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Comment by marcus0x62 | Hacker News Reader

Why would that be a good idea? If you don’t want to drink, then don’t. Kindly leave me alone.

That would be fine if drinking didn't affect people's ability to satisfy their social obligations (as coworkers, parents, friends, etc.) but that's not the case.

Fascinating that you keep getting downvoted for stating completely obvious observations. I would have thought your reasonable explanations could convince this supposed 'rational' crowd but apparently not.

Drinking sometimes for some people impairs their ability to meet their social obligations. Prohibition was an unmitigated disaster and you have to be a special kind of idiot to think trying it again would produce a different result. People like to drink alcohol.

Prohibition is the go-to example of banning alcohol not working but I think this is blurry thinking. In no other area of policy would you just point to one big example of something not working and thereby declare the whole approach off limits.

The whole argument seems like a discussion-ending cover for people's emotional attachment to alcohol. It completely doesn't engage with the cost-benefit analysis of how alcohol affects the functioning of society at large or navigate any of those tradeoffs.

Prohibition was not an “unmitigated disaster.” By some measures crime and domestic violence fell dramatically.

See: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...

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