JayB

So is your argument based on the principle that the state should forcibly prevent people from engaging in voluntary activities that exceed a certain risk threshhold, or on the sheer number of people that harm themselves engaging in any particular activity? If your argument is founded on sheer numbers - which it must be if you claim that the state should forcibly prevent people from using drugs but not free-soloing - then by this logic, the state would be justified in forcibly preventing people from overeating, which currently inflicts a much higher toll on society both in terms of expense and mortality than those who use illegal drugs.

Though I agree with most all your arguments so far, I don't get this one. What have seatbelt laws to do with public good other than protecting the body of the wearer? Seems very similar to the drug prohibitions protecting people from themselves. In fact if you buy the argument that addicts turn to crime and hurt more people, then the anti-drug laws are a lot more toward protecting the public good than seatbelt laws. Are they worried someone is going to get out of control behind the wheel because they aren't wearing a lap belt? The public owns the roads and has some legal claim on them in terms of its ability to set speed limits, vision requirements, etc. Unless you accept the claim that your body represents the same class of public good as a a piece of publicly funded infrastructure, the legal scope for the state to determine what you do with it in private is effectively nil. Accepting that what you do with your body while using a public resource like a road requires some acceptance of the state's authority to govern your conduct while you are using it doesn't justify the proposition that the the state should have the same level of authority over what you do with your body in private anymore than laws against having sex in public justify the government arresting you for having sex in the privacy of your own home. IMO the only proper role for the state with regards to laws that regulate the use of the roads is insuring that a given driver's actions do not pose a threat to other drivers. I don't think that the safety of the driver constitutes an acceptable argument for the state to mandate seatbelt use, except in the case of children or mentally incompetent adults who cannot determine the risks for themselves. Aside from the principal that actions that don't directly harm anyone else should be legal, I also oppose seatbelt laws on the grounds because they give rise to the very mentality that I've been arguing against on this thread - which is that the state has the right and the responsibility to protect mentally competent adults from actions which can only directly harm themselves. The argument for seatbelts in terms of the probability that those who don't wear them will end up having their medical care paid for by the public in some fashion or another is a rather tenuous one, but still stronger than those which insist that state has the right and the duty to protect autonomous adults from themselves.

I'm not sure which weak argument you're referring to. Personal freedom is absolute; laws are merely deterrents. I stand by my assertion that the naive can and should be protected by laws that deter extraordinary risks to themselves. For example, we have seatbelt laws not because we want to crush free will, but because we're pretty sure it makes you safer. I'm also opposed to seatbelt laws for adults who have sufficient health and disability insurance to cover the tab if they jack themselves up too badly. IMO the only defensible argument for seatbelt laws applies in the cases where the state is likely to pick up the tab for your care if you mess yourself up. In any event, driving is a privilege that requires the use of a public good, so seatbelt laws fall into a different class of laws than those that pertain to what people can do with their own bodies. Mentally competent adults exercising a fundamental right to determine what they ingest is something else entirely. If you buy the argument that our bodies constitute a public good that the state should have discretion over that supercedes our own, then your analogy makes sense. Your leap from one to the other with nary a thought for the manifold differences between the two is a classic example of the slippery slope in action. "I stand by my assertion that the naive can and should be protected by laws that deter extraordinary risks to themselves." You mean like soloing, alpine climbing, etc, etc, etc? I'm pretty sure that the actuaries could run the numbers and determine that engaging in either constitutes a far greater risk to the participants than the consumption of any drug known to man. Better get the state on the job and fund a massive bureaucracy of rangers to patrol the mountains and prevent the naive from taking extraordinary risks to themselves.

One could easily toss this red-herring "I'm not against personal freedoms, I'm against the CORPORATE DOMINATION OF THE UNIVERSE!!! [C'mon fellow travelers, I know my other argument was weak, but no one here likes Walmart...]" overboard by granting the government a monopoly on the distribution and sale of all drugs that are currently illegal.

His efforts have set back basic human rights in this country. That is a real, concrete effect, not mere politicing in a vacuum. If he had preached love and tolerance for all, I might shed a tear at his passing, but this guy represents everything unchristian and evil about American evangelical "christianity". Becuase he beleives in a principle different than you, you hate him. Your no different. Hypocrit. but hypocrism is the precise reason for hating falwell - he espoused the message of jesus, which is the uber-hippy message of love-fucking-everyone-and-under-no-circumstances-ever-do-anything-harmful-to-them-judge-not-lest-you-be-judged-yadda-yadda-yadda - a real cut and dried philosophy - but then falwell comletely fucked it up by judging everyone and creating a situation where his followers felt totally justified in hurting them who on this board is more hypocritical then that? There are also some fairly compelling interpretations of Jesus's message that argue that the guy was a messianic, intensely narcissistic leader of a pre-modern doomsday-cult. The Jim Jones of Jerusalem, so to speak. Under that interpretation, the folks waving the spiritual pompoms for The Rapture might actually be closer to the mark.

This is very depressing. There's a reason that we don't let kids vote, drink, drive, live on their own. Before a certain age most kids aren't really capable of making good decisions. Having someone protecting them is a good idea. To assume that kids who live in this kind of protective-bubble world can conceptualize the utility of not being constantly directed and cared for is asking a bit much. Ask that question to kids who are actually out on their own, making their own decisions (like ashw_justin!) and you'll probably get a bit of a different answer than from middle-schoolers. So anyway, this was a long-winded way of saying that the results of Ivan's survey of barely pubescent children is neither unexpected nor too depressing. It's not the kids that worry me, its the adults that share this perspective that concern me. It's a slippery slope from "stop me or I'll smoke crack" to "stop me or I'll eat this Big Mac," and those that argue for the former seem to have a tendency to argue for the latter as well.

Apples and oranges. The negative effects of widespread addiction vs. criminal trafficking are different phenomena, the relative potential magnitudes of which neither of us can claim to know. Where I simply seek to highlight the potential danger for widespread use of hard drugs, you attempt to do explicit mathematics with abstract principles. Take a breath man. I don't want people buying crack at the store because I'm afraid that it will turn our country into a drug-enslaved shithole. And I already said that I'm sympathetic to the idea of natural selection--just that the real manifestation of it is never pretty, especially if it occurs on a massive scale. Here's some conceit for you: why do the lab rats keep hitting the cocaine until it kills them? Clearly they wanted to live? Have you actually got any evidence to suggest that your doomsday scenario will materialize if drugs are legalized? The experience of the Netherlands, and of pretty much every country in the world prior to the advent of laws against drugs and the law enforcement apparatus necessary to enforce them suggests otherwise. People have made these arguments against pornography, gambling, and every other species of vice under the sun, and they all rest on the false assumption that the law is the only operational check on human behavior at work in society. This is about as logical as concluding that enacting laws against suicide would actually curtail the practice, and that if such laws existed, the second that they were rescinded, all of humanity would stampede to the local bridge and do themselves in. "Apples and oranges. The negative effects of widespread addiction vs. criminal trafficking are different phenomena, the relative potential magnitudes of which neither of us can claim to know. Where I simply seek to highlight the potential danger for widespread use of hard drugs, you attempt to do explicit mathematics with abstract principles. :rolleyes:" This argument rests on the assumption that the criminalization of drugs can either eliminate or substantially reduce the use of and addiction to whatever drug it is that's outlawed. Experience says otherwise. So as things stand now, we have a large number of addicts, *and* a system which results in a massive transfer of wealth to organized crime, widespread corruption of the judiciary and law enforcement in less developed countries, rampant street violence, massive diversion of funds away from other priorities into the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders, and the costs both in money and personal liberties that have resulted from the legal and bureaucratic enforcement mechanisms necessary to maintain the present prohibition. You are making the determination that it's worth people who never touch drugs enduring all of the above to save the minute fraction of the population who have hitherto avoided drugs like meth, crack, and heroin because of their illegality - from themselves. Not a reasonable trade, IMO.

Let me apologize in advance for this twist in logic, but if this is what the youth are thinking, then legalizing hard drugs would be an invitation to use them. They will equate 'legal' with 'okay.' Yes sadly enough, the masses are willing to let the system do their thinking for them. Perhaps all they need are a few overdoses to set them straight... but that could get ugly. Again - the conceit. If academic qualifications were all that mattered, then Ted Kacynski would have become a model citizen.

The United States are not the Netherlands. That's like comparing a spoiled 13-year-old to a college professor. Would you tell your 13-year-old daughter that it's okay to do heroin? (It's okay, she'll just use her judgment.) Intentional oversimplification? First, greater availability would lead to greater consumption. Second, 'legal' equals profitable and marketable. If McDonalds' sexy ad convinces you to try a Big Mac and it sucks, you don't have to buy another one. It's not that simple with hard drugs. Honestly, I want to believe in the ideal of free will and personal judgment. But in practice that ideal is defeated in a society where many if not most people are too stupid to take care of themselves (such as the US). Should we let them kill themselves? Perhaps. Is that going to suck for the rest of us? Yes. But how many will self-destruct? That's the key question--how many addicts does it take to ruin a society? Is that a storm that you want to try to weather? And for what? 'Freedom' to get wasted on hard drugs? Are you counting yourself amongst those too stupid to look after themselves? If not, what grounds do you have for the monumental conceit that your statement rests upon? I've spent time on the shop floor and at the lab bench, and when it comes to exercising the basic judgments necessary to lead a happy and productive life - I can't say that the advantage necessarily always goes to those in academia. As far as the link between legalization and consumption is concerned, there probably would be an increase in both consumption and addiction as a result of legalization - but any adverse effect from either would be no worse than the rampant violence and criminality that flourish under the current regime of prohibition, not to mention the massive transfer of wealth to criminal organizations that results from it, and all of the corruption, targeted killings of judges, etc. When you legalize drugs, you don't eliminate all suffering associated with drugs, but at least the vast majority of the harmful effects are visited upon those who consume them. In my experience the people who argue that the state should be invested with the power to protect people from themselves have quite a bit in common with the folks who are convinced that because they can't imagine living a happy, productive, and ethical life without believing in a particular deity and religious creed, and therefore it's incumbent upon them to insure that others do the same - voluntarily or no. Swap "God" for "State" and the two perspectives are almost interchangeable.

Interesting observation, Ivan. "The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them." The other thing I'd like to point out is that any argument for drug prohibition that is based on the notion that it's society's duty to protect individuals from themselves could also be applied - and would be at least as apt - to free soloing.

Yes - the Netherlands is tottering on the edge of collapse as we speak. The notion that the large numbers of people who don't already smoke crack, inject heroin, etc would do so if it were legal is one of the most idiotic arguments against legalization that anyone has ever conjured up. Likewise, the argument that the illegality of the same constitutes a protective barrier that prevents those who would otherwise abuse the drugs from doing so is equally ridiculous. Per your line of reasoning, if prostitution were legalized, then every man in America who is not currently availing themselves of their services would suddenly do so, because no other considerations are involved in such decisions. Just imagine if Walmart came out with it's own branded line of discount-hookers...! Are you sure you aren't projecting anxieties that you hold concerning your own constitution and temperament onto society at large here?

Reposted from an earlier thread: "As the [classical] liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad. Still, as Jacob Burckhardt says, power is evil in itself, no matter who exercises it. It tends to corrupt those who wield it and leads to abuse. Not only absolute sovereigns and aristocrats, but the masses also, in whose hands democracy entrusts the supreme power of government, are only too easily inclined to excesses. In the United States, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages are prohibited. Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics. It is universally deemed one of the tasks of legislation and government to protect the individual from himself. Even those who otherwise generally have misgivings about extending the area of governmental activity consider it quite proper that the freedom of the individual should be curtailed in this respect, and they think that only a benighted doctrinairism could oppose such prohibitions. Indeed, so general is the acceptance of this kind of interference by the authorities in the life of the individual that those who, are opposed to liberalism on principle are prone to base their argument on the ostensibly undisputed acknowledgment of the necessity of such prohibitions and to draw from it the conclusion that complete freedom is an evil and that some measure of restriction must be imposed upon the freedom of the individual by the governmental authorities in their capacity as guardians of his welfare. The question cannot be whether the authorities ought to impose restrictions upon the freedom of the individual, but only how far they ought to go in this respect. No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism. Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too? More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of pornographic pictures, of obscene plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations? Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed to undermine respect for God and the Church? We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding, of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind's progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all. Let no one object that the struggle against morphinism and the struggle against "evil" literature are two quite different things. The only difference between them is that some of the same people who favor the prohibition of the former will not agree to the prohibition of the latter. In the United States, the Methodists and Fundamentalists, right after the passage of the law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, took up the struggle for the suppression of the theory of evolution, and they have already succeeded in ousting Darwinism from the schools in a number of states. In Soviet Russia, every free expression of opinion is suppressed. Whether or not permission is granted for a book to be published depends on the discretion of a number of uneducated and uncultivated fanatics who have been placed in charge of the arm of the government empowered to concern itself with such matters. The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them. It will require many long years of self-education until the subject can turn himself into the citizen. A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police."

1. Our experience with prohibition pretty much disproves every single argument that you've just made. 2. Your desire for the state to control every aspect of human behavior - predicated on the notion that people should never be legally entitled to decide what's in their best interest, nor are capable of doing the same - is far more frightening than anything than any set of motives that could ever be attributed to any corporation. When you were a child, did your older brother terrify you by telling you that there was a corporation hiding under your bed?

I'd say that Falwell discredited the set of beliefs that he stood for far more effectively than any of his most rabid critics ever could have, so if you count yourselves amongst those who opposed his viewpoints, you should mourn his death for the simple reason that an unintentional champion of your causes has passed on. I didn't count myself amongst his fans, but recognized that he had a certain utility.

I'm heading the wrong way in a hurry. Lost five pounds last week. Too much activity, not enough food or time to prepare it.

Carbs, sugars, fats, whatever. In the end the only thing that matters is the delta between caloric intake and caloric expenditure. Burn more than you consume and you lose weight. Consume more than you burn and you gain weight. End of story.

"Yet ski areas consciously decide that the appeasement of the status quo to 'go big' (i.e. keep the customers coming back) is more important than avoiding inevitable severe injuries." Don't hit parks much do ya? The number of people that hit a jump is inversely proportional to its size. I'd almost wager that the number decreases as the square of the hypotenuse formed by the back of the jump and the tabletop. Even in the biggest parks, the number of people that hit the biggest jumps is in the single digits on any given day. The real money maker/crowd-attractor is groomed slopes, and you could make a much more convincing argument that pervasive grooming results in a situation where rank beginners who lack both the skill and the judgment required to control their speed end up skiing way too fast and endanger both themselves and their fellow skiers. "I think it would have to do something with restricted access and a second waiver." I think you are correct here. I'd be amazed if this is the only ramification of this ruling, though.

"After a five-week trial, a King County jury on Friday awarded $14 million to a 27-year-old skier who was paralyzed after dropping 37 feet from a ski jump at the Summit at Snoqualmie. Kenny Salvini, of Lake Tapps, was 23 years old when he went off the jump at the Central Terrain Park at Snoqualmie Central and landed on compact snow and ice in February 2004, said his attorney, Jack Connelly. During the trial at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, "information came out ... that the man who built [the jump] eyeballed it with a Sno-Cat" rather than engineering a design, Connelly said. Engineers and an aeronautics professor from the University of California, Davis, testified that the jump was improperly designed and featured a short landing area, Connelly said, adding that ski jumps are supposed to be sloped so that energy from a vertical jump is transferred into a skier's forward motion on landing. "Going off this jump was the equivalent of jumping off a three-story building," Connelly said. "If you're going to be throwing kids 37 feet in the air, these jumps need to be engineered, designed and constructed properly." Officials from the Summit at Snoqualmie on Friday afternoon wouldn't answer questions about the incident but released a statement. It said risk is inherent in snow sports, but, "that said, any time there is an incident, our genuine thoughts and prayers are with our guests and their families." The statement said Summit officials "are disappointed but respectful of the [trial] process." According to Connelly, other people were injured on the same jump in the weeks before Salvini's accident, including a snowboarder who broke his back. A week after Salvini was injured, 19-year-old Peter Melrose of Bellevue died going off a different jump at the same terrain park, he said. "There were 10 accidents with eight people taken off the slope in a toboggan" in the weeks before Salvini was hurt, landing on what Connelly said was a flat surface. In all, he said, evidence of 15 earlier accidents was admitted into evidence but "nothing was done" by ski operators to fix or close the faulty jumps. The full jury award was for about $31 million, Connelly said, explaining that the amount was decreased to $14 million after calculating "the comparative fault" of his client and "the inherent risk of the sport." advertising Before he was injured, Salvini, now a quadriplegic, was captain of the wrestling team at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where he graduated in engineering technology, Connelly said. His mother is now his full-time caregiver. Over the course of his life, Salvini's medical needs are estimated to cost between $23 million and $26 million, Connelly said." I feel bad for the guy, but this sets a very, very, very bad precedent. If there's anyplace where you voluntarily assume risk at a ski area, it's when you line up above a jump and make the decision to hit it.

Clearly by conspiracy by big pharma to scare the public into worrying excessively about the "dangers" of "cancer" so that they can reap the profits generated by the sheeple who want to "protect themselves" against this "disease."

Couldn't get much worse.

Actually, actors in the sectors of the economy that are the most dependent on immigrant labor have been amongst the most vocal advocates of immigration reform. It seems like most of their proposals have involved making it easier for Mexicans and others to come to the US to work legally, without making it easier for them to acquire permanent citizenship. Of all the ideas put forward to reform immigration, I think that this is one of the worst, in that embracing a system of rules that encourages large numbers of desperately poor people to come to the US to work, but denies them the opportunity to become citizens has the potential to create a class of people who come to feel both exploited by and alienated from the country that they are residing in on a more or less permanent basis. This is the system by which large numbers of Muslim immigrants came to Europe, and you can see how well that's worked out for Euroland. Whatever the defects of the current system, the prospect of eventually gaining citizenship - or the citizenship granted their American born children - seems to encourage a level of personal investment in and identification with the US that's ultimately fostered a much more peaceful and harmonious outcome than mass-migration has elsewhere in the world. I'm not sure what the best solution to illegal immigration is, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't involve giving official sanction to a bifurcated society of citizens and permanent non-citizens. The funny thing about this debate is that no one ever seems to focus on the ultimate cause. In this case, it's the fact that the entrenched corruption, inefficiency, and incompetence that permeates the conduct of both business and politics in Mexico that has rendered a substantial portion of that country's citizens destitute and desperate for the country's entire history.

I can't believe that Ponzini is stealing my thunder on this one....

Such innocence... One wonders what would happen if an electronic chain letter started circulating that encouraged all recipients to reduce global CO2 emissions by refusing to exhale for 10 minutes...

Ken: There's actually a bunch of material out there concerning the effects of food aid on economies in which most of the people derive their living from small scale agriculture. I don't have any at my fingertips, but there's plenty out there if you are interested in looking into the issue a bit more.

Its called the master cleanse, more intense then a juice fast...less then a water fast. I did it for a spring cleaning, its a big transition time in my life and I felt the need to do it. I don't go to doctors and this is my way of healing my body....after day 10 your body starts repairing damaged tissue...blah blah blah. I wanted to go longer but you get sorta spacy which I was getting tired of One thing I have wondered about doing this type of fast is if I need to cut out my activity. I just can imagine having no energy. Did you use spirolina or super blue green in your juice or any other type of suplement? Ken: Since you are in the minority of folks that can actually assess the scientific evidence to support the specific claims made by the folks that advocate fasting, I'd encourage you to do so.