Philosophical question : Whats the moral difference between sexuality laws and drug laws?

[nhbbear]

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[HomerThompson]

Like

 

[nhbbear]

I am a bit pissed because my long, thoughtful first response disappeared.

So here goes.

I will assume you are referring to the sale of sex, as few would argue that rape and sex crimes involving children are not a crime. I believe that prostitution should be legal, but restricted to red light districts and tax it. Keep soliciting on the streets by crackwhores illegal. Restrict the use of the internet to set up dates in hotels because that is closely related to human trafficking. Women, young girls and illegal immigrants, are often transported from state to state and operate out of hotels. They have to fork over a good portion to scumbag pimps, and while not held captive(some are), they are not always allowed to quit or leave.

As for the drug issue, marijuana should be legal and taxed. Meth, crack/powder cocaine, and heroin should still be illegal. Why? Well, not for puritan reasons, but because of the huge impact those drugs have on an individual, their family, and the community. Healthcare issues related to addicts drive up costs for everyone. Using narcan to treat overdoses and the subsequent er visit is forced onto the community, as the addicts are unable to pay their bills. The black market sales of these drugs are related to, and often cause violent crimes such as murder and gun violence to protect turf and punish addicts that don't pay their debts.

I believe that we need to increase in patient treatment centers, but the costs are so high, that there is a large push to prescribe addicts "weening" drugs such as suboxone(subs), subutex, and methadone, which addicts have to go to centers to get a daily dose to ease withdrawal. Subs and subutex are prescribed and are abused, traded, sold, and used just like heroin. Subutex are strips that can be dissolved in water and injected. The addicts that have these needs still use heroin, they just use the Rx drugs to get by until they get their heroin. I can't even begin to describe the number of people that we arrest for a great number of crimes, and the arrestees always have subs on them.

The illegal drugs also drive crime in the form of theft of everything, shoplifting, fights and disputes, shootings, murders, panhandling, homelessness, pissing and shitting in public parks and alleys, prostitution, and a great number of other issues. Besides the healthcare costs to treat addicts, they walk around like zombies and make the area look shitty.

This is not nearly as complete as my first response that was lost, but this still about covers it.

 

[lecter]

Entitled to meaning that the the citizen is entitled to a certain level of service under the law.

Now, you can argue that implementation is flawed and inconsistent. That's a far argument. But it's the flawed and inconsistent application of the standard to which someone is entitled. In the anarchism model, there is no standard, period. There is no debate as to whether or not someone is being treated to a lower standard as you point to with the Detroit mom and Zuckerberg.
[...]

I disagree because you're making a purely utilitarian argument, to begin with. Both, your initial argument, as well as the conversation we had based on your argument, were only discussing what would "work" better.

Otherwise, the discussion would be a very different one. Both systems have inherent problems independent from their implementation but those aren't seen as a moral problem by the advocates of either system.
An exclusively market orientated form of society might not be able to offer protection for every single citizen.
Somebody who believes that every human interaction has to be based on voluntarism, either contracts or donations, will not recognize a problem there. He will respond that one individual's needs alone don't put moral obligations onto other individuals, that those certainly can't be enforced, that negative rights of those individuals who might either help or pay for help, trump the positive rights of another individual to help, that a solution based on coercion isn't a solution and so on.

In a statist society, we might claim we can provide protection to every member of the society. Of course, statism doesn't solve the problem of scarcity of goods and services and that's only possible because others are forced to fund service which one might not be able to acquire on his own. A statist will not recognize a moral problem there either. He might answer with implicit social contract theories, legitimization of political authority through a democratic process, arguing that government and society aren't distinguishable etc

But no form of society solves those respective moral problems from the ideological opponent's point of view.
They will always cancel each other out.

Your argument that it's only a problem of implementation goes back to what I said earlier: The only distinction is a hypothetical and moral one which currently isn't provided by any system. You might say "well on paper everybody does receive the same quality of services provided by LE, everything else is a matter of implementation. In Greoric's model of anarcho-capitalism, there isn't even anything which could possibly be implemented". But at the end of the day, that means: In both systems, it's theoretically possible that everybody has sufficient access to LE services, neither system effectively guarantees it in reality. So the question if having it written on a piece of paper makes a difference is a hypothetical question of morality. An argument which anarcho-capitalists will dismiss since they don't recognize a "right" to law enforcement services at all.
And regarding the efficiency or the actual outcome, writing something a piece of paper is meaningless.
Writing it down doesn't guarantee it and not writing it down doesn't make it impossible. Sorry for the long post.

 

[Greoric]

I disagree because you're making a purely utilitarian argument, to begin with. Both, your initial argument, as well as the conversation we had based on your argument, were only discussing what would "work" better.

Otherwise, the discussion would be a very different one. Both systems have inherent problems independent from their implementation but those aren't seen as a moral problem by the advocates of either system.
An exclusively market orientated form of society might not be able to offer protection for every single citizen.
Somebody who believes that every human interaction has to be based on voluntarism, either contracts or donations, will not recognize a problem there. He will respond that one individual's needs alone don't put moral obligations onto other individuals, that those certainly can't be enforced, that negative rights of those individuals who might either help or pay for help, trump the positive rights of another individual to help, that a solution based on coercion isn't a solution and so on.

In a statist society, we might claim we can provide protection to every member of the society. Of course, statism doesn't solve the problem of scarcity of goods and services and that's only possible because others are forced to fund service which one might not be able to acquire on his own. A statist will not recognize a moral problem there either. He might answer with implicit social contract theories, legitimization of political authority through a democratic process, arguing that government and society aren't distinguishable etc

But no form of society solves those respective moral problems from the ideological opponent's point of view.
They will always cancel each other out.

Your argument that it's only a problem of implementation goes back to what I said earlier: The only distinction is a hypothetical and moral one which currently isn't provided by any system. You might say "well on paper everybody does receive the same quality of services provided by LE, everything else is a matter of implementation. In Greoric's model of anarcho-capitalism, there isn't even anything which could possibly be implemented". But at the end of the day, that means: In both systems, it's theoretically possible that everybody has sufficient access to LE services, neither system effectively guarantees it in reality. So the question if having it written on a piece of paper makes a difference is a hypothetical question of morality. An argument which anarcho-capitalists will dismiss since they don't recognize a "right" to law enforcement services at all.
And regarding the efficiency or the actual outcome, writing something a piece of paper is meaningless.
Writing it down doesn't guarantee it and not writing it down doesn't make it impossible. Sorry for the long post.

And actually, utilitarian grounds are where the argument is actually strongest. We know how inept and inefficient monopolies are with the provision of any given service that the market currently provides. It's also reasonable to conclude that services like law and security are at least as difficult or complex to produce than other goods we wouldn't dare apportion to the government to produce.

So why have we come to the arrangement that law and security be provided by them?

 

[Da Right Cross]

As in whats the moral difference between sending someone to jail for having sex and sending someone to jail for possession of drugs?

Public health? well promiscuous sex is a public health issue too.
Public order? you cant do drugs in your own home either.

I'm pro drug legalization but this is obvious. Sex involves two parties while ingesting drugs is up to individuals.

 

[lecter]

And actually, utilitarian grounds are where the argument is actually strongest. We know how inept and inefficient monopolies are with the provision of any given service that the market currently provides. It's also reasonable to conclude that services like law and security are at least as difficult or complex to produce than other goods we wouldn't dare apportion to the government to produce.

So why have we come to the arrangement that law and security be provided by them?

Well, I see the logic from their point of view. Once you've established that there's absolutely nobody who doesn't have access to sufficient services in a statist society and if you don't distinguish between an actual result of voluntary interactions on a market and a result achieved through coercion by a central planner, you can claim that no Pareto improvement is possible, which apparently is the criterion of choice here, and therefore all alternatives should be turned down.

Also, the thought of having services like what's currently called 'Law Enforcement' provided by a market is often reduced to the strawman-ish 'lol so everybody buys his own army of policemen lol', which is then compared to our current system. So a caricature of the dumbest and most simplistic form of a market-orientated solution is compared to what was established and allegedly improved for how many years now? 200 or something (in the US). People don't see a problem with using a forced insurance scheme for something which is inherently incompatible with the idea of an insurance because using it on a regular basis is expected (healthcare) but think a true insurance scheme for something which actually is only needed in case of emergency (protection) could never work. Most things besides emergency can be made a transferable good on a market anyway and therefore be offered to somebody who has the means to enforce it.