Too Much Money In It

[Diogenes]

People "Self medicate" because from their perspective life sucks.

Evidently you think that being abused as a child with the resultant PTSD makes a person worthy of further abuse by the government if they self medicate for it. Unless they use one of the most dangerous drugs known to mankind - alcohol.

If you really are interested in doing something about the problem the answer is: do something about child abuse - the #1 cause of PTSD in America.

I am delighted that you mentioned this. The solutions which I have been suggesting all along tackles this problem and a whole host of others besides. The Solution is something you always denigrate as "Moral Socialism", which it is not.

Society should have a moral consensus, and that consensus should be based on nature and reality. The Burkean philosophy is what we need, and when we practiced it, problems such as child abuse were not nearly so severe. Likewise, other problems such as divorce, STDs, Abortion, Murder, Rape, Robbery, etc. were all minimal compared to what they are today.

What changed? Society changed. Prosperity created indulgences among the rich and their spoiled children, and these people grew in power and influence and by example and intent have led the nation down a road of fallacy. They tampered with the laws, they tampered with public perception (by setting bad examples and by advocating socially disruptive literature and media) and they slowly transformed society from something that worked decently to something cracking at every weakness.

I can only brush the surface in my attempt at explaining how all this stuff is tied together, but suffice it to say, it is, and how you deal with one aspect of it affects other aspects of it as well. This is why I keep telling you there is a FALSE BOUNDARY between fiscal and social. There IS no boundary.

The solution to our problems is an idea you disdain. A common accepted moral consensus in Society and Law.

The Best way to reduce Child abuse? Stop enabling people to have unwanted children. (Government financed sexual indulgence.) Require people to support their offspring by force of ostracization and law. (Deadbeat mothers and fathers.) Stop interfering with the establishment of a common moral consensus on what is acceptable behavior between parents and children, and ostracize and injunct those who cross the line. (Punish abusers.)

In other words, allow society to establish a standard of behavior that is reasonable and nature based, and then have the expectation that people will not abuse it. (This task used to be accomplished by religious institutions.)



Sure, this won't eliminate child abuse, but it will greatly reduce it. As with any system, it's D@mn hard to eliminate all loses, but optimization is a worthwhile goal.

You are an adult only in the sense that you are an adult psychopath with no compassion for the suffering of others.

Not true. I just realize that when people's misery is brought to them by foolish behavior, the first thing needed for a cure is to stop the foolish behavior, even if it temporarily makes them even more unhappy.

Call it tough love. The cure for Tobacco addiction is not encouragement to smoke. It's telling people that they need to exercise willpower before that stuff kills them.

My job is to make the new generations aware of the latest findings. For that you serve as a very useful foil.

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There was a time when the current illegal drugs were available over the counter and the nation did fine.

At first. Then it became more widely used and abused, and people reacted in horror to what was happening and outlawed it. How you can ignore this fact is baffling to me.

We're so much better people now. /s

No, we're far worse people, but the cause of it does not lie exclusively with drug usage. We are suffering from an illness of spirit. One which I believe is caused by the natural human reaction to prosperity. (Indulgence.) Too much social policy has been set by the children of bounty, who have grown up completely unaware of how their parents achieved so much wealth, and without the strength of character derived from confronting adversity.


The Georgian Era was followed by Victorian Era, which was followed by another Era of excess, as the forces at play cycle round each other creating alternating (Economic and Moral) boom and bust cycles. Too much positive feedback and not enough negative feedback is what ails us.

[MSimon]

Society should have a moral consensus, and that consensus should be based on nature and reality.

Good luck getting that in America.

And Moral Socialism will not work in the matter unless you assign every child a 24/7 uncorruptable and properly trained government minder. How is that for a jobs program? I think the Third Amendment would prevent that on a Federal level.

What will work is education. Why not start a blog? If it is any good I'll give you some links. An interesting link from my blog is good for 200 to 300 hits. Not much - but it is a start. Bigger movements have started from smaller beginnings.

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As to reality - look how difficult it has been to convince you that drug taking is a symptom not a cause - what has it been now two, three years? And you are rather brighter than average. And I'm not convinced that you are fully convinced.

How will you convince your social conservative brethren that "spare the rod" in its conventionally understood meaning (harsh discipline) is not the way to go?

And here we are and you have already wasted that two to three years fighting with me instead of fixing the problem.

You know what would convince me of your change of heart? When you come out for legalization.

[hanelyp]

The problem with so many "compassionate" programs and ideals is that by insulating people from the consequences of bad behavior, they encourage more bad behavior.

Welfare supporting sloth, reckless child bearing, and inability to support oneself through self induced chemical impairment.

Condemnation of the slightest harsh judgment for self destructive behavior breaking down the normal societal pressures against such behavior.

As for drugs, I tend to favor treating drug abuse as a mental illness, but pushing drugs as criminal abuse of the mentally ill.

[MSimon]

As for drugs, I tend to favor treating drug abuse as a mental illness, but pushing drugs as criminal abuse of the mentally ill.

I think of it as supplying medicine otherwise unavailable to those who need it. And doing it under very harsh circumstances. For profit to be sure. But I would not condemn them. I would give them the highest praise.

[MSimon]

Welfare supporting sloth, reckless child bearing, and inability to support oneself

Actually prohibition tends to create the very conditions you rail against.

Demographics

Most of the things you are against are not caused by drugs but by prohibition. Even the people on my side (more or less) are not well educated on the subject.