Most of what we know is from our own personal experiences.
And that’s good for day to day living, but not for policy. The standards of evidence for policy need to be high.
A legal immigrant generally comes to the US because they’re a Christian escaping persecution, and they believe “liberty or death” — American values.
That applies to most migrants that cross illegally. And not all legal immigrants are christian. A lot of them are non-christian, about 40% to be exact:
They’re willing to break the law either because they’re hardened criminals or because they come from a society with such lawlessness that they have no real conception of law.
As somebody who’s been to Latin American countries, that’s simply not true.
I think many Americans on the Left fail to grasp this difference because they don’t own ANY American flags, and they willfully break the law frequently — smoking pot, speeding when they drive, jaywalking, etc. The conservative personality type that’s actually a law-abiding Christian is completely foreign to the stereotypical leftist. So if that’s your perspective, you don’t see a difference because you’re not an American at heart.
This is just a sweeping generalization, to the point that it’s almost a joke.
Anyone willing to break the law is a criminal. Someone willing to break into another country and break the law there, is the bottom of the barrel.
I’m not seeing any real point here, so I will move on.
is the bottom of the barrel. I don’t care what category of crime it is. If you think some laws are okay to break, you’re absolutely wrong. (Edit: I take it back in the case of resisting tyranny.)
So breaking the law to resist tyranny makes you bottom of the barrel? That doesn’t make much sense.
Cry me a river. I don’t support US military aggression overseas, but at the same time people need to stand up and fight in their own country instead of running away. Cowards have no place in American culture.
Families are not soldiers.
I find it hard to sympathize with any man who doesn’t fight like a man.
And that is one of the root problems of conservatism, there is no empathy in an ideology which says that every problem to ever exist is a personal failure.
If I had it my way (and let us both be grateful that American policy is not solely in the hands of any single individual like myself), the US would grant legal immigration to less than ten people per year, maximum. The borders would be completely shut down, and once you leave you can never return. Anyone trying to enter the country (except those ten or fewer legal immigrants) would be deported by means of a catapult.
This has to be a troll, lol
I offer you Romans 13:1-2:
That doesn’t dismiss my point.
But that only applies to scenarios in which God has directly commanded someone to break the law of man. Show me a case of an illegal immigrant claiming God specifically ordered him to do something requiring illegal entry into the US, and I’d advocate for asylum. I’ve never heard of that particular scenario, but sure there’s a non-zero chance it could happen.
It’s not worth my time to aim for such a ridiculous goal post.
The standards of evidence for policy need to be high.
I do agree with that.
about 40% to be exact
Wow, that’s super interesting. About halfway down the page it says:
Of the approximately 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2011, an estimated 9.2 million (83%) are Christians, mostly from Latin America.
So USCIS exhibits values that misalign with my own, but that’s not entirely surprising. What is surprising, to me at least, is that my personal values are more closely aligned with illegal immigrants than legal immigrants. I’m going to have to digest that fact for a while.
As somebody who’s been to Latin American countries, that’s simply not true.
Well being that I value anecdotes, go on and tell me more please.
So breaking the law to resist tyranny makes you bottom of the barrel? That doesn’t make much sense.
Sorry, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant:
Breaking the law is generally a bad thing to do, whether it’s a misdemeanor, felony, or whatever.
Breaking into a country to break that country’s law is what I called “bottom of the barrel”.
Breaking the law to resist tyranny is where I make an exception, and side with the American founders that “resistance to tyranny is obedience to God”.
Families are not soldiers.
All able-bodied men between 17 and 45 are part of the militia, according to 10 USC §246. Now I understand we’re discussing other countries and other cultures here, but men everywhere protect women and children — that’s one of the roles of a father in a family. If that means standing up to a tyrant, so be it.
And that is one of the root problems of conservatism, there is no empathy in an ideology which says that every problem to ever exist is a personal failure.
How’s that a problem? It’s built on fundamental beliefs in equality of opportunity and the principle that everyone has the ability to succeed. It also recognizes that we all fail in life, while some of us are motivated to learn from our personal failures and turn them into stepping stones to success.
This has to be a troll, lol
I wasn’t trolling, honest. I was expressing a genuine opinion while recognizing it as a bit extreme, and acknowledging that I wouldn’t want any individual to set policy by personal preference. I meant it, honestly.
That doesn’t dismiss my point.
How doesn’t it? The words of God are the words of God.
Well being that I value anecdotes, go on and tell me more please.
What do you want me to tell you? The people there aren’t hardened criminals. The crime rate between the U.S. and Latin American countries is about the same once you take into account the effects of poverty and organized crime. Most Latin Americans are law abiding christians.
Sorry, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant:
I understand what you meant, but what you mean is self contradictory, hence the lack of sense. People who break an unjust law (resisting tyranny) cannot be both bottom of the barrel (unacceptable) and acceptable.
Now I understand we’re discussing other countries and other cultures here, but men everywhere protect women and children — that’s one of the roles of a father in a family. If that means standing up to a tyrant, so be it.
Not every situation is one you can stand up to. Fighting for your family, for your women and children, it often involves simply moving them out of danger.
How’s that a problem?
Empathy is a critical component to a functional society, and a good member of society.
It’s built on fundamental beliefs in equality of opportunity and the principle that everyone has the ability to succeed.
And it fails to address the fact that there is no such thing as equality of opportunity when there is a systemic problem with society.
I was expressing a genuine opinion while recognizing it as a bit extreme
What you’ve said is beyond extreme. And also shortsighted given that immigrants are incredibly beneficial for the economy, and on average commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens:
Well the people who choose to live there are a bit different from the ones who choose to illegally come to the US. How would you describe that difference? What kind of mentality does it take to knowingly break into another country uninvited? It’s like people who break into houses, who usually make the news when the homeowner shoots them. Who does that? Who thinks it’s a grand idea to go break in where they don’t belong?
People who break an unjust law (resisting tyranny) cannot be both bottom of the barrel (unacceptable) and acceptable.
Oh, so do I understand correctly that you mean US immigration laws are tyrannical? Please explain.
it often involves simply moving them out of danger.
Well, yes, that’s a decision many people do indeed make. I view it as cowardice. It’s honorable to stand and fight, and to die in battle; it’s dishonorable to flee.
Empathy is a critical component to a functional society, and a good member of society.
I do agree with this. I just don’t think it applies to people who are outside of our society, or to people who broke into our home.
there is no such thing as equality of opportunity when there is a systemic problem with society.
I reject that premise as certified hooey. There’s no systemic anything. It’s absolute nonsense, rooted in a deranged rejection of western civilization. Sorry, I know that’s rude, and I’m not trying to offend you personally. I appreciate how generally respectful this interaction has been. I just reject this notion out of hand.
immigrants are incredibly beneficial for the economy, and on average commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens:
Maybe they lay low because they’re afraid of getting deported? Honestly I don’t care how good they are for the economy. I mean, slavery was extraordinarily good for the southern economy, if you don’t count the slaves as people. So it’s not an argument I find compelling. Some things are good for the economy, or great for the economy, and yet I still oppose them. (There are other things in this category, like Chinese imports.)
Well the people who choose to live there are a bit different from the ones who choose to illegally come to the US. How would you describe that difference?
I would not describe one. They’re the same people. The former are just the people who still have the means to get by, the latter are the ones who do not.
What kind of mentality does it take to knowingly break into another country uninvited?
It’s the mentality of somebody who’s life is in danger, or who is trying to provide for their family any way they can. And in case you didn’t know, roughly 50% of all illegal immigration occurs through legal methods of travel, as in, people overstay their welcome when traveling but were otherwise granted legal access into the country.
It’s like people who break into houses
People who break into houses do so because they are greedy. People who break into countries (generally) do so because they are trying to escape or provide for their family.
It’s honorable to stand and fight, and to die in battle; it’s dishonorable to flee.
It’s not a battle, it’s suicide. Until some major things change, cartels will always exist due to the black market demand for them. Even if you somehow successful destroy one another will fit its place overnight because of how incredibly profitable it is. Fighting a cartel will have no effect other than to end your own life.
There’s no systemic anything.
Why not? When black WW2 vets were denied low interest housing loans on the basis of race, and white WW2 vets were given them freely, how was that not a systemic inequality in opportunity?
Maybe they lay low because they’re afraid of getting deported?
It applies to all kinds of immigrants, legal and illegal. So reducing the influx of people who commit fewer crimes than the general population is short sighted.
Honestly I don’t care how good they are for the economy. I mean, slavery was extraordinarily good for the southern economy, if you don’t count the slaves as people.
These are people. And they are making the choice to move here and set up businesses of their own free choice. Comparing this to slavery is quite frankly silly.
That strikes me as an overly broad generalization, but maybe you’re right.
It’s the mentality of somebody who’s life is in danger, or who is trying to provide for their family any way they can.
I suppose I understand that. But that doesn’t excuse the behavior.
Say you were starving, and you encounter a man with food. You ask him to share it with you, and he rudely declines. Are you justified in slaughtering him to take his food? Of course not. What if it’s to feed your family? No, that’s still murder.
Now we’re not really discussing murder here, but my point is that an immoral action is inherently immoral, and no amount of suffering or danger can justify an immoral action, nor warrant sympathy for one who commits it.
And in case you didn’t know, roughly 50% of all illegal immigration occurs […]
I did know that! It’s an interesting fact. And I wish it was more common knowledge. It’s why building the wall is absolutely not enough, though I’d like to see it built anyway as a preliminary baby-step.
Until some major things change, cartels will always exist due to the black market demand for them.
Some major things like what? I’d love to know how to end market demand, but that’s a very hard problem to solve.
Fighting a cartel will have no effect other than to end your own life.
I dunno. If one dude goes up against a cartel army, sure, that’s suicide. But if an entire country organizes into a strategic war on the cartels, I think the ensuing bloodbath would be the end of all cartels in that country.
When black WW2 vets were denied low interest housing loans on the basis of race, and white WW2 vets were given them freely, how was that not a systemic inequality in opportunity?
Racist behavior is despicable, and I think we agree on that. But the word “systemic” generally means invisible and imagined. You gave a great example of actual racism, and that sort of thing hasn’t happened in a very long time in the US. Today’s so-called racism is “systemic”, meaning you have to have a rather active imagination to believe it exists. (Edit: I take this back, as colleges were openly racist before the SCOTUS banned it, and woke corporations are still doing affirmative action. That’s not systemic though, it’s just actual racism.)
Comparing this to slavery is quite frankly silly.
Yeah, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant the argument that it’s “good for the economy” doesn’t convince me, just as someone could argue that slavery is good for the economy, and many economists argue that Chinese imports are good for the economy. I don’t care. We can tank the economy for all I care. I don’t find the argument compelling.
Some major things like what? I’d love to know how to end market demand, but that’s a very hard problem to solve.
OK, so to end the market demand for these drugs you first have to understand why they’re used at all. Everybody knows they are harmful and addictive, nobody starts using them without knowing that it will harm them. So why do they use them? Primarily it is because of isolation and poverty, which are the two biggest indicators of crime and drug use. Humans have a built in need for socialization, and without that we have to cope in some way. Poverty is very similar, when we do not have stability in our life, a good source of food and shelter, when our well-being is in bad shape, just like with isolation we need some way to cope. Often times that method is drug use.
So if we can tackle the things leading to this isolation and poverty, it can go a long way towards reducing people’s drug use. So lets look at the first of these source problems, and some solutions.
Isolation - Nowadays people have a great deal of difficulty maintaining communities. Part of that is poverty, but the largest part is how we structure our society. Here in the U.S. we don’t have any semblance of work-life balance. We are the most productive we have ever been and yet we work more than we have in almost a century. How can somebody be reasonably expected to have a social life when they must work two jobs to make ends meet? We also get far less time off than other developed nations, in large part because we have no guaranteed minimum time off. Other countries on the other hand get weeks of time off at a minimum. There is also the physical structure of our society, the city planning and infrastructure. Everything in the U.S. is car dependent. Do you want to go hang out with friends? Do you want to go to church? Do you want to volunteer? Doesn’t matter what activity you want to do, you are required to get their by car because no other valid options exist. We don’t have the freedom to travel to places through other means because all cities everywhere are built for cars and only cars. It is also just dangerous to travel by foot or by bicycle in the U.S. because so little thought is put into the safety of pedestrians. Even if something is technically within walking/biking distance, there may be no sidewalk, pedestrian barriers, or trees. We also do not have the density or mixed use zoning that is needed to allow people to make strong communities in our neighborhoods. Everything is built too far spaced out when it could easily be built with community in mind.
So to fix the isolation we need:
More mixed use & higher density zoning
Better public transportation support
Better pedestrian safety
Minimum time off requirements
U.S. GDP/Productivity rates need to be inversely tied to quantity of working hours without effecting wages
So that more or less covers the easy part, isolation. Poverty is a whole other monster.
Poverty - So this is a two part issue, a wage issue and a price issue. On the wage side of things, we as a society simply are not paid enough. Productivity rates have grown massively, but wages have not. And all that extra wealth that is being created is going directly to the rich. As a result people are impoverished. CEOs, company owners and shareholders take home extreme levels of wealth while your average Joe takes home crumbs at best. CEOs currently get paid somewhere on the order of 670 times as much as the lowest paid workers. CEOs are not working 670 times harder than any other worker out there. Our country has plenty of wealth to make sure everybody has a stable food source and secure housing, but the wealth is distributed such that it always goes to the rich. Part two of the poverty issue, is the price issue. Whether it is for pharmaceuticals, college, housing, or just groceries, the prices of everything have gotten completely out of hand. And that’s not because these things take much more to manufacture/maintain. The cost to manufacture insulin is about $6 a vial yet it is sold for $300 at least for example. Colleges waits shit loads of their money on administration and sports. Housing is intentionally kept scarce to keep prices up, etc. Corporations and landlords are extracting every single ounce of wealth out of us as they possibly can, and it has immensely damage our society through poverty.
There is a lot more to it than that, but I think you get the gist. So to fix this, some of the things we will need to see is:
Wages need to match productivity rates
Minimum wage should return to being a living wage as it was originally intended to be, and to keep it that way it needs to be tied to inflation
Regulation must stop CEOs & the rich from being paid at such high rates. I think a limit of 10 to 1 would be reasonable, as in for every 1 dollar the lowest paid employ is paid, the highest can only be paid 10. And that should include all methods of payment/benefits.
Regulation for price gouging needs to be tightened to stop pharmaceutical companies from continuing their robbery of our citizens
Housing needs an overhaul, I’d personally recommend georgism, massive investments in market rate housing construction, and zoning overhauls to allow for higher density housing & mixed use zones
Education needs an overhaul as well. We ought to catch up with the rest of developed nations to have free higher education, but that is also it’s own massive topic.
Healthcare, same as education, we need to catch up with the rest of the developed world to have medicare for all. Our for-profit healthcare system has utterly failed us, again it’s own massive topic.
And so that covers largely the source reasons why people start drug use in the first place. But there is still more to it. The third main category of fix for the cartels would be ending the war on drugs. It’s been ~50 years of trying to get rid of drugs and we are no closer to doing so. It’s clear that it isn’t working. Drugs are more potent, dangerous, and available than they ever have been. If we were to decriminalize use of them we would save billions of dollars that could instead go towards the above fixes, and it would also reduce the profitability of the cartel’s trade. If somebody is addicted to a drug, they should have a harm reduction program to help them through it. If the drugs on the street are more expensive, dirtier and riskier than what a free prescription can get them, then cartels would evaporate as they would have no customers. Other nations have tried this approach, and study after study shows that it is the most effective way to help people stop using drugs off the street, and to stop using drugs all together.
I find it frustrating and disappointing that kbin didn’t notify me of this reply, particularly since you put so much effort into writing it. I’m glad I noticed it.
Thank you for your well thought-out reply on this. We are certainly coming from opposite perspectives, and I disagree with you on almost every point you made, which is really saying something, because you made a lot of points.
My perspective FWIW is that regulations of business are always bad. America is supposed to be the land of the free, meaning all regulations of business should be prohibited, IMHO.
To my view, a major reason for the drug problem comes down to that same '62 SCOTUS decision. Because when we treat our bodies as God’s abode, and when we strive to be sober, drug abuse isn’t an option. And as kids have grown up without prayer, we’ve seen secularism continually rise along with depression and drug abuse.
That being said, I recognize that drug abuse existed before '62, and indeed has existed since time immemorial. And I recognize that even though I disagree with most of your points, isolation and poverty indeed may be underlying causes, in conjunction with secularism.
I don’t have much more to say on the topic, but thank you again for that very well thought out reply. I looked up Georgism and learned what it’s all about, so thank you.
I disagree with you on almost every point you made, which is really saying something
I suspected as much.
My perspective FWIW is that regulations of business are always bad.
A government must regulate businesses or else they become monopolies, price gougers, environmental disasters, etc. A truly free market will always result in monopolies. A free market is a competition, but competitions have winners, and winners are monopolies.
America is supposed to be the land of the free
How can we be free if we are slaves to corporations?
a major reason for the drug problem comes down to that same '62 SCOTUS decision
Punishing drug addicts for being drug addicts does nothing to help them, it just makes it worse. If you truly want to help people and to make society healthy, you have to help people where they are at.
Because when we treat our bodies as God’s abode, and when we strive to be sober, drug abuse isn’t an option.
That simply isn’t an effective way of dealing with drug abuse.
And as kids have grown up without prayer, we’ve seen secularism continually rise along with depression and drug abuse.
Correlation does not imply causation.
, in conjunction with secularism.
Secularism is not the problem here.
I looked up Georgism and learned what it’s all about, so thank you.
And that’s good for day to day living, but not for policy. The standards of evidence for policy need to be high.
That applies to most migrants that cross illegally. And not all legal immigrants are christian. A lot of them are non-christian, about 40% to be exact:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/05/17/the-religious-affiliation-of-us-immigrants/
As somebody who’s been to Latin American countries, that’s simply not true.
This is just a sweeping generalization, to the point that it’s almost a joke.
I’m not seeing any real point here, so I will move on.
So breaking the law to resist tyranny makes you bottom of the barrel? That doesn’t make much sense.
Families are not soldiers.
And that is one of the root problems of conservatism, there is no empathy in an ideology which says that every problem to ever exist is a personal failure.
This has to be a troll, lol
That doesn’t dismiss my point.
It’s not worth my time to aim for such a ridiculous goal post.
I do agree with that.
Wow, that’s super interesting. About halfway down the page it says:
So USCIS exhibits values that misalign with my own, but that’s not entirely surprising. What is surprising, to me at least, is that my personal values are more closely aligned with illegal immigrants than legal immigrants. I’m going to have to digest that fact for a while.
Well being that I value anecdotes, go on and tell me more please.
Sorry, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant:
All able-bodied men between 17 and 45 are part of the militia, according to 10 USC §246. Now I understand we’re discussing other countries and other cultures here, but men everywhere protect women and children — that’s one of the roles of a father in a family. If that means standing up to a tyrant, so be it.
How’s that a problem? It’s built on fundamental beliefs in equality of opportunity and the principle that everyone has the ability to succeed. It also recognizes that we all fail in life, while some of us are motivated to learn from our personal failures and turn them into stepping stones to success.
I wasn’t trolling, honest. I was expressing a genuine opinion while recognizing it as a bit extreme, and acknowledging that I wouldn’t want any individual to set policy by personal preference. I meant it, honestly.
How doesn’t it? The words of God are the words of God.
What do you want me to tell you? The people there aren’t hardened criminals. The crime rate between the U.S. and Latin American countries is about the same once you take into account the effects of poverty and organized crime. Most Latin Americans are law abiding christians.
I understand what you meant, but what you mean is self contradictory, hence the lack of sense. People who break an unjust law (resisting tyranny) cannot be both bottom of the barrel (unacceptable) and acceptable.
Not every situation is one you can stand up to. Fighting for your family, for your women and children, it often involves simply moving them out of danger.
Empathy is a critical component to a functional society, and a good member of society.
And it fails to address the fact that there is no such thing as equality of opportunity when there is a systemic problem with society.
What you’ve said is beyond extreme. And also shortsighted given that immigrants are incredibly beneficial for the economy, and on average commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens:
https://www.epi.org/publication/immigration-facts/
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/immigrants-contribute-greatly-to-us-economy-despite-administrations
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117
Well the people who choose to live there are a bit different from the ones who choose to illegally come to the US. How would you describe that difference? What kind of mentality does it take to knowingly break into another country uninvited? It’s like people who break into houses, who usually make the news when the homeowner shoots them. Who does that? Who thinks it’s a grand idea to go break in where they don’t belong?
Oh, so do I understand correctly that you mean US immigration laws are tyrannical? Please explain.
Well, yes, that’s a decision many people do indeed make. I view it as cowardice. It’s honorable to stand and fight, and to die in battle; it’s dishonorable to flee.
I do agree with this. I just don’t think it applies to people who are outside of our society, or to people who broke into our home.
I reject that premise as certified hooey. There’s no systemic anything. It’s absolute nonsense, rooted in a deranged rejection of western civilization. Sorry, I know that’s rude, and I’m not trying to offend you personally. I appreciate how generally respectful this interaction has been. I just reject this notion out of hand.
Maybe they lay low because they’re afraid of getting deported? Honestly I don’t care how good they are for the economy. I mean, slavery was extraordinarily good for the southern economy, if you don’t count the slaves as people. So it’s not an argument I find compelling. Some things are good for the economy, or great for the economy, and yet I still oppose them. (There are other things in this category, like Chinese imports.)
I would not describe one. They’re the same people. The former are just the people who still have the means to get by, the latter are the ones who do not.
It’s the mentality of somebody who’s life is in danger, or who is trying to provide for their family any way they can. And in case you didn’t know, roughly 50% of all illegal immigration occurs through legal methods of travel, as in, people overstay their welcome when traveling but were otherwise granted legal access into the country.
People who break into houses do so because they are greedy. People who break into countries (generally) do so because they are trying to escape or provide for their family.
It’s not a battle, it’s suicide. Until some major things change, cartels will always exist due to the black market demand for them. Even if you somehow successful destroy one another will fit its place overnight because of how incredibly profitable it is. Fighting a cartel will have no effect other than to end your own life.
Why not? When black WW2 vets were denied low interest housing loans on the basis of race, and white WW2 vets were given them freely, how was that not a systemic inequality in opportunity?
It applies to all kinds of immigrants, legal and illegal. So reducing the influx of people who commit fewer crimes than the general population is short sighted.
These are people. And they are making the choice to move here and set up businesses of their own free choice. Comparing this to slavery is quite frankly silly.
That strikes me as an overly broad generalization, but maybe you’re right.
I suppose I understand that. But that doesn’t excuse the behavior.
Say you were starving, and you encounter a man with food. You ask him to share it with you, and he rudely declines. Are you justified in slaughtering him to take his food? Of course not. What if it’s to feed your family? No, that’s still murder.
Now we’re not really discussing murder here, but my point is that an immoral action is inherently immoral, and no amount of suffering or danger can justify an immoral action, nor warrant sympathy for one who commits it.
I did know that! It’s an interesting fact. And I wish it was more common knowledge. It’s why building the wall is absolutely not enough, though I’d like to see it built anyway as a preliminary baby-step.
Some major things like what? I’d love to know how to end market demand, but that’s a very hard problem to solve.
I dunno. If one dude goes up against a cartel army, sure, that’s suicide. But if an entire country organizes into a strategic war on the cartels, I think the ensuing bloodbath would be the end of all cartels in that country.
Racist behavior is despicable, and I think we agree on that. But the word “systemic” generally means invisible and imagined. You gave a great example of actual racism, and that sort of thing hasn’t happened in a very long time in the US. Today’s so-called racism is “systemic”, meaning you have to have a rather active imagination to believe it exists. (Edit: I take this back, as colleges were openly racist before the SCOTUS banned it, and woke corporations are still doing affirmative action. That’s not systemic though, it’s just actual racism.)
Yeah, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant the argument that it’s “good for the economy” doesn’t convince me, just as someone could argue that slavery is good for the economy, and many economists argue that Chinese imports are good for the economy. I don’t care. We can tank the economy for all I care. I don’t find the argument compelling.
OK, so to end the market demand for these drugs you first have to understand why they’re used at all. Everybody knows they are harmful and addictive, nobody starts using them without knowing that it will harm them. So why do they use them? Primarily it is because of isolation and poverty, which are the two biggest indicators of crime and drug use. Humans have a built in need for socialization, and without that we have to cope in some way. Poverty is very similar, when we do not have stability in our life, a good source of food and shelter, when our well-being is in bad shape, just like with isolation we need some way to cope. Often times that method is drug use.
So if we can tackle the things leading to this isolation and poverty, it can go a long way towards reducing people’s drug use. So lets look at the first of these source problems, and some solutions.
Isolation - Nowadays people have a great deal of difficulty maintaining communities. Part of that is poverty, but the largest part is how we structure our society. Here in the U.S. we don’t have any semblance of work-life balance. We are the most productive we have ever been and yet we work more than we have in almost a century. How can somebody be reasonably expected to have a social life when they must work two jobs to make ends meet? We also get far less time off than other developed nations, in large part because we have no guaranteed minimum time off. Other countries on the other hand get weeks of time off at a minimum. There is also the physical structure of our society, the city planning and infrastructure. Everything in the U.S. is car dependent. Do you want to go hang out with friends? Do you want to go to church? Do you want to volunteer? Doesn’t matter what activity you want to do, you are required to get their by car because no other valid options exist. We don’t have the freedom to travel to places through other means because all cities everywhere are built for cars and only cars. It is also just dangerous to travel by foot or by bicycle in the U.S. because so little thought is put into the safety of pedestrians. Even if something is technically within walking/biking distance, there may be no sidewalk, pedestrian barriers, or trees. We also do not have the density or mixed use zoning that is needed to allow people to make strong communities in our neighborhoods. Everything is built too far spaced out when it could easily be built with community in mind.
So to fix the isolation we need:
So that more or less covers the easy part, isolation. Poverty is a whole other monster.
Poverty - So this is a two part issue, a wage issue and a price issue. On the wage side of things, we as a society simply are not paid enough. Productivity rates have grown massively, but wages have not. And all that extra wealth that is being created is going directly to the rich. As a result people are impoverished. CEOs, company owners and shareholders take home extreme levels of wealth while your average Joe takes home crumbs at best. CEOs currently get paid somewhere on the order of 670 times as much as the lowest paid workers. CEOs are not working 670 times harder than any other worker out there. Our country has plenty of wealth to make sure everybody has a stable food source and secure housing, but the wealth is distributed such that it always goes to the rich. Part two of the poverty issue, is the price issue. Whether it is for pharmaceuticals, college, housing, or just groceries, the prices of everything have gotten completely out of hand. And that’s not because these things take much more to manufacture/maintain. The cost to manufacture insulin is about $6 a vial yet it is sold for $300 at least for example. Colleges waits shit loads of their money on administration and sports. Housing is intentionally kept scarce to keep prices up, etc. Corporations and landlords are extracting every single ounce of wealth out of us as they possibly can, and it has immensely damage our society through poverty.
There is a lot more to it than that, but I think you get the gist. So to fix this, some of the things we will need to see is:
And so that covers largely the source reasons why people start drug use in the first place. But there is still more to it. The third main category of fix for the cartels would be ending the war on drugs. It’s been ~50 years of trying to get rid of drugs and we are no closer to doing so. It’s clear that it isn’t working. Drugs are more potent, dangerous, and available than they ever have been. If we were to decriminalize use of them we would save billions of dollars that could instead go towards the above fixes, and it would also reduce the profitability of the cartel’s trade. If somebody is addicted to a drug, they should have a harm reduction program to help them through it. If the drugs on the street are more expensive, dirtier and riskier than what a free prescription can get them, then cartels would evaporate as they would have no customers. Other nations have tried this approach, and study after study shows that it is the most effective way to help people stop using drugs off the street, and to stop using drugs all together.
I find it frustrating and disappointing that kbin didn’t notify me of this reply, particularly since you put so much effort into writing it. I’m glad I noticed it.
Thank you for your well thought-out reply on this. We are certainly coming from opposite perspectives, and I disagree with you on almost every point you made, which is really saying something, because you made a lot of points.
My perspective FWIW is that regulations of business are always bad. America is supposed to be the land of the free, meaning all regulations of business should be prohibited, IMHO.
To my view, a major reason for the drug problem comes down to that same '62 SCOTUS decision. Because when we treat our bodies as God’s abode, and when we strive to be sober, drug abuse isn’t an option. And as kids have grown up without prayer, we’ve seen secularism continually rise along with depression and drug abuse.
That being said, I recognize that drug abuse existed before '62, and indeed has existed since time immemorial. And I recognize that even though I disagree with most of your points, isolation and poverty indeed may be underlying causes, in conjunction with secularism.
I don’t have much more to say on the topic, but thank you again for that very well thought out reply. I looked up Georgism and learned what it’s all about, so thank you.
I suspected as much.
A government must regulate businesses or else they become monopolies, price gougers, environmental disasters, etc. A truly free market will always result in monopolies. A free market is a competition, but competitions have winners, and winners are monopolies.
How can we be free if we are slaves to corporations?
Punishing drug addicts for being drug addicts does nothing to help them, it just makes it worse. If you truly want to help people and to make society healthy, you have to help people where they are at.
That simply isn’t an effective way of dealing with drug abuse.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Secularism is not the problem here.
You are welcome.