They turn their back on young people

[Diogenes]

Opposition to the War on Some Drugs (WoSD) is not only a libertarian hobbyhorse. Problem is that both wings of the Boom Generation are committed to prosecution of the WoSD, and everything is a moral crusade allowing no compromise to them.

There are three ways to deal with drugs:

1) Target Supply. The current approach. Lock up "the pushers."
2) Target Demand. The previous approach. Lock up "the addicts."
3) Legalize. End Prohibition, let the hopeless addicts destroy themselves.

#1 doesn't work. Given an illegal market generating massive profits, merchants will materialize from out of the woodwork to service that market and reap the filthy lucre. It took my great-grandparents 15 years to figure out they'd messed up; my parents' generation is still prosecuting the glorious crusade after 40 years with zilch success.

#2 can work, but its unpopular. Isolate demand by locking it up and no market can exist to be serviced. OTOH, every addict is some voting mother's "Precious Johnny," and voting mommy doesn't like "Harmless Precious Johnny" being locked up. Demonizing the "pushers" is soooooo much simpler. #2 is an approach more suited to an era without universal female suffrage - fathers simply find it easier to be hardasses, statistically.

#3 requires significant moral ruthlessness. The bleeding hearts are going to want to save everyone, and part and parcel of legalization is demonizing the addicts who are unable to exercise self-control (MADD!) and writing them off as social wastage.

Best solution is probably a compromise between #2 and #3 - keep the harder substances illegal while targeting the addicts with reduced fervor and penalties, and legalize the softer substances.

Very astute analysis. I would only add that the means of targeting both Supply and Demand (they are interlinked, so affecting one affects the other) used to destroy the tobacco industry might be very effective in destroying another drug industry.

Regulate it to death.

Of course, now we have reached the absurdity of our Government wanting revenue from a product they work to eradicate. In a way, I suppose the same could be said of our entire Private enterprise system. The Socialists want to eliminate them, but wants the money they produce.

[Diogenes]

You will really like this:

http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/03/1 ... o-chicago/

Also go back and read parts one and two of the above. It all fits in with the links I have been posting. i.e. How hot drug money was used to bring down the economy. Classic pump and dump.

In the name of morality the crooks were given a license to steal.

I think Ulsterman is just someone's schtick for selling "ink." Nothing more.

[Diogenes]

Heh,

People on the right saying how bad the left is, then defending themselves. Walk into a group of lefties and they'll respond the same.

Also like the part where I was told what to believe. Kinda validates the point I made. Not that it needed validation.

Thanks Dj for demonstrating what I disliked the most about the Republican / Conservative / TB / GoP / whatever-name-you-want party.

Oh, I would very much like to demonstrate to you a LOT more reasons to dislike us. I think life will do the job for me though. Come back and discuss it with me after you've lost the stupid.

[djolds1]

No, and I don't go in for conspiracy theory.

I have as of late (last several years) come to realize that the nuance between "conspiracy" and non-conspiracy is not always apparent. That everyone employed by the Media and News Networks were actively working to get Obama elected is quite apparent to me, but to allege it was a "conspiracy" is not accurate. The members of the media acted in concert for a common goal, but it was because they all shared the same disposition, and not because they specifically conspired to do so. They all simply felt the same way about it.

That's groupthink, not conspiracy. It can be shattered, but not easily, and not often.

Now regarding that article I linked you to, my first thought was not to regard it as a "conspiracy" but as an act by people who have a common interest, in damaging us, and who prefer Barack Obama in our Highest office. The Salient point of that article is that SOMEONE attacked our financial system to the tune of 500 billion dollars in a matter of hours.

Probably the Wall Street auto-selling programs going FUBAR. Even the Black Wednesday attack on the GBP came nowhere NEAR to that magnitude. When given a choice between conscious evil and idiocy, always choose idiocy.

Finance uber alles was God 1975-2008, with bipartisan enthusiasm. The only sector in which the parties would "pay off" was culture, and the Dems are far more reliable on that front than are the Establishment GOPhers. That's one reason the conservative base is so enraged and engaged finally - 33 years of lies and attempts to backstab, versus at least second-rate delivery of the goods by the Dems to their Left voters.

I have long suspected that the "Great Society" was Lyndon Johnson's attempt to co-opt Black voters that his party had hated for most of their history, but suddenly found a need for when they figured a way to get them to vote for the Party that had been oppressing them so long. Tell them you care, and make them addicted to the drug of free money.

Too paranoid. Johnson had a once-every-other generation opening with the JFK martyrdom to "complete the New Deal," and he tried. He tried hard. The bad consequences were predicted - such as the 1965 Moynihan Report - but brushed aside; everyone is the Knightly Hero of their Personal Psychodrama.

There are many ways the Chaos Dice can roll this year. The high-order probability IMO is Obama wins in Novmenber - tight, but a win. After which the TPM and RR fall on the "GOP Establishment" in a Night of the Long Knives, for "forcing another Establishment LOSER on us!" It doesn't particularly matter if that's true - that will be the refrain. What emerges from that roll of the Chaos Dice may still bear the title GOP, but it will be a new organization. I anticipate the full purge of the Big Business wing.

This is pretty much my own current assessment. At this point, I am expecting Obama to win. None of the Republican contenders have any appeal beyond their own coalitions. The Media people will give Obama another billion dollars worth of free advertising and likewise viciously attack his opponent, whomever that turns out to be. The Democrat party will insure ballot stuffing and illegal voters to the extent they can get away with it, and let's face it, with the Justice Dept. in Eric Holder's hands, there will be no worries of any investigations of Democrat wrongdoing.

I could be dead wrong. There are multiple other plausible scenarios. And the margin of fraud in places like Chicago and King County only allows for a few 10s of K votes by the dead - margins of victory beyond that, and the winner wins, period. The basis of my analysis is that I simply don't see the Left as able to adapt.

As for purging the Big Business wing, I am thinking that would be a good thing. Their primary concern has become not what is best for the United States, but what is best for their Companies, and themselves personally, and they have been using their money and influence to distort public law for their own ends. (General Electric, for example) This is merely another side-effect of a decline in Moral objectivity.

Every vital society decays into curatorial stasis. I'd just like to ward that off in our case for a further century or so. It may be possible. It may not.

I think all of us would like some REAL DATA to look at so we can finally get an answer as to whether the polywell concept is a valid design for a fusion reactor, and further whether it could actually be possible to use it as a Aneutronic device. I think I saw in the news section that a Report might be coming out shortly. If so, I think we will all look forward to reading it.

Polywell. The Lerner cell. The Woodward Effect. Other Plausible Left-Field approaches worthy of review. I really don't care. But I would like to see them explored and either substantiated or disposed of. Current "big science" strikes me as far more over-confident and assured it is on the right track than it should be. I look at it in multiple areas, and I see the same encroaching stasis that made Aristotelianism "obviously and impeachably true" for 1500 years.

There are various leading contenders. Spengler. Toynbee. The Kondratiev Long Wave. The Spenglerian cycle looks to be winding down this century, and the Imperial Core for the Empire of the West is more or less set in stone now.

You obviously have more familiarity with Social cycles theory than do I. Is this an area of favorite study for you?

An area of interest. The classical Kyklos as well. Brached off an interest in systems theory and materialist teleology - it simply struck me that Stephen Jay Gould's Random Walk hypothesis was prima facie wrong on the most basic examination of the evidence. Too much repetitive structure shows up too often, and there quite obviously is a vector of development from simplicity to complexity and life. Simon Conway Morris is far more on the correct track IMO.

At some point, custom creatures (such as Hippogriff or Unicorns) will be created. I recall reading a sci-fi story in which Dogs were force-evolved into being as dextrous and smart as humans.

A favorite of fendom. I prefer the Vargr.

The social balances will sort themselves out organically, once the ideologues are neutered. The ideologues will be forced to STFD and STFU by the current 20 years - such idiocies cannot be indulged while the world is burning.

This is exactly what I meant when I referred to the weak being the first to suffer when the long knives come out. People will talk about Freedom and Equality, and how everyone is entitled to this or that consideration, but Under conditions of dire circumstances, the people most able to inflict pain or death on others will be running the show, and unless they can be matched by equal violence, they will have contempt for opinions other than their own.

I have a hard time squaring the privileged motor mouths of yesterday and today with "the weak," but to each their own.

[djolds1]

Opposition to the War on Some Drugs (WoSD) is not only a libertarian hobbyhorse. Problem is that both wings of the Boom Generation are committed to prosecution of the WoSD, and everything is a moral crusade allowing no compromise to them.

There are three ways to deal with drugs:

1) Target Supply. The current approach. Lock up "the pushers."
2) Target Demand. The previous approach. Lock up "the addicts."
3) Legalize. End Prohibition, let the hopeless addicts destroy themselves.

#1 doesn't work. Given an illegal market generating massive profits, merchants will materialize from out of the woodwork to service that market and reap the filthy lucre. It took my great-grandparents 15 years to figure out they'd messed up; my parents' generation is still prosecuting the glorious crusade after 40 years with zilch success.

#2 can work, but its unpopular. Isolate demand by locking it up and no market can exist to be serviced. OTOH, every addict is some voting mother's "Precious Johnny," and voting mommy doesn't like "Harmless Precious Johnny" being locked up. Demonizing the "pushers" is soooooo much simpler. #2 is an approach more suited to an era without universal female suffrage - fathers simply find it easier to be hardasses, statistically.

#3 requires significant moral ruthlessness. The bleeding hearts are going to want to save everyone, and part and parcel of legalization is demonizing the addicts who are unable to exercise self-control (MADD!) and writing them off as social wastage.

Best solution is probably a compromise between #2 and #3 - keep the harder substances illegal while targeting the addicts with reduced fervor and penalties, and legalize the softer substances.

Very astute analysis. I would only add that the means of targeting both Supply and Demand (they are interlinked, so affecting one affects the other) used to destroy the tobacco industry might be very effective in destroying another drug industry.

Regulate it to death.

You need something to regulate first. Jump to this too quickly, and you merely perpetuate #1. Move pot and maybe coke over to the state stores, enforce purity standards, and reap the taxes.

Up side to general legalization - in the year after Prohibition was repealed the murder rate dropped to <10% of what it had been the year before. A 1000% multiplier, thanks to Prohibition, and also probably thanks to the WoSD. Not to mention Civil Rights degradations, and puffing up the budgets of the LEOs the same way the Left eternally puffs up the education budgets with zero returns. We do need the sheepdogs, we do not need the SWAT cowboy attitudes the WoSD encourages.

The Cartels are not going to go away - we've spent 40 years creating them. But they will be forced to focus on the more traditional OC trades, plus the new cyber-frauds. They seem to have an affection for kidnapping, but that can be broken.

Heh,

People on the right saying how bad the left is, then defending themselves. Walk into a group of lefties and they'll respond the same.

Also like the part where I was told what to believe. Kinda validates the point I made. Not that it needed validation.

Thanks Dj for demonstrating what I disliked the most about the Republican / Conservative / TB / GoP / whatever-name-you-want party.

Oh, I would very much like to demonstrate to you a LOT more reasons to dislike us. I think life will do the job for me though. Come back and discuss it with me after you've lost the stupid.

Unnecessarily harsh. I prefer a more Socratic approach.

[williatw]

Every peer I know of, myself included is for the legalization and regulation of pot. From the method it's grown to how it's cut, mixed and made into smokable form. Standardize it all with safety regulations for content quality and tax it the same way you do cigarettes.

It's available right now, and no amount of money nor laws will stop it nor even slow it down. The best way to protect the citizen is to ensure the quality and safety of the product being sold. Right now the market is underground, not regulated and not safe. You run the risk of being associated with very bad people, this risk isn't enough to deter consumers from seeking a the supply, but it does factor into the overall cost of the product. Once you regulate it then you have a standard and safe way to purchase it, it becomes countable. Illegal black market pot won't be able to compete with legal regulated pot which directly effects the cash supply of not only domestic criminals but also the foreign cartels that supply them.

Honestly it's just cheaper to regulate and standardize then it is to try to deter and hunt down the boogeymen.

Opposition to the War on Some Drugs (WoSD) is not only a libertarian hobbyhorse. Problem is that both wings of the Boom Generation are committed to prosecution of the WoSD, and everything is a moral crusade allowing no compromise to them.

There are three ways to deal with drugs:

1) Target Supply. The current approach. Lock up "the pushers."
2) Target Demand. The previous approach. Lock up "the addicts."
3) Legalize. End Prohibition, let the hopeless addicts destroy themselves.

#1 doesn't work. Given an illegal market generating massive profits, merchants will materialize from out of the woodwork to service that market and reap the filthy lucre. It took my great-grandparents 15 years to figure out they'd messed up; my parents' generation is still prosecuting the glorious crusade after 40 years with zilch success.

#2 can work, but its unpopular. Isolate demand by locking it up and no market can exist to be serviced. OTOH, every addict is some voting mother's "Precious Johnny," and voting mommy doesn't like "Harmless Precious Johnny" being locked up. Demonizing the "pushers" is soooooo much simpler. #2 is an approach more suited to an era without universal female suffrage - fathers simply find it easier to be hardasses, statistically.

#3 requires significant moral ruthlessness. The bleeding hearts are going to want to save everyone, and part and parcel of legalization is demonizing the addicts who are unable to exercise self-control (MADD!) and writing them off as social wastage.

Best solution is probably a compromise between #2 and #3 - keep the harder substances illegal while targeting the addicts with reduced fervor and penalties, and legalize the softer substances.

I agree with most of this but I still think option 3 would work provided it was regulated. Strongly(including concentration of and availability of) in the case of say cocaine/heroine/meth, weakly in the case of pot. There is no way drugs would be legalized without extensive regs, the people opposed to it would force the regs on it. Get the Feds out of it kick it back to the states, let them laboratory various mixes of legal/illegal/legal-regulated to see what works best. Treating addiction as a medical condition (like Portugal) instead of this holy alcohol prohibition like "war on drug" crusade is clearly not working or going to work.

[djolds1]

I agree with most of this but I still think option 3 would work provided it was regulated. Strongly(including concentration of and availability of) in the case of say cocaine/heroine/meth, weakly in the case of pot. There is no way drugs would be legalized without extensive regs, the people opposed to it would force the regs on it. Get the Feds out of it kick it back to the states, let them laboratory various mixes of legal/illegal/legal-regulated to see what works best. Treating addiction as a medical condition (like Portugal) instead of this holy alcohol prohibition like "war on drug" crusade is clearly not working or going to work.

Oh, sure, #3 CAN work as a stand-alone policy. But the impact of legal-access "hard" drugs is going to create LOTS of human wastage, which will drive the bleeding hearts crazy. More rational IMO to cut a middle course. And I don't think the "crusader" - or more properly, "redeemer" - mindset will ever really leave Americans; a legacy of "the City on a Hill" heritage.

[williatw]

I agree with most of this but I still think option 3 would work provided it was regulated. Strongly(including concentration of and availability of) in the case of say cocaine/heroine/meth, weakly in the case of pot. There is no way drugs would be legalized without extensive regs, the people opposed to it would force the regs on it. Get the Feds out of it kick it back to the states, let them laboratory various mixes of legal/illegal/legal-regulated to see what works best. Treating addiction as a medical condition (like Portugal) instead of this holy alcohol prohibition like "war on drug" crusade is clearly not working or going to work.

Oh, sure, #3 CAN work as a stand-alone policy. But the impact of legal-access "hard" drugs is going to create LOTS of human wastage, which will drive the bleeding hearts crazy. More rational IMO to cut a middle course. And I don't think the "crusader" - or more properly, "redeemer" - mindset will ever really leave Americans; a legacy of "the City on a Hill" heritage.

Let the bleeding hearts be driven crazy(pretty short drive IMHO), the simple reality is we are rapidly running out of money. Our current system is going bankrupt, we have a prez who thinks trillion dollar deficits are sustainable. Legalizing would save a god awfull amount of money, the amount of money sucked from our economy by illegal insanely overpriced drug use is staggering. To say nothing of the cost of trying/imprisoning users. Bet pot will be legal(not just medical) in Calif and other places in 10yrs. Regulated hard drugs to follow.

[Diogenes]

That's groupthink, not conspiracy. It can be shattered, but not easily, and not often.

Groupthink is one of my most constant opponents.

Probably the Wall Street auto-selling programs going FUBAR. Even the Black Wednesday attack on the GBP came nowhere NEAR to that magnitude. When given a choice between conscious evil and idiocy, always choose idiocy.

If it is idiocy, it is still a threat which needs to be addressed. We need to know HOW idiocy can have such a dangerous impact on us and see if it is possible to ameliorate it. I just want a reasonable explanation as to what happened, and why it will not happen again.

Too paranoid. Johnson had a once-every-other generation opening with the JFK martyrdom to "complete the New Deal," and he tried. He tried hard. The bad consequences were predicted - such as the 1965 Moynihan Report - but brushed aside; everyone is the Knightly Hero of their Personal Psychodrama.

There are multiple dynamics at work. I just find it hard to discount the notion that one of them was an attempt to coalition build at the expense of taxpayers, because this is exactly how it has worked out in practice. I suppose the best argument against this, is that the Democrats are incompetents who seemingly cannot ever get a plan to work as they intend.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right about how things turned out. He was one of the very few Decent Democrats.

I could be dead wrong. There are multiple other plausible scenarios. And the margin of fraud in places like Chicago and King County only allows for a few 10s of K votes by the dead - margins of victory beyond that, and the winner wins, period. The basis of my analysis is that I simply don't see the Left as able to adapt.

They have their game plan, and I don't see them changing it either.
I don't see the margin of victory for any of the potential candidates being outside their range of cheating. Perhaps there will be a brokered convention. I personally preferred Rick Perry of all the potential nominees. (Not that he didn't have some problems too.)

A lot of people have suggested that efforts would be better spent working on the House and the Senate.

Every vital society decays into curatorial stasis. I'd just like to ward that off in our case for a further century or so. It may be possible. It may not.

Last year I read a wonderful essay that made this exact point. The Author pointed out that a system (such as a system of governance) will acquire modifications over the year, and it will keep going along until it breaks, and then it will be replaced rather than repaired.

He suggested that one would think that repairing it might be easier. Just remove whatever modification made it non-functional, but that is not the case. It is, in effect, non-repairable. Like a living Organism, it's vitality is spent and by this point people would rather see it die than try to resurrect it.

Another Fractal analogy.

Polywell. The Lerner cell. The Woodward Effect. Other Plausible Left-Field approaches worthy of review.

I have been a fan of the Woodward Effect (Transient mass fluctuation) for a long time. It is the most reasonable theory of which I have heard regarding a possible propellantless system of propulsion.

I really don't care. But I would like to see them explored and either substantiated or disposed of. Current "big science" strikes me as far more over-confident and assured it is on the right track than it should be. I look at it in multiple areas, and I see the same encroaching stasis that made Aristotelianism "obviously and impeachably true" for 1500 years.

"Every great physical theory starts as a heresy and ends as a dogma". Or MSimon's version is just as good. "Science Advances when the old farts die off. " (I paraphrased a bit. )

Intellectual phase lock has always been a serious problem.

An area of interest. The classical Kyklos as well. Brached off an interest in systems theory and materialist teleology - it simply struck me that Stephen Jay Gould's Random Walk hypothesis was prima facie wrong on the most basic examination of the evidence. Too much repetitive structure shows up too often, and there quite obviously is a vector of development from simplicity to complexity and life. Simon Conway Morris is far more on the correct track IMO.

You left off the Tytler cycle, which I am fond of quoting. I'll have to gain familiarity with the other references you mentioned I think.

A favorite of fendom. I prefer the Vargr.

A lot of ideas get thought up independently. I hadn't heard of the Vargr before.

I have a hard time squaring the privileged motor mouths of yesterday and today with "the weak," but to each their own.

There are people today who as a group have political power, but in absence of a big central government to bolster the protection of their rights, they are actually weak in strength of arms. Women, for example, have suffrage because Men gave it to them, not because they took it through strength.

If we are to return to the fundamentals of government, it will be the most vicious of bad-asses who will end up ruling us.

[djolds1]

Probably the Wall Street auto-selling programs going FUBAR. Even the Black Wednesday attack on the GBP came nowhere NEAR to that magnitude. When given a choice between conscious evil and idiocy, always choose idiocy.

If it is idiocy, it is still a threat which needs to be addressed. We need to know HOW idiocy can have such a dangerous impact on us and see if it is possible to ameliorate it. I just want a reasonable explanation as to what happened, and why it will not happen again.

Perhaps. I worked as a local government bureaucrat for awhile over a decade ago. The lesson I took away from it? Government (at least in the US) tries to make things better, by making them worse. "Addressing the problem" segues ever so easily into "more laws! More laws!" And given that our government does not write laws but rather pious wish lists, the asininely specific regulations multiply insanely and rapidly. Even the bureaucrats have no idea what their jobs are.

Simplification makes far more sense than trying to "address" every problem that pops up.

Too paranoid. Johnson had a once-every-other generation opening with the JFK martyrdom to "complete the New Deal," and he tried. He tried hard. The bad consequences were predicted - such as the 1965 Moynihan Report - but brushed aside; everyone is the Knightly Hero of their Personal Psychodrama.

There are multiple dynamics at work. I just find it hard to discount the notion that one of them was an attempt to coalition build at the expense of taxpayers, because this is exactly how it has worked out in practice. I suppose the best argument against this, is that the Democrats are incompetents who seemingly cannot ever get a plan to work as they intend.

Look back to their honest ideals 100 years ago. The state, regulated by magisters whose refined judgment would be assured by the beloved academy, would provide a society of justice and plenty.

In the abstract, its a beautiful dream. Sensible. Easy (in concept) to construct. Just one minor problem. Like every other utopian dream, the Libertarian inclusive, it simply doesn't work.

I could be dead wrong. There are multiple other plausible scenarios. And the margin of fraud in places like Chicago and King County only allows for a few 10s of K votes by the dead - margins of victory beyond that, and the winner wins, period. The basis of my analysis is that I simply don't see the Left as able to adapt.

They have their game plan, and I don't see them changing it either.

They haven't changed their game plan in a century. That's the problem. They pushed their program through to completion - and now its decaying. But instead of adapting, they're digging in to defend. Very human. But it will not guarantee the longevity of their accomplishments.

I don't see the margin of victory for any of the potential candidates being outside their range of cheating. Perhaps there will be a brokered convention. I personally preferred Rick Perry of all the potential nominees. (Not that he didn't have some problems too.)

Primaries are different from general elections. Dems will cheat in general elections, GOPhers will be "caught" by the MSM. Unless there's a disaster, Romney has it sewn up.

A lot of people have suggested that efforts would be better spent working on the House and the Senate.

I would not disagree.

Polywell. The Lerner cell. The Woodward Effect. Other Plausible Left-Field approaches worthy of review.

I have been a fan of the Woodward Effect (Transient mass fluctuation) for a long time. It is the most reasonable theory of which I have heard regarding a possible propellantless system of propulsion.

Woodward seems to be running into problems with the dielectrics, and Heim is discredited now. HFGWs or Pharis Williams' idea might play out. Williams' work is sweet in terms of parsimony.

A favorite of fendom. I prefer the Vargr.

A lot of ideas get thought up independently. I hadn't heard of the Vargr before.

Traveller is one of the better fictional RPG universes ever created. IMO. Probably because it is also one of the longest-lived.

If we are to return to the fundamentals of government, it will be the most vicious of bad-asses who will end up ruling us.

Only if you count George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower as vicious bad-asses. Competent and willing to be ruthless at need? Yes. Vicious? Not necessarily.

[MSimon]

The libertarian dream is anti-utopian. We assume all levels of government are incompetent, corrupt, and evil. We thus wish to limit government at every turn.

And the libertarian dream? To cut drug use in half in ten years using methods that worked for the Portuguese. And drastically reduce prison and jail costs there by.

And we could keep drug money from corrupting the government. And taking our economy down:

http://classicalvalues.com/2012/03/wall ... -the-news/

But you are not alone. A LOT of people favor the corruption of government by drug cartel money.

The Baptists are ALWAYS the bootleggers best friend. Fortunately that strain of error is declining with time.

"Make a law, make a business." — Old New Jersey street saying

[Diogenes]

Very astute analysis. I would only add that the means of targeting both Supply and Demand (they are interlinked, so affecting one affects the other) used to destroy the tobacco industry might be very effective in destroying another drug industry.

Regulate it to death.

You need something to regulate first. Jump to this too quickly, and you merely perpetuate #1. Move pot and maybe coke over to the state stores, enforce purity standards, and reap the taxes.

I have suggested licensing. For pot it would be pretty much a nothing deal, but for coke, I would expect it to be somewhat onerous.

Up side to general legalization - in the year after Prohibition was repealed the murder rate dropped to <10% of what it had been the year before. A 1000% multiplier, thanks to Prohibition, and also probably thanks to the WoSD. Not to mention Civil Rights degradations, and puffing up the budgets of the LEOs the same way the Left eternally puffs up the education budgets with zero returns. We do need the sheepdogs, we do not need the SWAT cowboy attitudes the WoSD encourages.

The downsides have been explicitly narrated. The Upsides are dismissed as a fable, but those who dismiss them do not seem to actually understand the argument they are dismissing. I keep pointing out that China is the only real world experiment that resembles what they are suggesting, and it was a horrible disaster for China.

The Cartels are not going to go away - we've spent 40 years creating them. But they will be forced to focus on the more traditional OC trades, plus the new cyber-frauds. They seem to have an affection for kidnapping, but that can be broken.

As long as there is a market for illegal activity, there will be people willing to supply it. Murder has always been illegal, but there are still people willing to kill for money.

Oh, I would very much like to demonstrate to you a LOT more reasons to dislike us. I think life will do the job for me though. Come back and discuss it with me after you've lost the stupid.

Unnecessarily harsh. I prefer a more Socratic approach.

Civility for the Civilized, Barbarity for the Barbarians.

[Diogenes]

I agree with most of this but I still think option 3 would work provided it was regulated. Strongly(including concentration of and availability of) in the case of say cocaine/heroine/meth, weakly in the case of pot. There is no way drugs would be legalized without extensive regs, the people opposed to it would force the regs on it. Get the Feds out of it kick it back to the states, let them laboratory various mixes of legal/illegal/legal-regulated to see what works best. Treating addiction as a medical condition (like Portugal) instead of this holy alcohol prohibition like "war on drug" crusade is clearly not working or going to work.

Depends upon what you mean by "work".

If THIS is the normal progression of freely available drugs in a society:

Chests of Opium imported into China.



Then keeping the line flat at 2% is a huge benefit. We could reduce usage even further were we to implement Mao like methods, but those are unacceptable to our society.

[Diogenes]

Let the bleeding hearts be driven crazy(pretty short drive IMHO), the simple reality is we are rapidly running out of money. Our current system is going bankrupt, we have a prez who thinks trillion dollar deficits are sustainable. Legalizing would save a god awfull amount of money, the amount of money sucked from our economy by illegal insanely overpriced drug use is staggering. To say nothing of the cost of trying/imprisoning users. Bet pot will be legal(not just medical) in Calif and other places in 10yrs. Regulated hard drugs to follow.

It will only save money if "Nothing happens" once drugs are legalized. That is a presumption at odds with the evidence.

"Needle Park" did not work well in Switzerland. If you look at the Graph of Chests of Opium imported into China you might notice that at first the amounts were not so bad, but grew steadily worse over time.

I have still yet to hear a reasonable explanation as to why the same thing wouldn't happen anywhere else.

[Diogenes]

Perhaps. I worked as a local government bureaucrat for awhile over a decade ago. The lesson I took away from it? Government (at least in the US) tries to make things better, by making them worse. "Addressing the problem" segues ever so easily into "more laws! More laws!" And given that our government does not write laws but rather pious wish lists, the asininely specific regulations multiply insanely and rapidly. Even the bureaucrats have no idea what their jobs are.

Simplification makes far more sense than trying to "address" every problem that pops up.

I'm not suggesting that we make a law. I am suggesting we understand what happened. We wouldn't know if a new law is a possible solution until we know what caused it. If it was a hostile act by manipulators, some sort of retaliatory response would be more reasonable.

Look back to their honest ideals 100 years ago. The state, regulated by magisters whose refined judgment would be assured by the beloved academy, would provide a society of justice and plenty.

Honesty and Lyndon Baines Johnson do not go well together. No doubt idealism motivated some of the simple minds who supported the idea, but from Lyndon Johnson's perspective, It was all about getting and keeping power. My Dad claims to have known Lyndon Johnson, (my dad was from Texas) and he said the man was a crook and a sleaze.

In the abstract, its a beautiful dream. Sensible. Easy (in concept) to construct. Just one minor problem. Like every other utopian dream, the Libertarian inclusive, it simply doesn't work. .

The Fallacy of Liberalism is a failure to comprehend the unchanging aspect of Human Nature. "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs." Works within a family, but does not work at all outside of that group of closely related people. (Sometimes it doesn't even work WITHIN a family.)

The Founders created multiple components of our Government in the hopes that each one would jealously guard and constrain the powers of the other. A triple stalemate if you will. They knew that the only thing which could oppose human lust for power, is more human lust for power.
They understood human nature, and designed it into their calculations for a stable government. I have this to say about our founders. " Those Magnificent Bastards!"

They haven't changed their game plan in a century. That's the problem. They pushed their program through to completion - and now its decaying. But instead of adapting, they're digging in to defend. Very human. But it will not guarantee the longevity of their accomplishments.

Many of them don't care about longevity, they only care about the here and now. Unions have been advocating a system which is inherently impossible to maintain, yet every year they argue with greater fervor that their unsustainable plan be maintained and expanded. Perhaps some party therotician\ideologues want longevity, but for their ground troops, all they want is money NOW.

Primaries are different from general elections. Dems will cheat in general elections, GOPhers will be "caught" by the MSM. Unless there's a disaster, Romney has it sewn up.

Most likely. The question is will the Milquetoast candidate garner any enthusiasm? The base doesn't care for him. If he is the nominee, I doubt many will bother voting. Barack's hard core WILL show up.

Woodward seems to be running into problems with the dielectrics, and Heim is discredited now. HFGWs or Pharis Williams' idea might play out. Williams' work is sweet in terms of parsimony.

I haven't kept up lately, being too involved in politics. What happened with Heim? How was it discredited. As for Woodward, it's easy to see how a technology on the ragged edge of material science might run into problems. At the transition speeds he is trying to use, material becomes spongy.

Traveller is one of the better fictional RPG universes ever created. IMO. Probably because it is also one of the longest-lived.

Alas, my Science Fiction days have been mostly behind me. I have been wanting to reacquaint myself with the genre, but It is hard to find stuff I like nowadays. Several months ago I bought "Speaker for the Dead" because it was written by Orson Scott Card, and "Ender's Game" was so good, I thought surely other books by this Author would be as well. So far, the first several chapters have been a snooze fest in my opinion.

As for the RPG, I loved the Fantasy based Genre, but I never got into the Sci-Fi versions.

Only if you count George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower as vicious bad-asses. Competent and willing to be ruthless at need? Yes. Vicious? Not necessarily.

I just read a few days ago where Washington dealt with a Mutiny from an army group. He Captured them, and said he would pardoned the Enlisted but ordered them to shoot their officers who had so badly led them into mutiny. When the enlisted fired over their heads, Washington told them that if they didn't shoot true on the next volley, they would all join their officer's fate.

The men thereafter shot accurately.

Washington was a civilized man, so he could be ruthless without being vicious. (Wanton Cruelty) However, unprincipled cruelty also works to produce a base of loyal supporters.

Genghis Kahn for example.


What I am saying is that when TSHTF Vicious works as well (or perhaps better) in securing power. Saddam Hussein is another example.


Pour l'encouragement des autres.