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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I know this is somewhat tangential to the story, but with now it looking like there will be a bunch of newly-minted billionaires in the burgeoning cannabis sector, I can't help but think of all of the (largely poor and minority) people whose lives were ruined by marijuana charges.

It's just kind of fascinating to me how we reserve the terms "drug dealer" mainly for (again, largely poor and minority) illegal drug sellers, but that very word "drug dealer" conjurs up more than illegality, but a real moral judgement that these are "bad people". But if you're rich and pulling on the levels of power to do it "correctly", you are a forward-thinking entrepreneur.

Not really sure what my point is in posting this, but just I guess as a reminder that how we even talk about morality is subtlely guided by the structures of society that are not "right or wrong" in and of themselves, but just how powerful people set things up to benefit them.

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What is also amazing about this is that it made me hesitate strongly about legalization of all drugs. Big ass companies selling drugs almost immediately as the market opens up is not how I pictured "decriminalization". Should coca-cola just sell straight up heroin? Should one of these companies produce internal documentation about the damages of marihuana and hide it, just like tobacco did?

I guess getting older gets you more conservative..

How did you picture it?

More like "organic farming", or "small batch alcohol" for a long time. I mean i pictured the actual criminal producers turning legit.

In America this attitude (of seeing successful drug lords as talented entrepreneurs) has a long history, going back to early English colonization efforts. The English "settlers" in what is now Virginia were aspirational freebooters, hoping to follow in the footsteps of Cortez. When that failed hard, they eventually became what we would now call 'drug lords', with tobacco as their product of choice.

Similarly, rich-person's opioids are distributed legally (often) and are a drug treatment and addiction problem. Poor-person's opioids are criminal distribution and a law enforcement problem, treated in prison. Until sentencing reform, rich-person's coke (powdered cocaine) received much shorter sentencing than poor-person's cocaine (crack).

The difference, IMHO, is between the familiar and the 'other', between us and them, between feeling safe and feeling alarm. If someone of my milieu does it, it's one deviation from a norm I understand; they aren't threatening to me; they have my empathy or even my secret envy for doing something exciting. If someone of an unfamiliar milieu does it, it could mean anything; will they rob me? Kill my family in a drug-fueled rage? Undermine the foundations of society? It creates fear and alarm.

At an individual level this may be true, but it is becoming necessary to ask if this is a standalone phenomena or symptomatic of a system with one class extracting resources from another. Is the problem just a pattern of fallacy in the perception of privileged people, or is this pattern borne of the group interest to extract and control the underprivileged en masse, not explicitly or consciously thought about by almost anyone but economically incentivized?

To give another ex. it used to be common for people to be really uncomfortable with the idea of women having full-time jobs. Did this interpersonal discomfort create the system of gender roles where men extract domestic labor from women in marriage, or was the discomfort a function of this system?

That's one of the most interesting questions I've read on HN; thanks; I've really had to think about it.

To refine the question, I think it is, 'to what degree' does each factor - perception or system - cause the other?

First, I'd love to read someone who has studied the issue and has expertise in the domain, if anyone has any suggestions.

Obviously, I don't know the answer. I'd wildly guess that the economic system creates inequality which creates social division which creates the perceptual fallacy which reinforces it all. I'd also guess that for some the economic system creates a conscious desire to control the underprivileged; Thiel might be a leading example: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."[0]

Also, any system gains the self-reinforcing phenomena of normalizing itself (perhaps defined by the perceptual fallacy that the system is inevitable or the best of all possible worlds) and of vested interests who act, consciously and unconsciously, to protect the system that benefits them.

[0] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

Going off on your point about "morality is subtlely guided by the structures of society...", the division that's created where people are put into morality buckets of "good people" and "bad people" have a lot to do with past government propaganda. What I mean by that is drug commerce in the early days happened through p2p cash exchanges, there was little govt oversight and thus govt couldn't extract taxes from these transactions.

So if govt can't extract taxes directly, they do it indirectly by criminalizing the act, then funnel even minor drug offenders through the prison system where they can finally get their piece of the pie.

Now that state govt's have figured out how to benefit from marijuana sales, they've become more receptive of "drug dealing" as long as you play by their rules and they get a share of every transaction that occurs.

There's also the issue of religion playing a big role in demonizing drugs. I do not want to make a statement in saying religious groups are "right" or "wrong" on the topic of drugs, but I will say they have a large voice in what the U.S. deems as moral.

Just adding a few thoughts/discussion points to your insightful commentary on current society.

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