[ExI] Same Sex Marriage (was Re: Call To Libertarians)

[Darren Greer]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>wrote:

>A group got together some money, went
into a drug infested area of an inner city neighborhood with a doctor
and offered a few hundred dollars to any young lady that wished to be
relieved of her reproductive capacity. To me this is a
win-win-win-small lose situation. If I had a million dollars, I think
this might be my favorite charity.

The problem is that drug babies cost the country a HUGE amount of
money. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars per child, over their
life time. The girls don't really want to get pregnant for the most
part. The beauty of this solution is that everyone is a volunteer in
the equation.<

This seems reasonable, at first blush. The problem is, and I'm making this
assumption based on your post, that you're speaking of drug addicts Cravings
for certain types of drugs such as heroine and crystal meth and cocaine are
so powerful and so dominate in the mid-brain--over-powering sex drive,
hunger and even the instinct for self-preservation--that you can offer a
drug addict money to do just about anything and they will likely do it.
 People would, and gladly do, kill someone because they are offered a couple
hundred dollars to do so. Granted there is at least one involuntary
participant in this transaction.

But you could offer money or something else she really wanted or saw herself
as needing to someone who was mentally challenged to have herself sterilized
and perhaps convince her, because she didn't have the mental capacity to
know what she was agreeing to. Drug addicts in the throes of their
addictions need to be treated the same way, as if they have a disability. A
more complex but equally cost-effective solution would be to get that person
in treatment and clean, where they could make better decisions about
reproduction and everything else. But then again, here treatment is covered
by the state, and I know in some places it is not. About ten percent of
entrants get clean, which is a pretty low rate. But it saves the state and
individuals an enormous amount of money in the end, for it is not just drug
babies that are expensive. Drug adults are too -- hospitals and detoxes,
shelters and foodbanks, welfare and crime.

And the war on drugs is useless, as all wars ultimately are. As Dr. Terry
Tafoya said, "'Just say no' to a drug addict is as about as useful as 'have
a nice day' is to a manic depressive."

Darren
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