Evidence and strategies for alcohol control as crime control | Hacker News Reader

Evidence and strategies for alcohol control as crime control

manhattan-institute.org

10 pointsobjections24 comments

Interesting stuff.

Before controlling alcohol (which is largely a symptom of the real problem, imo) what about evidence and strategies for income inequality control as crime control? https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/06/07/the-star...

The problem with that solution, which I agree is better, is that helping poor people not be poor is unpopular with the people who have the means to provide that help.

Alcohol can be a symptom, but having more money doesn't make you necessarily drink less.

So I think Alcohol is a problem on its own, and it also causes a lot of families to stay stuck on low paying jobs.

It's not really a controversial point, that limiting alcohol limits certain undesirable behaviors. Every bar I've ever heard of allows and usually requires bartenders to cut people off. Almost every locality has restrictions on where and when you can buy alcohol, where you can consume it, etc. The more interesting question is whether we think that the positive social effects of alcohol itself and/or people's freedom to drink (or "individual responsibility" to quote the first sentence of the author's institute's mission statement) are sufficient positives to offset the negatives. (And which political forces see themselves as having a stake in influencing that conversation).

Indeed. None of this stuff is new, but it requires a "is this measure reasonable and proportionate to the problem" discussion which isn't black or white.

Evidence and strategies for people control in the name of crime control.

I mean .. yes? Crime is committed by people. To control crime is necessarily to control people, to coerce them into not performing certain acts. Laws, courts, police: all systems of control.

would you consider, say, making camping in public a felony the same sort of “control” as education, affordable housing, job opportunities, etc.? specifically with respect to solving homelessness.

That's a coercive form of control, whereas affordable housing and job opportunities are not in and of themselves. However, some jurisdictions can make them coercive by making them an opportunity people cannot refuse without legal consequences.

(Both this and my previous post should be regarded as descriptive not normative, that is a statement of how things can most coherently be described rather than how they ought to be)

Anti-homeless spikes are control. Unsleepable bench designs are control. Heck, even a sign can be control.

right, that’s basically my point: i think we can draw a distinction between a coercive control here (i.e. forcing someone to do something they otherwise wouldn’t want to do), and an incentive/root issue correction (i.e. encouragement/elimination of need).

to suggest that both approaches are basically same because the end result is the same, would be like saying all discussion is manipulation.

put bluntly, if people commit crime we could end all crime by killing all people. clearly this is worse than any suggestion thus far :)

If you can be controlled through access to alcohol, I'd say you have a problem.

This is true, the hard truth is that many people do have a problem with alcohol.

Yes, but I doubt a government could "control people" at a societal level through control of alcohol addicts.

The article isn't about controlling people, so much as controlling the access and availability of alcohol. And not everyone who has a problem with alcohol is necessarily and addict. Consider the difference between a wedding reception with and without an open bar and the likelihood of drunken incidents. Compare that with a reception where there is no alcohol served at all. True that a hard-core addict can sneak some in, but the chances of the rest of the guests behaving badly reduces substantially and proportionately with their ease of access to drinks.

The article isn't, but the post I replied to is.

> not everyone who has a problem with alcohol is necessarily and addict

I said if you can be controlled via alcohol you have a problem (with alcohol, an addiction) not that everyone who has a problem with alcohol can be controlled through it. I would argue anyone who can be controlled via alcohol is an addict, and not just someone with a problem.

Ok, then back to the wedding reception example. Imagine someone who is not an alcoholic, just a regular person who has a drink now and again. This person, if given access to an open bar, might have a few too many drinks and cause a scene, but if it was a paid bar would only have one or two and be fine. The person's behavior could therefore be 'controlled' by changing the availability to drinks; i.e. putting a cost on each drink reduces how many they have and the corresponding bad behavior they could potentially engage in if they had too many.

But then, that would be "crime" control legit, not "in the name of".

I don't understand what you mean by this.

Evidence and strategies for genocide in name of people control.

"The mission of the Manhattan Institute is to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility." [1]

That last part seems pretty antithetical to the idea that you should limit people's choices about alcohol, because of the negative consequences of those choices. That sort of seeming hypocrisy of course invites the question as to what this group's unstated motives are, and since it's a right wing American organization, I'm sure you can think of plenty of theories.

[1] https://www.manhattan-institute.org/about

I’m all for questioning a group’s motives. But protecting personal liberty for everyone sometimes requires limiting personal liberty. I like to be free to not be killed by a drunk driver, for example, and that means we cannot leave drunk driving up to “personal responsibility.” I generally think people should be free to not be assaulted on the street, or by their spouse, or by their parents. I’m not sure that restricting alcohol is the best way to do that. But if it were I don’t think a principle of individual responsibility would get in the way. The crimes they are discussing are not victimless, they impact both individuals and society.

The mission does not include anything to check that these are good ideas, or even practical.

So it's pretty upfront about disseminating propaganda.

Left and right wing definitions are becoming increasingly blurred. The big difference seems to be on exactly what they want to restrict. Neither seem to have personal freedoms or responsibility at the top of their lists and only use these phrases to hide motivation.

Historically, at least in France post Napoléon and until ww2, the center was the current government, the right wanted to go back to a previous system/societal organisation (at first monarchism, privilege and landed nobility (to some degree, see Montesquieu), then to a parliamentary monarchy, then to 18th century capitalism... Etc) while the left wanted change never tested before (first parliamentary monarchy, then a republic, then allowing women to vote... Etc).

The fact that left and right became more indiscernible might be because nowadays, most politicians wants untested changes in some domains, staying the course in others, and going back to a previous state in a few.

So definition like 'the right wants more freedom, the left more equality' to me misses the point. The real interest of left and right is to discern what your endgoal society is. If you want to get back to guilds and corporatism, you are economically far right. If your policies help get back to the robber barons state by allowing monopolies and stop regulations on natural monopolies, you are right wing, idc if you are a democrat or a republican.

Sometimes, it is just balancing the two.

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