Thanks for the considered response. I appreciate it.
Fair play for responding to the money argument. That's fine. But redirecting that it's _only_ about money misses what I thought the actual point was. A fairer way to reframe my accusation is that the OP offered two claims, and you addressed one (money) and ignored the other, then claimed that the other (freedom) was a different goalpost. I think it was the main goalpost, to begin with.
>If you remove money from your rephrasing of the argument you get “I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State” which is different: I don't mind if you really want to self medicate, nor does the state (as illustrated by the fact that there's no felony or crime for self medication), but in average it's a pretty poor idea: you're way more likely to harm yourself than achieve your goal. If Steve Jobs died because he wasn't smart enough to make the proper medical call for himself, so can you.
Agree with you. I think they are powerful and dangerous, but I am against a nanny state. We should outlaw things that have profound negative effects, such as children with developing brains taking these compounds.
>If you really want to do it “because freedom”, then go for it, but if you do it because there's money at stake like OP, then you're not actually doing it freely, you're doing it under economic constraint and blaming “too much state” is delusional.
Fair point. I don't think that was the case, but I can see why it might seem like that.
>The argument being made was, in short, “it's too fucking expensive, fuck the state” when the reality is that it's expensive because the state doesn't want to intervene, which is what I pointed out.
I think you're half-right. It's expensive because the state has facilitated a black market. It would still likely be expensive due to taxes and regulation, if it were legal. Universal healthcare probably lowers costs, but I hate the argument that "because I'm not paying directly, it's free." We have that now with insurance, and it's a lie.
>Also, “personal sovereignty” is an oxymoron unless you're a king or some autocrat. Sovereignty is a collective process, it's “we the people” not “Me myself and I”.
Personal sovereignty is a thing. It's about autonomy and the right to choose what you do with your body and your property. There are fuzzy areas, such as where those choices might impact others or the environment, but I believe in it as a fundamental right, not a positive one.
>The comment I responded to at the beginning was complaining about the cost of health professional, it wasn't at all about psychedelics in particular, and that's the argument I responded to.
The first one explained, "I remain resistant to this insertion of the state into what should be my right to use my own mind the way I see fit." Yes, they mentioned cost as a factor, but I read that as incidental to the "real" issue.
Apologies for playing the "offensive card." I put a lot of stock into my ability to identify root causes and figure out problems. If someone comes along and presupposes that I'm wrong about my framing of an issue without explaining why, that does feel like an affront. It feels like a theory of mind violation. It felt like you were claiming, "You say that you care about sovereignty, but you actually only care about access. If it was free you wouldn't be complaining." How could you know that? You're not in their head. You skipped a step, and just assumed. I'm hyper-sensitive to this type of thing. I suppose I was projecting this onto your reply to the OP.