[ExI] Deficit spending and never admitting you were wrong

[William Flynn Wallace]

I got some of my libertarianism from Heinlein. In one of his novels he says
"We'll feed and take care of your family but if you won't work you can
starve."  It's not just the drug addict that needs help - it's the family
too.  You want to be tough on the addict - fine - will you let his family
starve?  I would not and I think that most libertarians would not.  Status
restored.

Our laws now protect everyone   I never should have said that.  I dunno
what I was thinking.

I have no idea what the addiction recovery rate is.  Depends on the drug, I
am sure.  I am also pretty sure that tens of thousands of homeless people
are addicted and have been in and out of therapy for years and are still
shooting up.  I have no idea what to do with them like the street people in
SF that Spike and I have been discussing.  I do not know what not treating
them like helpless people would be like.  How would you get tough on street
people?  Many of them are cross-addicted as well, and a large percentage
are mentally ill.  Getting tough is no solution to that, whatever that
would mean.

Totally agree about drug prohibition:  good money after bad, or even good
money after good. Has there ever been a bigger federal government failure?

bill w

On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 10:46 AM Dave Sill via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 6:37 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> I used to think exactly the same thing with regards to drugs.  I still
>> think it about gambling and prostitution.  But over the years I have come
>> to realize that total access to drugs - antibiotics, for example, which
>> would ruin their effectiveness asap - is not a good idea for everyone and
>> maybe not for anyone.  I hope I don't lose my libertarian standing here,
>> but people are just too weak.
>>
>
> Libertarian standing: revoked.
>
>
>> These are powerful drugs, like Fentanyl.  You would not destroy society
>> but you would have drug 'prisons' (treatment centers) far larger than the
>> ones for criminals.  I dealt with my own problems but most simply cannot,
>> it seems.  Our laws now protect everyone.
>>
>
> Bullshit. They ruin lives and create a black market that kills more people
> than the drugs would.
>
>
>> People, many, many, I don't know how many, need to be protected from
>> themselves.
>>
>
> No. People need to be treated like adults, not nannied.
>
>
>> If I were a real hardnose I could just say "If they want to kill
>> themselves that is none of my business."  But it is.  It takes big tax
>> dollars to deal with addiction and it would increase by more than one order
>> of magnitude with total access.
>>
>
> We spend a fortune on drug prohibition. If we spent half that on treatment
> we'd be way ahead of the game.
>
> -Dave
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200528/dbd10dff/attachment-0001.htm>