2010:warmest year ever since records began

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KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

WizWom wrote: Money. There is big money to be made in solving a problem. And its safer if the problem doesn't exist.
Actually, it is safest if the problem can't be proven not to exist.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

Diogenes wrote: The threshold of libertarian tolerance, (and common sense) is "if it harm none." The problem is, it doesn't. Addicts rob and steal, and rely on other people to feed and clothe them because all they want to do is get high.
I used to frequent a mom and pop grocery back when I lived in Portland. One evening, while standing in the checkout line, the news reported that a large drug bust had just gone down. The mom then growned and said something like "now we'll get robbed for sure". I was puzzled and asked her meaning. She told me that druggies never robbed stores when drugs were plentiful, but right after a major bust, every time after a major bust, the price would shoot up and the addicts would be out robbing to pay the grossly inflated price.

It isn't the addiction that is the problem here. It is the suppression.

The other thing they do to get money, by the way, is to PUSH the expensive drugs onto those who are still able to pay for them. So suppression crates the very problem it is SUPPOSED to prevent. Convenient circularity for the power hungry, no?

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

Diogenes wrote: I am not trying to address "good intentions", I am pointing out that when someone is intending to do x, you cannot claim they are intending to do y, even if y is the result.
Except that if they KNOW y will be the result, they are still responsible for making y. If your wive's seat gets hot each time you close the windows, you are responsible for her hot seat. Do something about it like putting in a solar powered window fan or else accept the complaint like a man. Quit dodging the responsibility!

Your good intent is the road to your wive's private hell. Man up!

bcglorf
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People aren't inanimate

Post by bcglorf »

KitemanSA wrote:
Diogenes wrote: I am not trying to address "good intentions", I am pointing out that when someone is intending to do x, you cannot claim they are intending to do y, even if y is the result.
Except that if they KNOW y will be the result, they are still responsible for making y. If your wive's seat gets hot each time you close the windows, you are responsible for her hot seat. Do something about it like putting in a solar powered window fan or else accept the complaint like a man. Quit dodging the responsibility!

Your good intent is the road to your wive's private hell. Man up!
Unintended consequences with inanimate objects are one thing, with people it's another.

If I leave the windows up on my car, then it heats up because of what I did and I'm responsible for it. Intent or no, it is a direct result of MY actions.

If I leave the windows down on my car, and then someone steals my car and uses it to run a bus full of orphans over a cliff am I responsible for the dead orphans? Leaving the windows down was my choice, which did make it easier for someone else to steal my car. They, and not I, are still responsible for stealing the car. Even more removed is the killing of orphans with my stolen car.

I do believe your store clerks are akin to orphans, rather than the wife. There are a whole crowd of criminals making decisions to do harm along multiple steps removed from the original policy.

The spelling nazi in me must also ask what good it does accusing Diogenes of being an abusive polygamist? :)

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Let me tell you a story of a big drug bust in my little town. The FBI and the DEA took out a whole gang.

The FBI told our local paper that the murder rate would go up. Did it ever. And some little kid got killed in the crossfire.

That was the last major drug bust in our town in about 25 years.

What does that mean? The police are no longer in the "stopping the trade" mode. They are now in the "take the worst offenders off the street and accommodate the rest" mode. If you look at the murder rate in America since 1986 I think you will see evidence that the whole country is in the "take the worst offenders off the street and accommodate the rest" mode.

Only rubes take the drug war seriously. And politicians angling for the rube vote.

====================

Bottom line: they know.
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 »

Let me add that our Congress Critter brought a DEA office to our fair town and for about a year he touted it as a great accomplishment. Since that time he has been silent on the matter and has gone on to bring small business pork to our town. No more DEA pork.

The whole mess has devolved into all kinds of corruption. We are in the waning days. And like the USSR until the very end people still pay lip service to the mess. But believers? Only those religiously inclined to believe without looking at the actual evidence.

I saw a poll in the last year or three to this effect:

1. Is the drug war working? About 75% NO.
2. Should it continue? About 65% YES.

There is a disconnect there. It will eventually get resolved by ending prohibition.
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 am not trying to address "good intentions", I am pointing out that when someone is intending to do x, you cannot claim they are intending to do y, even if y is the result.

Well then. The socialists really are trying to make the lot of the poor better then. You have made me a believer.

Now if you have a policy that is supposed to accomplish X and instead accomplishes "not X plus Y". And this policy has been steadily improved for 100 years with the very same results "not X plus Y" at what point do you say that for those behind the policy the real intent is "not X plus Y"?

Of course I suppose stupidity and willful blindness are other options. Or perhaps we could invoke faith. After all faith is often immune to real world results.

BTW the Conservatives of 1914 opposed the Harrison Narcotics Act. The Progressives championed it. Which just goes to show you that current conservatism is not very conservative.

So I guess we can say that we have two main types of Conservatives in America today: The Progressive Conservatives and the Liberty Conservatives. The Progressives are in the ascendance for now. But the Liberty lovers are gaining ground. Fast.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

KitemanSA wrote:
Diogenes wrote: The threshold of libertarian tolerance, (and common sense) is "if it harm none." The problem is, it doesn't. Addicts rob and steal, and rely on other people to feed and clothe them because all they want to do is get high.
I used to frequent a mom and pop grocery back when I lived in Portland. One evening, while standing in the checkout line, the news reported that a large drug bust had just gone down. The mom then growned and said something like "now we'll get robbed for sure". I was puzzled and asked her meaning. She told me that druggies never robbed stores when drugs were plentiful, but right after a major bust, every time after a major bust, the price would shoot up and the addicts would be out robbing to pay the grossly inflated price.

It isn't the addiction that is the problem here. It is the suppression.

The other thing they do to get money, by the way, is to PUSH the expensive drugs onto those who are still able to pay for them. So suppression crates the very problem it is SUPPOSED to prevent. Convenient circularity for the power hungry, no?

Another common fallacy that I deal with is the belief the perception that whatever is currently being done is the optimal solution. (we are having this exact discussion concerning disbanding the Iraqi army) I believe this is the result of the difficulty of being objective.
There may be better methods of creating the environment we want than our standard operating procedure legal system.

Apart from that, when you consider that drugs follow a similar rule to lawyers (the more of them you have, the more of them you need! ) perhaps you are mistaken in claiming the problem is suppression.

Drugs, CREATE addiction. By not suppressing them, are you not increasing the probability that more people will become addicted? I would say the answer to this question can be found by examining the British Opium trade in China. At some point there was relatively few opium addicts. Eventually, there were so many that they had to start killing them to save their nation.

The notion that tolerance of drugs would be beneficial seems contradictory to the historical facts.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

KitemanSA wrote:
Diogenes wrote: I am not trying to address "good intentions", I am pointing out that when someone is intending to do x, you cannot claim they are intending to do y, even if y is the result.
Except that if they KNOW y will be the result, they are still responsible for making y. If your wive's seat gets hot each time you close the windows, you are responsible for her hot seat. Do something about it like putting in a solar powered window fan or else accept the complaint like a man. Quit dodging the responsibility!

Your good intent is the road to your wive's private hell. Man up!

Regardless of the outcome, it is dishonest to claim my intention was to burn my wife's butt.

Another example. You go to the fridge, you eat the last piece of cake. Your wife accuses you of depriving her of it. You point out that your intention was to satisfy yourself, not to make her do without, even though that is one of the consequences of you eating it first.

It is a question of clarity. You cannot legitimately claim someone is doing something for one purpose, when they are actually doing it for another.

Another example is "No Blood for Oil!"

The claim is that we are fighting a war to enrich oil companies and deprive the poor from their natural resource.


It is the intentional misscharacterization of purpose.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:Let me add that our Congress Critter brought a DEA office to our fair town and for about a year he touted it as a great accomplishment. Since that time he has been silent on the matter and has gone on to bring small business pork to our town. No more DEA pork.

The whole mess has devolved into all kinds of corruption. We are in the waning days. And like the USSR until the very end people still pay lip service to the mess. But believers? Only those religiously inclined to believe without looking at the actual evidence.

I saw a poll in the last year or three to this effect:

1. Is the drug war working? About 75% NO.
2. Should it continue? About 65% YES.

There is a disconnect there. It will eventually get resolved by ending prohibition.

The only response i'll make to this is "Argumentum ad populum."

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

The purpose of drug "education" in the United States is to make sure kids can't get through a day without thinking about drugs at least 20 times.
Drugs do not create addiction. They create habituation. And we know how to treat habituation. We have no effective treatment for addiction.

Why? Well according to the NIDA addiction is in part genetic. So the question is: can the police treat a genetic disease? And the other part of the equation is trauma. So is turning some neighborhoods into war zones an effective way to reduce trauma?

The whole system as designed perpetuates and intensifies the very misery it claims to be trying to prevent. Clever these politicians. Even cleverer are the people who vote for them.

Now if I really wanted to do something about the problem I'd get the government out of the drug war.

In general politicians and governments can only make bad situations worse.

Not to worry. In another year or three the Mexican Cartels will bring their methods North in a big way if the Mexican Government has any significant success against the cartels there. And we are paying them to do that very thing.

The violence has moved north inexorably from Colombia, to Central America, to Mexico. Guess who is next? I was warning of this 25 years ago (FIDO net).

You would almost think the intent of our government was to raise the level of violence in the US. And what would the government response be under the current regime? "Never let a crisis go to waste."

Comforting thought that.

I can think of no better way to bring a police state to America. To the cheers of our most "conservative" brethren.

The Progressives invented this program. How do you think it will turn out?
Last edited by MSimon on Wed Jul 21, 2010 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:I am not trying to address "good intentions", I am pointing out that when someone is intending to do x, you cannot claim they are intending to do y, even if y is the result.

Well then. The socialists really are trying to make the lot of the poor better then. You have made me a believer.

I'm certain that some of them believe that. Others are just using that as a rationale.


MSimon wrote: Now if you have a policy that is supposed to accomplish X and instead accomplishes "not X plus Y". And this policy has been steadily improved for 100 years with the very same results "not X plus Y" at what point do you say that for those behind the policy the real intent is "not X plus Y"?

I assume you are talking about crime prevention. The fact that we still have rapes and murders after thousands of years of trying to minimize it.
No, I know you are talking about drug interdiction, but you are failing to concede that your argument applies exactly to crime in general.

The argument that because we cannot prevent all crime(drugs), we must stop trying to prevent crime(drugs) , is just plain silly.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

MSimon wrote:
The purpose of drug "education" in the United States is to make sure kids can't get through a day without thinking about drugs at least 20 times.
Drugs do not create addiction. They create habituation. And we know how to treat habituation. We have no effective treatment for addiction.

Yes we do, it's don't let it start in the first place! EVERYONE is addicted to Heroin. They just don't know it because they haven't had a chance to try it.



MSimon wrote: Why? Well according to the NIDA addiction is in part genetic. So the question is: can the police treat a genetic disease? And the other part of the equation is trauma. So is turning some neighborhoods into war zones an effective way to reduce trauma?

Of COURSE it's Genetic! The plants have EVOLVED to manufacture toxins which work on their predators. The predators (consumers) evolved to develop immunity to the toxins. We have now reached the absurd stage where the predators have evolved to ENJOY the toxins which are meant to kill or discourage them from consuming the plants!

MSimon wrote: The whole system as designed perpetuates and intensifies the very misery it claims to be trying to prevent. Clever these politicians. Even cleverer are the people who vote for them.

That is the claim by people who favor drug legalization, and it is at odds with what is widely regarded as common sense. The Chinese example of drugs illustrate the disaster that occurs when the idea is actually tested with reality.

MSimon wrote: Now if I really wanted to do something about the problem I'd get the government out of the drug war.

In general politicians and governments can only make bad situations worse.
How about getting them out of the crime war? After all, if they can't do anything right, they must be doing that wrong as well.

In all fairness, law enforcement generally maintains a higher level of competence than the rest of the government (as does the military), but as with any human endeavor, it is prone to screw ups.

MSimon wrote: Not to worry. In another year or three the Mexican Cartels will bring their methods North in a big way if the Mexican Government has any significant success against the cartels there. And we are paying them to do that very thing.

The violence has moved north inexorably from Colombia, to Central America, to Mexico. Guess who is next? I was warning of this 25 years ago (FIDO net).
I hope they do. A lesson I learned a long time ago is that sometimes people won't fix a problem until it becomes apparent to a majority. The drug cartels are going to commit suicide if they become a nuisance up here.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Drug crime is rather unusual.

In what we normally think of as crime there is a perpetrator and a victim. The perp tries to make the victim do something against his will.

With drug crime the victim is the perpetrator and there is no conflict of wills. Just a business transaction. And you know the first rule re: government when it comes to business.

When governments controls what is bought and sold the first thing bought and sold is government.
"The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It's possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government."- William Colby, former CIA Director, 1995
The Opium Trade

"If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us."
-- Directors of Jardine-Matheson

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html
There are always "useful idiots" to use Stalin's clever turn of phrase. Which is to say: what ever you think you are doing, objectively you are supporting the cartels. We didn't get rid of the American alcohol cartels by intensifying alcohol prohibition. But at least in some respects people were smarter back then.

It falls into the same category as the useful idiots who promote socialism to help the poor. And the error in thinking is the same: if we put enough guns and power in the hands of the state we can fix this.

What tickles me is that the progressives say - we can fix the economic order with enough government power. While our erstwhile "conservatives" say - we can fix the social order with state power. What can the state do reasonably well? Kill people and break things.

Did you know that the reporting of all transactions of over $10,000 was a drug war measure? Money laundering don't you know. Well our current Congress has lowered the threshold to $600. Swell. Just swell.

And let me paraphrase Franklin:

Those who give up essential liberty for safety will get neither liberty nor safety.

I believe the man was on to something.

=====

What ever power you give the State will eventually be used against you and your interests. And you know this in every context except for the drug war exception. But to think there is a drug war exception is magical thinking.

Suppose for some odd reason the state takes an interest in you and the interest is not benign. What is the easiest way to violate your liberties with little or no recourse? Accuse you of a drug crime. Then the search and seizure rules go out the door. Especially if they bring some drugs with them to make sure you are guilty. There is no reliable way to protect yourself from a status crime. Because possession is 100% of the law in those cases. Of course as a suspected dope fiend the government will take away your children. To protect them from the dope. And even if you eventually get it all resolved in your favor you will have months and possibly years of family trauma to deal with. Why it is enough to drive people to drugs.

Well. It can't happen here. Except for the fact that we have a very vocal minority (probably a majority for now) cheering them on. And it has happened more than once (see Rampart scandal Los Angeles for one example). But for now it will be confined to "those people" until you are used to it. And then it will expand. In just the way $10,000 became $600.

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Geo. Washington

Thanks for putting such powerful tools in the hands of our Masters.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

WizWom
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Post by WizWom »

Diogenes wrote:Drugs, CREATE addiction.
simply: no

Addiction is a state of mind; the predilection for it is in the mind by a likely inherited factor. Drugs don't "hook" everybody who takes them; they hook those who need something to fill a hole. Even if drugs had not been invented, these people would be addicted to something.

And really, we've pointed out the experimental programs in other countries to give away drugs to whoever wants, and they have REDUCED the number of addicts.

You seem incapable of or perhaps unwilling to read the literature.[/b]
Wandering Kernel of Happiness

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