-point-in-decades.-Why-America-is-safer-now http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0109/US-crime-rate...
- joshuapants 12y ago
  1) The mafia didn't only deal in alcohol. Prostitution and gambling, two other popular-but-illegal things were often controlled by organized crime. Prohibition did allow organized crime a boom where they could squirrel away money and use it for their enterprises later on, which explains their presence after the fact. 2) I'm not sure that police deaths are the best metric, since most of the violence during prohibition was carried out by gangs against other gangs. Given enough police corruption, violence wasn't even necessary. 3) How about cocaine followed by crack cocaine? 4) That doesn't mean we couldn't be less violent and more peaceful, and it doesn't mean that our law enforcement resources are efficiently allocated.
  - jordigh 12y ago
    In the places where prostitution is legal (Netherlands, Germany, Austria, New Zealand...) there is still a huge criminal organisation built around human trafficking. Most prostitutes in such countries are poorer immigrant women from neighbouring countries in economic desperation, and very frequently acting against their will. Not every popular-but-illegal activity benefits from becoming legal. Selling alcohol is very different from selling people. Don't conflate the two activities.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      Selling people is very different from allowing people to sell their services. Don't conflate the two activities. Seriously, the existence of problems related to legal prostitution in any particular location doesn't necessarily indict the entire practice. Also, in close analogy with drug prohibition, the state gives criminals space to thrive whenever it limits the free movement of people.
      - jordigh 12y ago
        They're not selling a service. They're selling their bodies. With a service, someone is performing something, not having something done to them. With a service, the more experienced practitioners are more valuable. With prostitution the opposite is true: the least experienced people are the most valuable, and there is no training required nor even desired. It's not a job when the most desirable "employees" are the least experienced ones.
        grinnbearit 12y ago
        I don't think thats true, if that was the case, the price of prostitution would drop with experience/skill/quality. A quick google leads me to http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-average-prostitution-prices-worldwide http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-average-prostitution-price... From this, it looks like the price for prostitutes increases with quality.
        12y ago
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. I don't think the OP was making any correlation with crime in the 70s and 80s. You could however link that rise in crime to the spread of crack cocaine through NYC and LA if you really wanted to. 4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History Interestingly enough, while that is true, our incarceration rate is the highest ever and it started just as the drug war started. See also The New Jim Crow [1] [1] http://newjimcrow.com/ http://newjimcrow.com/
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    Lead poisoning due to leaded gasoline has been one of the more interesting (and common sense) explanations of that rise and fall of crime.
    - canvia 12y ago
      Relevant article: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
    - InclinedPlane 12y ago
      And it's almost certainly bullshit. There is no correlation with crime rates and lead exposure. The pattern observed is a massive spike in crime during the '80s and '90s due to gang activity from the crack boom, which then falls back down to '60s/'70s levels afterward. What you'd expect to see if lead exposure was the problem is a very gradual increase over time and then a gradual tail off as exposure reduced. Instead the homicide rate doubled for folks under 25 between 1983 and 1993, and then fell back to 1980s levels by the early 2000s. The background crime rate increase from the 1960s forward is more readily explained by societal changes, as well as the start of the "war on drugs".
  - talmand 12y ago
    I suppose one could make the argument that one reason for the decline in crime rates is due to the fact that so many criminals are in prison. I don't necessarily agree with that, but the argument could be made. But I've been led to believe that a large amount, if not majority, of drug crime prisoners are due to low-level and non-violent criminal acts. Many of the drug laws are extremely heavy-handed that puts many people in prison for little reason. If that's the case, I doubt most of these people would have contributed to violence statistics.
- duaneb 12y ago
  > Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. The big theory for this is the widespread use of lead paint that was banned in the 70s.
  - chongli 12y ago
    Actually, leaded gasoline is more likely to be the culprit.
    - newobj 12y ago
      I'm glad it wasn't only me that was thinking "wasn't it leaded gas?" ... I would like to find the citation for this though before I repeat it at cocktail parties.
      - chongli 12y ago
        Here you go[0]. [0] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
  - ufmace 12y ago
    Last I've read, there are dozens of plausible-sounding theories, and none of them hold up all that well under serious analysis, at least as far as explaining the whole rise and fall. Maybe some or all of them are a little true, maybe it's something nobody's thought of or figured out yet.
- edkennedy 12y ago
  Could you elaborate on your point about the recording of crimes prior to the 1960? I'd be interested to see a source and a few google searches didn't bring up anything.
- xasos 12y ago
  > Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society This probably came because of the creation/rise of gangs, an organization dealing with things very similar to the Mafia.
  - angersock 12y ago
    And what do many gangs use to fund their activities? The sale of drugs, perhaps?
    - xasos 12y ago
      That's one of many things they do. (Gang Leader for a Day gives great insight into the many role gangs play in their communities [1]) It's also a possible consequence of Nixon's War on Drugs [2] [1] http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp... [2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
- discardorama 12y ago
  > 3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. Hmm... let me see. What related thing started in the early 70s? Yep, the "War on Drugs", started by Nixon.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    The rise in violent crime preceded the drug war. When Nixon uttered the phrase "drug war" in 1971, the violent crime rate had more than doubled since 1960. http://www.decisionsonevidence.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Estimated-Violent-Crime-Rate-US-Total-1960-2009.png http://www.decisionsonevidence.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/1.... To a great extent, the drug war was a response to the increase in violent crime rates. People blamed drug use for the collapse of the social structure of the inner cities.
    - discardorama 12y ago
      There was also the Vietnam War in progress, training 100s of 1000s of people in armed conflict. And there was the Civil Rights movement and the associated brutal crackdown. In other words, there was violence all around.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > 3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. The statistical increase in crime rates that peaked then is largely well explained by the baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s and the widely-observed correlation between crime and the proportion of population that is adolescent to young adult males. > 4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History Which is also largely well explained by the same demographic effects. Lead exposure through lead in gasoline also can explain some of both of these effects, as noted in other comments.
  - baldfat 12y ago
    > The statistical increase in crime rates that peaked then is largely well explained by the baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s and the widely-observed correlation between crime and the proportion of population that is adolescent to young adult males. Crime rates are based per 1000 so it is percentage based and not population based. BUT the correlation young adult males makes senses. Right now we are starting the smallest proportion of young adult males that US has ever seen and it is going to keep getting smaller. I should dive into the percentage of young adult males and the crime rate and see what I come up with.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      the baby boom is relevant not because of the overall size of the population, but because it created a demographic bulge that reached the critical age range starting in the 1960s, and peaking somewhere in the late 1970s to 1980s.
    - baldfat 12y ago
      Don't downvote without a comment? Sorry I changed my mind when someone presented a good argument? I changed my mind in seeing that young adult males percentage of population could be the answer to the mid 1960s to early 1990s crime bump?
  - curun1r 12y ago
    It's also noteworthy that most of the drug war is being fought in Mexico, where drug-related murders went up by a factor of 6 between 2006 and 2011. Also note that while we've had a small dip, we're still near an all-time high when it comes to incarceration rates in the US, despite lower crime rates. The impression I get is that the entire illicit drug trade vertically integrated to increase profits and localized the competition aspect between suppliers (killing each other) to a geographic location where law enforcement is less capable and easier to buy off.
- SeanLuke 12y ago
  > 3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. I thought that at this point it was pretty much accepted that by far the strongest factor here was leaded gasoline.
  - apozem 12y ago
    That's a fascinating theory, but leaded gasoline has never been confirmed as the reason.
rayiner 12y ago
It's interesting to look at murder rate over time: https://madeinamericathebook.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/homicides-1900-20062.jpg https://madeinamericathebook.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/hom.... It was already extremely high at the turn of the century and only went up slightly during prohibition. And after the trough in 1960, it started rapidly rising before the drug war got going up in the 1970's.
- cynoclast 12y ago
  Also banning leaded gasoline.
nothrabannosir 12y ago
Why the sad face? Isn't this a great part of history repeating?
- Raphmedia 12y ago
  Bad parts of history repeating means that people are not paying attention to what happened before. The whole situation could have been avoided if people had taken the time to look back.
  - alfapla 12y ago
    I hope the people will look back to the way the tobacco industry has killed thousands by ruthlessly effective marketing, intentionally making their product more addictive, spreading misinformation and lobbying against laws that were in the interest of public health. Can you think of any particular reason why "Big Marijuana" will behave better?
Lawtonfogle 12y ago
Do you support prohibition for prostitution? What about for illegal pornography? I find that even those against prohibition support it for things they personally see as really really wrong. Even many of those who don't use drugs don't see pot as a major problem, only as something they don't want. And as such they don't support prohibition of it. But pick something that they do outright hate, and they will support prohibition regardless of how ineffective it may be.
- bognition 12y ago
  Woah, dude chill out. First of all prohibition of prostitution has been shown to create the same problems as prohibition of alcohol and drugs. Its wrongly assigns the crime to the people at the bottom of the hierarchy. Its perfectly reasonable to conceive of a system of prostitution where everything is consensual and everyone is protected, which is what we have for alcohol and what people are fighting for with drugs. Let people do what they want as long as they aren't harming other people. Child porn cannot exist under these terms. Science has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that children cannot give informed consent and therefore cannot participate in the creation of pornography consensually. So to compare prohibition of alcohol, drugs, or prostitution to prohibition of child pornography doesn't hold up.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Lawtonfogle 12y ago
    >Let people do what they want as long as they aren't harming other people. Take alcohol. Ideally it doesn't directly cause harm to another individual. Now remind me again how many people are killed by drunk drivers each year? Now, is this alcohols fault? Or is it the drunk driver's fault? Or is it both? Or some fourth option? Well we've now reached a point where 'harming other people' is quite a subjective standard when determining what is causing that harm and thus what can be prohibited. >Science has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that children cannot give informed consent Links? Of the limited amount of science concerning informed consent that I've read (dealing with mentally disabled individuals ability to give informed consent), most teens would easily meet the standards set for a mentally disabled adult. But we can avoid that whole moral quagmire by instead focusing on outlawed images that look like children but do not involve any children in their production (such as photorealistic CGI). Even when no one is harmed in making, would you still be for prohibition? And swinging back round to prostitution, what about those who are financially coerced into it? Fully informed consent requires that one be both of age and not coerced. Thus someone who is financially coerced is incapable of consenting, which means that the parallels and comparisons made here do stick. Finally, even if we say that the prohibition of A cannot be compared to prohibition of B, if the original point being made was that prohibition of anything fails, then it fails regardless if it is A or B being prohibited.
typedweb 12y ago
lose, not loose.

by jussij 12y ago

baldfat 12y ago

The only thing that makes me hesitate this popular view: 1) There was a mafia in Italy and US long before Prohibition and after Prohibition 2) The violence and deaths of police officers in the US started to rise in 1900 and peaked at 1921 and declined for another 30 years. 3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. 4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History [1] Police deaths in London and NYC (I could use other markers just this was a lazy first choice http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2586786/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2586786/ [2] US Crime Rate (Which I would argue is flawed since the recording of crimes prior to 1960s was not tracked in the same way as records are now kept after JFK assassination http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0109/US-crime-rate-at-lowest-point-in-decades.-Why-America-is-safer-now http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0109/US-crime-rate...

joshuapants 12y ago
1) The mafia didn't only deal in alcohol. Prostitution and gambling, two other popular-but-illegal things were often controlled by organized crime. Prohibition did allow organized crime a boom where they could squirrel away money and use it for their enterprises later on, which explains their presence after the fact. 2) I'm not sure that police deaths are the best metric, since most of the violence during prohibition was carried out by gangs against other gangs. Given enough police corruption, violence wasn't even necessary. 3) How about cocaine followed by crack cocaine? 4) That doesn't mean we couldn't be less violent and more peaceful, and it doesn't mean that our law enforcement resources are efficiently allocated.
- jordigh 12y ago
  In the places where prostitution is legal (Netherlands, Germany, Austria, New Zealand...) there is still a huge criminal organisation built around human trafficking. Most prostitutes in such countries are poorer immigrant women from neighbouring countries in economic desperation, and very frequently acting against their will. Not every popular-but-illegal activity benefits from becoming legal. Selling alcohol is very different from selling people. Don't conflate the two activities.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Selling people is very different from allowing people to sell their services. Don't conflate the two activities. Seriously, the existence of problems related to legal prostitution in any particular location doesn't necessarily indict the entire practice. Also, in close analogy with drug prohibition, the state gives criminals space to thrive whenever it limits the free movement of people.
    - jordigh 12y ago
      They're not selling a service. They're selling their bodies. With a service, someone is performing something, not having something done to them. With a service, the more experienced practitioners are more valuable. With prostitution the opposite is true: the least experienced people are the most valuable, and there is no training required nor even desired. It's not a job when the most desirable "employees" are the least experienced ones.
      - grinnbearit 12y ago
        I don't think thats true, if that was the case, the price of prostitution would drop with experience/skill/quality. A quick google leads me to http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-average-prostitution-prices-worldwide http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-average-prostitution-price... From this, it looks like the price for prostitutes increases with quality.
        12y ago
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. I don't think the OP was making any correlation with crime in the 70s and 80s. You could however link that rise in crime to the spread of crack cocaine through NYC and LA if you really wanted to. 4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History Interestingly enough, while that is true, our incarceration rate is the highest ever and it started just as the drug war started. See also The New Jim Crow [1] [1] http://newjimcrow.com/ http://newjimcrow.com/
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  Lead poisoning due to leaded gasoline has been one of the more interesting (and common sense) explanations of that rise and fall of crime.
  - canvia 12y ago
    Relevant article: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
  - InclinedPlane 12y ago
    And it's almost certainly bullshit. There is no correlation with crime rates and lead exposure. The pattern observed is a massive spike in crime during the '80s and '90s due to gang activity from the crack boom, which then falls back down to '60s/'70s levels afterward. What you'd expect to see if lead exposure was the problem is a very gradual increase over time and then a gradual tail off as exposure reduced. Instead the homicide rate doubled for folks under 25 between 1983 and 1993, and then fell back to 1980s levels by the early 2000s. The background crime rate increase from the 1960s forward is more readily explained by societal changes, as well as the start of the "war on drugs".
- talmand 12y ago
  I suppose one could make the argument that one reason for the decline in crime rates is due to the fact that so many criminals are in prison. I don't necessarily agree with that, but the argument could be made. But I've been led to believe that a large amount, if not majority, of drug crime prisoners are due to low-level and non-violent criminal acts. Many of the drug laws are extremely heavy-handed that puts many people in prison for little reason. If that's the case, I doubt most of these people would have contributed to violence statistics.
duaneb 12y ago
> Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. The big theory for this is the widespread use of lead paint that was banned in the 70s.
- chongli 12y ago
  Actually, leaded gasoline is more likely to be the culprit.
  - newobj 12y ago
    I'm glad it wasn't only me that was thinking "wasn't it leaded gas?" ... I would like to find the citation for this though before I repeat it at cocktail parties.
    - chongli 12y ago
      Here you go[0]. [0] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
- ufmace 12y ago
  Last I've read, there are dozens of plausible-sounding theories, and none of them hold up all that well under serious analysis, at least as far as explaining the whole rise and fall. Maybe some or all of them are a little true, maybe it's something nobody's thought of or figured out yet.
edkennedy 12y ago
Could you elaborate on your point about the recording of crimes prior to the 1960? I'd be interested to see a source and a few google searches didn't bring up anything.
xasos 12y ago
> Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society This probably came because of the creation/rise of gangs, an organization dealing with things very similar to the Mafia.
- angersock 12y ago
  And what do many gangs use to fund their activities? The sale of drugs, perhaps?
  - xasos 12y ago
    That's one of many things they do. (Gang Leader for a Day gives great insight into the many role gangs play in their communities [1]) It's also a possible consequence of Nixon's War on Drugs [2] [1] http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp... [2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
discardorama 12y ago
> 3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. Hmm... let me see. What related thing started in the early 70s? Yep, the "War on Drugs", started by Nixon.
- rayiner 12y ago
  The rise in violent crime preceded the drug war. When Nixon uttered the phrase "drug war" in 1971, the violent crime rate had more than doubled since 1960. http://www.decisionsonevidence.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Estimated-Violent-Crime-Rate-US-Total-1960-2009.png http://www.decisionsonevidence.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/1.... To a great extent, the drug war was a response to the increase in violent crime rates. People blamed drug use for the collapse of the social structure of the inner cities.
  - discardorama 12y ago
    There was also the Vietnam War in progress, training 100s of 1000s of people in armed conflict. And there was the Civil Rights movement and the associated brutal crackdown. In other words, there was violence all around.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> 3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. The statistical increase in crime rates that peaked then is largely well explained by the baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s and the widely-observed correlation between crime and the proportion of population that is adolescent to young adult males. > 4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History Which is also largely well explained by the same demographic effects. Lead exposure through lead in gasoline also can explain some of both of these effects, as noted in other comments.
- baldfat 12y ago
  > The statistical increase in crime rates that peaked then is largely well explained by the baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s and the widely-observed correlation between crime and the proportion of population that is adolescent to young adult males. Crime rates are based per 1000 so it is percentage based and not population based. BUT the correlation young adult males makes senses. Right now we are starting the smallest proportion of young adult males that US has ever seen and it is going to keep getting smaller. I should dive into the percentage of young adult males and the crime rate and see what I come up with.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    the baby boom is relevant not because of the overall size of the population, but because it created a demographic bulge that reached the critical age range starting in the 1960s, and peaking somewhere in the late 1970s to 1980s.
  - baldfat 12y ago
    Don't downvote without a comment? Sorry I changed my mind when someone presented a good argument? I changed my mind in seeing that young adult males percentage of population could be the answer to the mid 1960s to early 1990s crime bump?
- curun1r 12y ago
  It's also noteworthy that most of the drug war is being fought in Mexico, where drug-related murders went up by a factor of 6 between 2006 and 2011. Also note that while we've had a small dip, we're still near an all-time high when it comes to incarceration rates in the US, despite lower crime rates. The impression I get is that the entire illicit drug trade vertically integrated to increase profits and localized the competition aspect between suppliers (killing each other) to a geographic location where law enforcement is less capable and easier to buy off.
SeanLuke 12y ago
> 3) Doesn't explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society. I thought that at this point it was pretty much accepted that by far the strongest factor here was leaded gasoline.
- apozem 12y ago
  That's a fascinating theory, but leaded gasoline has never been confirmed as the reason.

rayiner 12y ago

It's interesting to look at murder rate over time: https://madeinamericathebook.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/homicides-1900-20062.jpg https://madeinamericathebook.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/hom.... It was already extremely high at the turn of the century and only went up slightly during prohibition. And after the trough in 1960, it started rapidly rising before the drug war got going up in the 1970's.

cynoclast 12y ago
Also banning leaded gasoline.

nothrabannosir 12y ago

Why the sad face? Isn't this a great part of history repeating?

Raphmedia 12y ago
Bad parts of history repeating means that people are not paying attention to what happened before. The whole situation could have been avoided if people had taken the time to look back.
- alfapla 12y ago
  I hope the people will look back to the way the tobacco industry has killed thousands by ruthlessly effective marketing, intentionally making their product more addictive, spreading misinformation and lobbying against laws that were in the interest of public health. Can you think of any particular reason why "Big Marijuana" will behave better?

Lawtonfogle 12y ago

Do you support prohibition for prostitution? What about for illegal pornography? I find that even those against prohibition support it for things they personally see as really really wrong. Even many of those who don't use drugs don't see pot as a major problem, only as something they don't want. And as such they don't support prohibition of it. But pick something that they do outright hate, and they will support prohibition regardless of how ineffective it may be.

bognition 12y ago
Woah, dude chill out. First of all prohibition of prostitution has been shown to create the same problems as prohibition of alcohol and drugs. Its wrongly assigns the crime to the people at the bottom of the hierarchy. Its perfectly reasonable to conceive of a system of prostitution where everything is consensual and everyone is protected, which is what we have for alcohol and what people are fighting for with drugs. Let people do what they want as long as they aren't harming other people. Child porn cannot exist under these terms. Science has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that children cannot give informed consent and therefore cannot participate in the creation of pornography consensually. So to compare prohibition of alcohol, drugs, or prostitution to prohibition of child pornography doesn't hold up.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  >Let people do what they want as long as they aren't harming other people. Take alcohol. Ideally it doesn't directly cause harm to another individual. Now remind me again how many people are killed by drunk drivers each year? Now, is this alcohols fault? Or is it the drunk driver's fault? Or is it both? Or some fourth option? Well we've now reached a point where 'harming other people' is quite a subjective standard when determining what is causing that harm and thus what can be prohibited. >Science has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that children cannot give informed consent Links? Of the limited amount of science concerning informed consent that I've read (dealing with mentally disabled individuals ability to give informed consent), most teens would easily meet the standards set for a mentally disabled adult. But we can avoid that whole moral quagmire by instead focusing on outlawed images that look like children but do not involve any children in their production (such as photorealistic CGI). Even when no one is harmed in making, would you still be for prohibition? And swinging back round to prostitution, what about those who are financially coerced into it? Fully informed consent requires that one be both of age and not coerced. Thus someone who is financially coerced is incapable of consenting, which means that the parallels and comparisons made here do stick. Finally, even if we say that the prohibition of A cannot be compared to prohibition of B, if the original point being made was that prohibition of anything fails, then it fails regardless if it is A or B being prohibited.

typedweb 12y ago

lose, not loose.