Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> You can take two views of humans.

Nothing in life is black or white. Life has many shades of gray (more than 50).

> Freedom means being able to make bad choices.

Yet here we are, where you're fined for drunk driving or for not wearing a seat belt.

* * *

There are no penalties for making bad choices that only affect <<you>>. But almost every choice you make, good or bad, affects someone else.

For an example of a very personal and selfish choice that actually impacts <<others>>, if you don't wear a seat belt and die, your family will greatly mourn your loss, but they might also not be able to make it without your financial support and have to get help from social services or from others, which others have to pay for. You'll probably turn a small accident into a big accident, and if you're not the only person in the car, you'll traumatize those with you for life (again, maybe needing help which others will pay for!) plus you're probably going to total the car (which the owner will have to pay for).

Humans aren't trees falling in a forest, trees that no one can hear falling.

* * *

Simple rule of thumb: if a restriction has been agreed to by diverse societies across the world, across tens and hundreds of countries, maybe it's there for a good reason and you're statistically not smarter than billions of people. I hope you are, but I'm willing to bet you aren't.

Approach these things more humbly, please.

> There are no penalties for making bad choices that only affect <<you>>. But almost every choice you make, good or bad, affects someone else.

Sure there are, easiest one to reach for is the consumption (or even ownership) of various drugs.

Beyond that there's prostitution in many jurisdictions, and no doubt there are other "victimless" crimes still on the books (basically those formed around morality - and therefore moral harm - rather than an otherwise identifiable harm or loss).

The problem with reaching for the "almost every choice you make affects someone" trope is that it's very easy to use it to justify any moral panic you choose. Sodomy (and by that I mean non-procreative sexual activity) is an excellent example whose laws were still active in some states up to 2014* (and maybe still).

* https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/21/12-stat...

> Sure there are, easiest one to reach for is the consumption (or even ownership) of various drugs.

Drug consumption is far from victimless. Even light drugs such as marijuana have negative effects on your cognitive abilities. That has an impact on others (the archetypal example being parents distraught by their children becoming drug users).

Stuff such as heroin, cocaine, meth, definitely have serious side effects for others.

If anything, your argument backfires spectacularly, since in a world where this would be possible alcohol, tobacco and possibly coffee would also be banned, for their disastrous consequences (coffee isn't really disastrous, but it's not that good, either).

I remember reading somewhere that the mortality rate on others (i.e. someone drinks alcohol and someone else dies due to that) of alcohol, for example, is second only to heroin (maybe meth, too?). It beats out stuff like cocaine or marijuana, for example.

> Beyond that there's prostitution in many jurisdictions, and no doubt there are other "victimless" crimes still on the books (basically those formed around morality - and therefore moral harm - rather than an otherwise identifiable harm or loss).

Prostitution is not victimless. It's mostly a female occupation (male prostitutes are a very small minority) and a good chunk of female prostitutes are abused and practically forced into it. I mean, it could be victimless, but in practice coercion is so present that it's almost impossible to separate the two.

> The problem with reaching for the "almost every choice you make affects someone" trope is that it's very easy to use it to justify any moral panic you choose.

That's why I said that only stuff where there's general agreement, including both liberal and conservative countries should be considered. For example murder would fit, since there really isn't any jurisdiction where murder is not a serious crime.

> Sodomy (and by that I mean non-procreative sexual activity) is an excellent example whose laws were still active in some states up to 2014* (and maybe still).

I agree. For your example, I'm having a really hard time to come up with real life, scientific, documented, negative side effects of sodomy on others. So it's much easier to distinguish between moral panic/aesthetic (let's be honest here, it's mostly an aesthetic thing, many people are just disgusted by it).

Both of the issues you cited with drugs (harm caused by action performed whilst on drug) and prostitution (coercion) are the crimes rather than the drug or prostitution itself.

Driving while intoxicated should certainly be a crime, as should rape, or forms of coercion like intimidation. These are one step removed from the acts themselves though.

With prostitution we should be acting to separate the violence etc from the act, and one way to do that is to not punish the victim. Provide support, reduce moral judgement.

Regarding sodomy (not just buggery, but onanism, buggery, oral sex, anything non procreative), I suspect the reason provided initially would be that it's preventing conception. This limits the expansion of a culture. The aspect of disgust came later (see ancient Greek consideration of the topic vs Abrahamic faith).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com