Hacker News Reader

Comment by themafia | Hacker News Reader

> One's choice here affects everyone else

You still owe me a court trial if you want to act on that in a way that reduces my rights. Prove that my individual choices are affecting anyone.

> if a democratic process creates rules requiring us all to be immunized for the common good, that's okay with me.

Drinking is universally a harm. We should ban alcohol. It's for the common good, obviously, and there are zero arguments against this. Why do we allow drinking? At the very least we should ban _public_ drinking. There's no sense in socially allowing this to occur.

View on HN

> Drinking is universally a harm. We should ban alcohol.

The actions that cause possible bad societal harms from drinking alcohol are indeed banned or heavily penalized. Drinking and Driving. Public Intoxication. Domestic Abuse. Child Endangerment and more.

It destroys your liver. Which one of those actions prevents that? Where is drinking to excess prevented? Why do people still die in vehicle accidents caused by alcohol?

Really. We should just stop selling it. It's insane that you think you can write a set of rules that somehow prevents harm. It merely manages the consequences of the harms. Your court cases cannot bring back the dead.

Why do we tolerate this yet take a hard line stance on far less important issues?

I can’t tell if you’re serious or not… there was that whole Prohibition thing, back in the day.

I can't tell if you're interested or not. I simply disagree with you. If you'd like to probe those differences I'm happy to oblige. If your only effort is to be dismissive then I find that rather rude.

How did Prohibition work out? Is it still going? /Why not?/

"Prohibition failed because it created a massive illegal market, fueling organized crime, widespread corruption, and disrespect for the law, while failing to stop drinking, leading to dangerous bootleg alcohol and lost tax revenue, ultimately causing public support to collapse and leading to its repeal in 1933."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com