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Comment by save_ferris | Hacker News Reader

I recently watched (and highly recommend) Ken Burns’ fantastic documentary series on prohibition.

I learned so much about that era that wasn’t really covered much in school (i.e. prohibition gave rise to the first federal income tax, women’s suffrage was very closely tied to the prohibition movement, bootleggers were delivering shipments to congressmen at their offices in the capitol, etc.)

It was an incredible look into America’s failed attempt to govern morality. It reminded a lot of how we see cannabis today.

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Learning about the connection to the women's suffrage movement was, for me, completely changed my context for understanding Prohibition. For those who haven't dug into it, I'd recommend checking out this Time article: https://time.com/5501680/prohibition-history-feminism-suffra...

Ditto, I had no idea about the link before watching the aforementioned documentary. I really enjoyed it!

That documentary is definitely on my top 10 list.

It's amazing (especially in hindsight) how both prohibition's opponents didn't take the movement seriously, to how it's proponents didn't take the problems it caused seriously.

On a lighter note, HBO's Boardwalk Empire is an excellent period piece as well

Based on the non-fiction book[0] by Nelson Johnson. The show is very entertaining, while taking a number of liberties with the source material. I liked it a lot, and I'm in the process of re-watching it.

It is also very graphic in it's depiction of violence.

[0]http://www.boardwalkempire.com/

I really liked the first season, which gave a wide view of the intersection between political machines, the wealthy, mobsters, ethnic communities, WWI veterans, reform groups, etc that made up the prohibition era in a much more interesting way than a lot of treatments of the time, which tend to focus on the mobsters to the exclusion of all else.

Sadly after the first season, it pretty quickly degenerated into "all mobsters, all the time" show. Even the FBI guy joined the mob.

That was my take as well. I really liked it as a period piece, but after S1 it seemed like the showrunners kept some characters merely because they liked the actors. Michael Shannon was wasted in later seasons, IMO.

It also paved the way for law enforcement's use of wiretapping (Olmstead v. United States, 1928).

This was covered extensively in high school American History courses (in NYC in the 1970s) and in my college's required American History courses.

And even though the range of History studies is now much broader than when I went to high school, the current California public school curriculum still includes it.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/histsocscistnd.pdf

> Ken Burns’ fantastic documentary series on prohibition.

I love Ken Burn's work, but haven't heard of this one. Looks like it is PBS. Do you know if it is available to stream anywhere (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Disney, Vudu, etc?)

Looks like it's on Netflix

It was an incredible look into America’s failed attempt to govern morality. It reminded a lot of how we see cannabis today.

What do you mean by "governing morality"? Do we not have laws that attempt to prohibit harmful acts?

Laws should only be passed when you’re harming someone else.

The US has a long history of passing laws governing morality even if it isn’t harming anyone else from segregation, to laws against interracial marriage, to laws banning homosexuality.

This pattern exists throughout history.

When you look at it closely a lot of these laws (which have roots in old religious law) do have a kind of hook into "public safety." You can - through the lens of people without the technical capability to mitigate them - understand how the causality of certain acts were reflected in the creation of the laws.

The argument that was made about alcohol was that it had a systemic, cascading effect on society. I think it's a fair argument at scope. Rampant alcoholism certainly can lead to a lot of larger societal problems.

What prohibition proved, though, was that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

Of course both alcohol and drug abuse are bad. But anytime the government is given more power, it’s always applied unevenly to poor and minorities.

As much as some people love their guns for instance, the NRA and conservative politicians like Reagan were all for gun control when minorities were “exercising their rights”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

Believe me, I'm not arguing for legislating behavior and there's no shortage of hypocrisy when it's been done.

Laws mandating seatbelts work exceptionally well, though.

I agree, but even traffic laws are unfairly enforced to give police officers a reason to stop “suspicious looking people”.

I'd argue that the incessant beeping that all modern vehicles do when you don't wear your seat belt has more effect on enforcing seat belt usage than the threat of a ticket.

I think you greatly underestimate seatbelt laws. Seatbelts were seen as bike helmets back then, almost nobody used them. For example, according to this study setbelt laws increased seatbelt usage from 6% to 70% in just a few years.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000145...

>Laws should only be passed when you’re harming someone else.

Cough cough DUI cough cough liver disease cough cough domestic violence

> DUI

Is illegal and I don't think anyone here is arguing against that.

> Liver disease

That's harming you, not someone else. If the state pays for the healthcare requirements that then arise then a more nuanced argument can be made, but surely if it's your own liver and you pay for healthcare then you're harming no one else.

> Domestic violence

Once again, already illegal and I don't think anyone here is arguing against that.

I like your arguments against gun control: murder is illegal already, after all.

My argument against gun control is similar to my argument on the “War on Drugs”. It wouldn’t be enforced equally. Do you think they are more likely to arrest one of the good ol boys in the south for having a gun illegally or a minority?

Also, the US has a poor history of actually getting rid of things that people want.

We should consider outlawing DUI and domestic violence

>"The US..."

Except laws or strongly enforced social norms surrounding homosexuality, race, etc are universal in the human experience and not unique to the US.

Alcohol arguably does "harm someone else" when the alcoholic comes home and beats his family in a drunken rage, or when they lose their livelihood and cannot support their family anymore. It was these real issues affecting people other than just the drinker that the prohibitionists were confronting.

Or when they get trashed, drive home and kill people along the way...

It’s not the alcohol. The same person who is violent with alcohol is usually violent without it - even alcoholism is not about the alcohol. There is almost always an underlying issue.

The problem is people do unfortunately see those things as harming them.

It's a misguided attempt to control the culture of their community, but in their mind I think they really feel threatened and harmed.

What about laws that are banning things that are not aesthetically pleasing? They recently made a law banning 'big-foot' houses near me. It 'harms' someone's view.

Unfortunately, that causes direct negative externalities. It reduces the values of other homes. For instance, when the bank forecloses on a house, it becomes their responsibility to keep the grass cut and the house maintained. It’s not enforced in a lot of places.

Even concepts like 'harm' or 'someone else' are hard to agree with.

If I sell a kid an illegal drug, am I harming the kid? If I sell it to a young adult who I have as much belief will make poor decisions as that kid, am I harming that young adult? If I sell it to a parent who I believe will neglect their kids, am I harming someone? If I sell chemicals that will cause birth defects, but the other party agrees to them (in the 2pt font fine print), am I causing a level of harm they did not consent to? If I build an incinerator behind my house that produces the most foul smelling, but not actually poisonous, fumes imaginable and run it every day, am I harming my neighbors?

A person can (and plenty do) justify prohibition over the idea of preventing harm like you are saying.

Take segregation. If I require all facilities to equally be accessible to males and females, am I harming anyone? I'm including things like changing rooms. Enough people will say yes. Go back a few generations and people would say the same about other forms of segregation even if today's response is that if someone was harmed by it then they need to get therapy and stop being abnormal.

If I sell a kid an illegal drug, am I harming the kid?

Laws are passed all of the time that recognize that children aren’t capable of making the same decisions as consenting adults.

Hopefully few would argue that passing laws that a grown person having sex with a 10 year old should be enforced. That doesn’t mean that any type of sex between consenting adults should be illegal.

If I sell it to a young adult who I have as much belief will make poor decisions as that kid, am I harming that young adult? If I sell it to a parent who I believe will neglect their kids, am I harming someone?

If you run a retail shop and see that a parent is spending money frivolously and not feeding their kids are you morally obligated to not sell the item to them? There are so many things that parents can spend money on and not take care of their kids that can be argued about anything.

That’s why we as a society have “must report” laws when it comes to kids where people who interact with children must report suspicions of abuse.

If I sell chemicals that will cause birth defects, but the other party agrees to them (in the 2pt font fine print), am I causing a level of harm they did not consent to?

Again that comes under the same concept of the difference between laws that carve out protections for children.

Also cigarettes are harmful, but we as a society has decided that informed consent in big letters is enough and let adults make their own decisions. It’s also completely legal even under the ACA to charge more for insurance for smokers.

>Laws are passed all of the time that recognize that children aren’t capable of making the same decisions as consenting adults.

Well yes, but it shows that concepts such as "Laws should only be passed when you’re harming someone else." have some variability in how we define harming someone else. So while many people agree with your example, many people also agree with the idea that employing someone for $1/hour is harming them enough that we ban it. Less people agree (I assume), but enough to get laws passed. It shows even given the above standard, reasonable people can disagree resulting in quite different takes on what laws are justified.

>If you run a retail shop and see that a parent is spending money frivolously and not feeding their kids are you morally obligated to not sell the item to them? There are so many things that parents can spend money on and not take care of their kids that can be argued about anything.

So we thus see there are difference between engaging in behavior (that the majority believes) harms the child directly and engaging in behavior that harms the child indirectly. Is that difference enough to justify a law in one case but not the other? That's another case where reasonable people can disagree and result in quite different views as to what laws are justified.

>and let adults make their own decisions.

Well, a significant portion enough to change the laws did just recently decide that not all adults are allowed to make such decisions. Once again where reasonable people can, following the original logic, come up with vastly different laws that are justified.

My point was that such a standard is ineffective in limiting the scope of laws because of how much of such a standard is left open to interpretation.

The idea of "governing morality" was a key discussion point in the series, not my phrase.

The crux was that alcohol was incredibly popular throughout the country, but a growing political, largely puritan faction gained enough to support to ban alcohol consumption on "moral" grounds (i.e. society should rise above the immoral vice of drinking because drinking causes immoral behavior.)

Of course, alcoholism was systemic back then (the average American consumed 3-4x more alcohol back then than today IIRC), and this did cause societal issues. But the conservative ideology of "creating a more moral society will solve all problems" turned out to be a huge failure that was soundly rejected by society.

That interpretation of prohibition looks past the very reasons why it was advocated for and ultimately instituted.

You mention yourself that drinking caused real harmful societal issues, and it was these issues which prohibitionists sought to confront. You downplay this by trying to make it seem like the prohibitionists were guided by a petty morality, but their moral qualms with alcohol were rooted in its causing many social problems I think all could agree are wrong and harmful.

The desire to create a more just, peaceful, "moral" society is not inherently conservative. The Left is just as willing and eager to legislate its own morality in pursuit of creating a world that is more consistent with its own moral vision.

As someone who lives in Massachusetts, I can wholeheartedly agree. The MA governor just banned vapes for 6 weeks or so then the legislature created some new laws and a hefty 75% tax. They banned menthol cigarettes and flavored vape juice. We are literally right where we started but with a bigger tax on vaping products.

Now we can have a menthol cigarette and flavored vape black market. So much "progress"...

Edit: I don't vape so I have no personal skin in the game just willing to call out politicians.

I'm not downplaying anything in regards to how they saw it, there's incredible documentary evidence backing up the idea that Teetotalers didn't see this as a public health crisis, they saw it as a moral failure of society.

They believed that they could make America a more moral place by legislating away alcohol, which only wound up creating one of of the most powerful black markets in US economic history.

Had the Teetotalers treated the situation like the public health crisis that it was instead of a collective moral failure, they could've accomplished the reduction in alcohol consumption without creating some of the most powerful organized crime outfits in US history.

That interpretation of prohibition looks past the very reasons why it was advocated for and ultimately instituted.

You mention yourself that drinking caused real harmful societal issues, and it was these issues which prohibitionists sought to confront

The overall lesson, is that it's far better to convince than to coerce. Coercion often causes a backlash, especially when it runs counter to market forces. On the other hand, when one convinces, backlash is greatly reduced, and the change sticks.

The Left is just as willing and eager to legislate its own morality in pursuit of creating a world that is more consistent with its own moral vision.

Not just legislation. Basically anyone who controls a "platform" is willing to use that power to push their own political agenda. (Not just owners, but their technicians and hired help.) Back when such platforms were newspapers, markets could control the worst abuses. Now, platforms have much more interaction and much greater reach.

If computer networks are as deep and far-reaching a change to culture as the printing press was, then it should be expected that the conception of human rights should have to change to accommodate such change. In 2020, we need our own version of "freedom of the press" which applies to platforms.

Completely agree that we need to update how we think about freedom in regards to big platforms.

In the age of newspapers there were thousands across the country and major markets were often served by many popular newspapers, giving a home in print to many different political views. The market forstered (political) diversity in ownership.

Contrast this with today, where major social networks and tech companies have absolute control over what we see and interact with, and because network effects are more powerful in social media than print media, there are just a few social networks which reduces competition and the possibility for diversity of ownership in the industry.

The existence of a small set of corporate overlords who in secrecy can powerfully influence how people think, behave and react is very scary for those of us who value a free and open society.

The behavior of social networks and platforms therefore must be regulated to ensure the immense power that comes with operating a social network at scale is not abused for private ends. Their power is too great to avoid a political solution.

> drinking caused real harmful societal issues, and it was these issues which prohibitionists sought to confront.

Caused? I doubt it. Exacerbated? In many cases yes. But taking away the alcohol didn't solve any of the underlying problems.

> But the conservative ideology of "creating a more moral society will solve all problems" turned out to be a huge failure that was soundly rejected by society.

Is that truly a conservative ideology? Because to me that's almost the definition of progressivism. "Let's change things to make them better" isn't conservative, and especially not "let's change something that's been around for millenia".

EDIT: Moralizing to prevent change is conservative. Moralizing to enact change is progressive. Methods vs goals, if that makes sense.

Progressivism and conservatism are not equivalent to reform. I disagree with your assessment insofar as the terms are commonly used today. Now that gay marriage is legal, is this now a conservative cause? Would it now be progressive to argue for it to be banned? If I argue for zero federal income taxes, is that a conservative cause or a progressive one? How about if I argue for doubling the income tax?

The problem is that drinking in and of itself is not immoral. But certainly immoral behavior can become exacerbated by excessive alcohol or drugs intake. That much should be obvious on its surface.

> huge failure

Is there any objective way to assess success or failure of such an experiment? Drinking dropped around 50% when Prohibition started and never recovered its previous place. The incidence of the evil consequences of drink remains much lower today than in 1919. How much longer must these consequences remain reduced until Prohibition is objectively evaluated as successful?

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