05-23-2019, 12:41 AM
(05-22-2019, 12:16 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Or perhaps what the US could do is completely legalize the drugs trade and take it out of the hands of the criminals. Given the choice between Pablo Escobar the crime boss and Pablo Escobar the CEO I'd take him as a CEO instead. He'll just take you to court rather than cutting off your head with a chainsaw.
Drugs ruin lives. Such is the rationale for prohibitions of heroin, cocaine, meth, Quaalude, PCP, etc. Or child pornography.
Just because something is profitable does not mean that it is acceptable. I suspect that if someone came up with an entertainment in which live people cast live persons into an aquarium with tiger sharks, crocodiles, or polar bears (maybe even leopard seals) there would be paying customers, just as there were for people watching Christians being fed to "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!") in ancient Rome.
Quote:Much like prohibition of alcohol, prohibitions of narcotics doesn't work. But that is neither here nor there.
I have seen people messed up on drugs. It could be that people with problems often gravitate to drugs, and people would be far wiser to turn to something else -- like classical music. Maybe if our economic system and medical system worked better we would not have so many people dependent on opiates and meth. Oh, our economic order works well at making people already filthy rich even more filthy rich because such is the only objective of our economic elites. No human suffering can ever be in excess so long as the economic elites get what they want?
That will crash, if not this 4T then in the next 4T when those elites are brittle targets as the seas start inundating prime farmland and reducing food supplies. If this 4T does nothing to resolve the extreme inequities of our society, then I can easily imagine this country going down a route parallel to that of the Soviet Union except for being plutocratic instead of 'socialist'. Most important it will be devoid of human values, and it will be able to get people to work only with brutality because people will get few rewards for their efforts. The image of America around AD 2080 will be the drunks and dopers. Productivity will fall to meet the low level of real pay. The old Soviet joke
"We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us"
will apply.
Quote:My point, PBR since you obviously missed it yet again. is that third world people bring with them their third world problems and that first world states cannot easily address the needs of their own populations much less the the needs of a huge influx of third worlders. Or did you expect that the lack of desire for hordes of immigrants in this country sprung out of a vacuum.
Cultural differences? The bulk are from Latin America, culturally more similar to the United States than much of Europe. It is a Spanish base instead of an English base... so what? Do you have a problem with East Asian or South Asian people in America? I'd be delighted to exchange our dopers for more of them -- wouldn't you?
Bringing their problems with them? Many seem to have not done so. Most seem to want to fit in, with the exception of those Muslims who want to bring jihad with them. Anyone who wants jihad can go back home.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.