Ronald Reagan, the Greatest President Of My Lifetime

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Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

Tom Ligon wrote:Afghanistan has never, in its whole history, been a unified and westernized nation.

Yes, small pockets of it have been relatively civilized in the past. It has had periods in which large portions of it were more or less under a unified, typically royal, leadership. But the influence typically spread only in thin threads, following trade routes that provided most of the country's wealth. Anything off those routes was largely autonomous, with very little interaction with the outside world.

Modern Afghanistan, like most other troublesome areas of the world, is largely a product of British mapmakers drawing lines and applying names to regions the British held or influenced. If you go into the villages, you find populations who feel anyone from more than a day's walk distance is a foriegner, not to be trusted. This is unchanged for thousands of years.

Village elders typically want to keep it that way. There is, however, a growing feeling in much of the population that they do now have an opportunity to build a real nation.
Mountainous people tend to be highly independent. No doubt due to the fact it's difficult to assail people in mountainous territory. They hide behind the mountains much as a small child hides behind it's mothers skirts, there to taunt others with no fear of reprisal.

I expect the safety of mountainous territory diminishes every year due to the onslaught of newer military technology. At some point, it will be no protection at all. A worrisome trend.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:
The Drug gangs are becoming so bold as to challenge the government. As George Will observes, the First mandate of government is to create and maintain a monopoly on the use of Violence. At some point the Mexican government will have to wipe these people out, or the Mexican government will cease to exist.
The wipe them out strategy was tried in the 20s. It didn't work.

Here I think a little economics lesson is in order:

1. Disrupt supply networks
2. Prices go up
3. Attracting new entrants to the field.
4. Who fight it out to establish market dominance

America is not prepared to off 1 million (current) dealers and their 30 million customers. Here is what happens in America where probable cause is still required for an arrest:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... nkies.html

We ended the alcohol prohibition violence by making manufacture and sales legal. Putting Al Capone out of business didn't work. Some one took his place.

Conservatives are always on about the lessons of history. Except when the history lesson is inconvenient.

And note: I didn't even mention cop corruption. Or do you really think the smugglers are smarter than the border patrol?


Conservatives are well aware of the difficulties in eradicating poison. They are also aware of the history of the difficulties that occur if the poison is not eradicated. They make the judgment call that tolerating the poison is worse than not tolerating it.

Let me give you a very good example of what happens when you tolerate it, when it is in fact LEGAL.





Now who's out of touch with history?
Last edited by Diogenes on Sun Aug 29, 2010 3:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Your focus on the supply chain puts your views in the same realm as those that favored supply chain restriction. Do you see?
The supply chain is where the violence is. I'm not so concerned with people who make bad choices. And nothing we are doing is stopping them. So it is total waste. But that is not the worst of it. My brother got killed in the drug war cross fire. Thirty-five years ago. I still miss him.

As to the damage to the users? On a population basis it is rather small. Problem dug use affects about .1% of the population. Something on the order of 300,000. Maybe I've underestimated and it is double or triple that. So one in 300. Or less.

How can that be given what you see reported? Well users with no problems are keeping their heads down. Safer that way.

Prohibition is just a word. And it prohibits nothing (or very little). The real meaning of prohibition is: who controls distribution.

Lots of people infected with the word virus though. A very common malady.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

choff
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Post by choff »

The other possibility is that in the future people can be immunized against addition, or cured by a one time pill. Medical knowledge will evolve. It would actually be funny if the global tobacco crop died off at once and all the smokers in the world sudden had to go cold turkey.
CHoff

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

choff wrote:The other possibility is that in the future people can be immunized against addition, or cured by a one time pill. Medical knowledge will evolve. It would actually be funny if the global tobacco crop died off at once and all the smokers in the world sudden had to go cold turkey.
How exactly do you immunize people against genetics and trauma?

The only way to stop the actions of the receptors in the body is to either fill them (you get high) or destroy them (there will be consequences).

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... holes.html

You see. If the premise is wrong: "drugs cause addiction" then your proposed "solutions" will be stupid.

People who wouldn't dream of directing plasma physicists without considerable study are experts on addiction based on what they learned from watching the telly and reading the papers. Too funny.

We did have an honest fellow in this discussion recently. He said that he was not interested in evidence or science. He liked his position and was sticking to it. A stupid way to go through life. But it got my respect because it was honest.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

choff wrote:The other possibility is that in the future people can be immunized against addition, or cured by a one time pill. Medical knowledge will evolve. It would actually be funny if the global tobacco crop died off at once and all the smokers in the world sudden had to go cold turkey.
And I suppose that is because in your totally kind hearted way you like seeing schizophrenics suffer.

Schizophrenia and Tobacco

Why is it that the first refuge of the "benefactors" of humanity is the increase of suffering? Always and everywhere.

IMO the true benefactors of humanity are people who want to leave others alone. We have a name for it in America and it is still popular here. It is called: Liberty. Always a difficult proposition for those who intend to improve humanity whether humanity wants it or not.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
-- Thomas Jefferson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

I suppose it is why I choose engineering over law. I'm not smart enough to make people's choices for them. Fortunately I AM smart enough to be able to increase the range of people's choices. And that I can do without infringing on anyone's Liberty.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

choff
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Post by choff »

Sorry if I've ticked you off a little, both my parents were smokers, and you can't imagine how much I enjoyed second hand smoke. In my high school I was one of the 5 percentile that didn't try drugs, and if you think that's an easy choice for kids you don't know peer pressure. They just found an opium crop in my old home town. The local drug dealers are all hooked on Oxycotin. If I have a laugh at the expense of druggies, its because they've had their fun with me.
You mentioned Nixon was rough on Hippies, well, one of my first experiences with a hippy came when I was ten. He objected to the fact I had an extra short haircut, so he punched me in the face, not that 10 year olds have choice about haircuts.
CHoff

Betruger
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Post by Betruger »

It is easy. A couple of years before ten I could tell drugs were stupid. Like slow burning poison. I've never done any except for two accidental exposures. Peer pressure is absolutely meaningless. What about peer pressure to be some "emo" suicidal masochist? Why don't we ban those thought crimes too?

It also wasn't hard to figure out, no matter what people like Diogenes would like to brainwash others into thinking, that the brain was essentially the most complicated circuit board known to man, and that screwing with it (viz. lobotomies, etc) was equally unpredictable. Where were all the SciFi mind-reading and mind-writing gadgets, etc? It was clearly the case that how the brain works was mostly mystery.
Also that alcohol had a much, much larger and more accessible pool of guinea pigs to make predictions of, on my own before I was even past mid-teens, what the consequences of alcohol use were. Not just to "see for myself" but to compare with what all the grandma's tales and other folksy "well-meaning" warnings to us kids, and evaluate same.

Kids' smarts are very underestimated. And I do mean kids naturally. Not kids after they're put thru cookie-cutter "education" or heavy religious indoctrination, or acclimatized to being lazy fops.

IntLibber
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Post by IntLibber »

Tom Ligon wrote:Afghanistan has never, in its whole history, been a unified and westernized nation.
Actually, you are painfully, completely wrong.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... ?page=full

Afghanistan in the 1950's was a modern westernized state.

Current day afghanistan is what you get when you take ANY country, destroy it with a communist invasion, then leave it to a bunch of wahhabist morality police rebuild the country. If you did that to the US, you'd have Afghanistan in Montana and most of the rest of the country.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

choff wrote:Sorry if I've ticked you off a little, both my parents were smokers, and you can't imagine how much I enjoyed second hand smoke. In my high school I was one of the 5 percentile that didn't try drugs, and if you think that's an easy choice for kids you don't know peer pressure. They just found an opium crop in my old home town. The local drug dealers are all hooked on Oxycotin. If I have a laugh at the expense of druggies, its because they've had their fun with me.
You mentioned Nixon was rough on Hippies, well, one of my first experiences with a hippy came when I was ten. He objected to the fact I had an extra short haircut, so he punched me in the face, not that 10 year olds have choice about haircuts.
If you were a hippy back in the day the hatred of "longhairs" was visceral. Here is a song about it: Bob Seger's "Turn The Page"

"On a long and lonesome highway east of Omaha...."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe7yOccqdxI

BTW I'd say you ran into a member of the outlaw biker faction rather than a true hippy.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

choff
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Post by choff »

This guy had the long hair and the peace symbol and the flowers. I've had plenty of ex peers tell me they did smoked dope back in the day just to fit with the 'in crowd.' In the 60's early 70's it was peer pressure amplified by an us vs them mentality, with a fair assortment of dealers and bootleggers thrown in the mix.
CHoff

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

Betruger wrote:It is easy. A couple of years before ten I could tell drugs were stupid. Like slow burning poison. I've never done any except for two accidental exposures. Peer pressure is absolutely meaningless. What about peer pressure to be some "emo" suicidal masochist? Why don't we ban those thought crimes too?

It also wasn't hard to figure out, no matter what people like Diogenes would like to brainwash others into thinking, that the brain was essentially the most complicated circuit board known to man, and that screwing with it (viz. lobotomies, etc) was equally unpredictable. Where were all the SciFi mind-reading and mind-writing gadgets, etc? It was clearly the case that how the brain works was mostly mystery.
Also that alcohol had a much, much larger and more accessible pool of guinea pigs to make predictions of, on my own before I was even past mid-teens, what the consequences of alcohol use were. Not just to "see for myself" but to compare with what all the grandma's tales and other folksy "well-meaning" warnings to us kids, and evaluate same.

Kids' smarts are very underestimated. And I do mean kids naturally. Not kids after they're put thru cookie-cutter "education" or heavy religious indoctrination, or acclimatized to being lazy fops.

Can you give an example of something that "Diogenes would like to brainwash others into thinking"? Here I thought I was advocating that people DON'T screw up their brains, and you seem to think I advocate the exact opposite.

Again, an example of what you are talking about would be helpful.

Tom Ligon
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Post by Tom Ligon »

Interliber,

The article you cite is about Kabul, not Afghanistan. Yeah, the city and the surrounding environs were moderately "westernized" in the 50's. The countryside never was, except for certain discrete trade routes and cities.

The joke in Afghanistan is that Hamid Karzai is the Mayor of Kabul.

My info comes from my nephew, just back from a year in the hoolies near the Pakistan border.

Tom Ligon
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Post by Tom Ligon »

Diogenes,

There was a news piece on Yahoo today, stating the perplexing statistic that alcohol abusers live longer than tee-totallers! This is despite the obvious bad effects of alcohol abuse. Go figure!

"Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers, Study Finds," By John Cloud – Mon Aug 30, 6:50 am ET, TIME

Moderate uses of alcohol live the longest.

But even if this were not the case, just what is the case for protecting idiots from themselves? I'm all for shutting down drunk drivers, who endanger me, but if a drunk dissolves his liver, well, hell, we've pretty much twarted natural selection as is.

The conservatives whine about Obamacare and the nanny-state. The libertarian approach says it is none of the government's business what people do to their own bodies. An Islamic state would say it is very much the government's business, and the offender should be killed.

Which of these is actually the American Way?

I'm not in favor of substance abuse. Apart from a statin and the occasional over-the-counter allergy med or headache pill, I don't use drugs. I drink a glass or two of red wine a week. I am in favor of education, and making people aware of the consequences of their actions. I am in favor of free choice. I am also in favor of the survival of those who choose well.
Last edited by Tom Ligon on Mon Aug 30, 2010 5:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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