Hacker News Reader

Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

Functional or not it is illegal. Both functional and non functional heroine users can be put into prison for life with no parole and it will fix both the problems of dysfunctional people roaming around and people dying from it. With real consequences people will actively avoid such substances. It will clean up society and disincentivize new people from trying as they will bot want to give up their life and family for something so petty. It needs to be overwhelmingly obvious that it will mess up your life for good if you try or distribite even a little bit.

View on HN

What you said here is essentially "Because it is illegal and they knowingly broke the law we should ostracize these people from society" without ever broaching whether it should be illegal or not to start with or if drug use by itself deserves being ostracized.

Yes, that is what I did.

Daily reminder that Boston Tea Party was illegal. If those people were properly punished then US wouldn't have got independence, and the world would've been a much better place.

Britain losing America as a colony was a major fail. If they had properly dealt with those people who had participated it would have slowed down the movement of American gaining its independence. It serves as a warning not to let small crime fester as those people can cause larger problems through network effects.

not only tough on crime but a committed imperialist. nice.

I don't think the United States had a much different policy towards the original inhabitants than the colonial government of Britain. Slavery became illegal in european colonizer countries earlier than in the United States. (Some argue it still isn't.)

It's not the colonized people that gained freedom, it's the colonizers who were freed from taxes so they could exploit more unregulated.

In this case it is between one imperialist country vs. another, so wouldn't label that position imperialistic necessarily.

thank you for the history lesson. my conclusion is that both empires were/are bad, not that we need to be tough on crime like the person i was replying to said

I think what charcircuit meant was that the independence of the United States was an internal struggle of the british upper class and viewed through the lens of them was bad and could have been avoided by another policy.

in conclusion, we should criminalize drugs because the crown should have wielded its legal power better to prevent the American revolution. you know what I would watch that ted talk actually

In conclusion, you need to enforce laws, otherwise it becomes normalized to not follow them and the only peaceful option is to revoke the law.

it's certainly a framing on the American revolution I haven't heard before

It's not a framing I haven't heard either ( :-) ), but I think that was what he wanted to suggest. I have however known this stance in general, and I think I agree to some point. You can always view a revolution from the side of your enemy, the lessons will be important when you are the large empire.

I think the wars and revolutions to free countries from being colonized were never honorable (like all wars) even when they served a greater good in the large scheme. I even think that also applies to WW2 (Churchill famously said later they should have gone after USSR first), there is always some dirty stuff going on from all sides, and maybe it applies to the American revolution as well. These revolutions often spark from egoistic interests even if they claim to fight for the greater good.

these are all true and great things to keep in mind, but I'm still struggling to work out how this relates to drug criminalization policy

There are people who think it is a crime and there are people who don't. Having something being a crime and not prosecute it hard enough makes both factions unhappy. The claim is that starting to prosecute a crime lightly leads to a shift in mentality in the society, which leads to people who don't perceive it to be a crime. This will eventually lead to it being inevitable that it is allowed. The policy claim is that you need to prosecute it harder before it comes to late. (I am inclined to agree to these claims.) The fact that you refer to it as "criminalization" seams to be evidence, that it is already too late.

My personal opinion, which wasn't stated yet, is that after a phase of lax regulation the problems become excessive, which leads to a larger part of the population to agree to a harder regime. After some time nobody remembers these things so it tends to become lax again. In other words I think this is going in circles, so I don't think we need to try it this time. Have a middle way and help thus who can't get off by themselves.

I tend to agree, but worth considering that Britain would probably not have banned slavery when it did if it still controlled the southern US.

Independence was happening no matter what.

We've been sending people to prison for heroin use for decades but people still seem to take it up.

Even the non-legal consequences of heroin addiction always seemed real enough to disincentivize me from trying it. Clearly those who become dependent on heroin approached their use from a different perspective than mine so I expect any solution I could think of to help these people would have to look outside the realm of 'what would work for me.'

Both functional and non functional people without empathy can be put into prison for life with no parole and it will fix both the problems of dysfunctional peoplewithout any morals. With real consequences people will actively avoid being assholes.

You’re right, we should also shoot the left handed and start persecuting religions we don’t like by sending them to death camps.

In the US is not illegal to be left handed, nor does being left handed ruin anyone's life. It is in no way comparable.

by God it should be

Why help people when you can just get rid of them instead /s

The goal is to improve life for law abiding citizens. Removing these from society is helping all the people in society. 2 birds with 1 stone.

As long as the society won't decide you are to be removed from the society, too.

At which point I'm sure you will comply and decide to sacrifice yourself for the society, you will, right?

What has happened in your life that you are so devoid of empathy?

I would not be above the law if that's what you are asking.

>so devoid of empathy?

I'm using my empathy to improve the lives of the many people who have to deal with people dying or having their lives ruined by these drugs. Improving the lives of people who have to deal with dysfunctional people on drugs. There are also second order affects that many more people are suffering from.

So you have no issue with "the final solution regarding the jewish question" then? Because that's exactly, what they were doing, they weren't doing anything illegal.

It's not helping the addicts. Nor is it helping the people who don't want to live under a brutally oppressive and cruel regime.

Addicts are a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the greater good of the populace. For how much heroine can ruin people's lives I do not think it is oppressive or cruel to punish people with the loss of a life in perpetuating such a life ruining substance. But it is still helping those people due to the benefits of addicts no longer existing.

Personally I'd be more inclined to sacrifice people advocating cruel, oppressive policies for the greater good if we should consider sacrifice someone, as I consider those attitudes far more harmful.

This is the problem with advocating policies that sacrifices anyone: Someone else will want to sacrifice you

“Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com