Continuously opining, intermittently publishing.

Archive for the ‘Immoral’ Category

3
June

Read this piece by Joseph Sobran. It begins:

My arrival (very recently) at philosophical anarchism has disturbed some of my conservative and Christian friends. In fact, it surprises me, going as it does against my own inclinations.

As a child I acquired a deep respect for authority and a horror of chaos. In my case the two things were blended by the uncertainty of my existence after my parents divorced and I bounced from one home to another for several years, often living with strangers. A stable authority was something I yearned for.

Meanwhile, my public-school education imbued me with the sort of patriotism encouraged in all children in those days. I grew up feeling that if there was one thing I could trust and rely on, it was my government. I knew it was strong and benign, even if I didn’t know much else about it. The idea that some people — Communists, for example — might want to overthrow the government filled me with horror. . . .

9
February

Drug laws are fundamentally unnecessary, immoral and dangerous.

They are immoral, because they abrogate the freedoms of individuals to ingest and imbibe the things that they wish, as stupid or unwise as taking those drugs may be. The government overreaches when it legislates and enforces laws to prevent people from making poor choices that do physical harm to only themselves.

Further, because the government is the worst allocator of economic and moral resources, i.e the sum of the individuals comprising government are synergetically more wasteful and corrupt together than they are individually, its policies and enforcement are logarithmically more wrong the more people who are affected or “covered” by the laws in force. Moreover, the application of the laws are largely due to an incomplete understanding of the subject matter and are corrupted by lobbying.

As an example, caffeine, a legal and necessary drug for much of the population to function, would instantly kill a person if he were able to powderize and ingest the same quantity as some people do when they take cocaine. Yet, caffeine is invisibly and minimally indirectly regulated by the FDA whereas the DEA will use automatic weapons to secure a cache of cocaine.

Oxycontin, the drug mimicking the hormone that the hypothalmus orders to be released during orgasm, is a prescribed medication in hospitals, and is vastly more addictive than other drugs (as evidenced by society’s new discovery of oxycontin abuse) for obvious reasons. But marijuana, which patients have used to some benefit of relief, cannot even be legally prescribed according to federal law.

So what drives the illegality of certain drugs over others? Tradition, the inability of the federal system to admit wrong when it has quixotically pursued an unattainable goal, lobbying and fear.

I am not passing opinionated judgment on the morality of use of a particular drug at this time, but even if I did, it is far more immoral for the government to decide what is okay for you to ingest, precisely because the government is not able to effectively allocate resources or ensure a consistent morality to its own or your own actions. Your choice to use drugs, as improvident or banal as it may be, is for you to decide with respect to your wishes, predilections, your family’s desires and your relationship with the Almighty.

Drug laws are unnecessary, because though addiction to drugs does lead people to do drastic things to feed their addictions, criminal and tort law was as (in)sufficient beforehand without the specific drug laws to deter violent and immoral acts by drug addicts to gain what they perceive they need as it is currently.

Possession laws do not prevent drug users from committing violent crime. Criminal law and moral upbringing prevent drug users from committing violent crime. Possession laws simply give people disincentive to possess drugs. They are unnecessary, because criminal assault, battery, murder, and larceny laws (and their attendant attempt counterparts) suffice as do their analogous common law torts.

Meanwhile, drug laws are dangerous, because the artificial degradation of supply always ensures that both price and risk for obtaining the commodity increase. This occurs in what is commonly known as a black market. Black markets ensure violence, and other evil behavior between the parties in the market, precisely because of the risk of punishment by the so-called legitimate government who has the power to enforce its laws with a nearly limitless budget and powerlust. In order to avoid being caught and sentenced for a lengthy term for selling drugs, a dealer may kill an informant or a counterparty and risk a murder charge in the hopes that he will not get caught.

Take the black market away by not making drug use, sale or purchase illegal, and it will instantaneously remove the incentive for intra-black-market crime. The price of drugs will also drop precipitously, because supply and demand will not be artificially constrained, and the attendant ills caused by the interaction of addiction and artificially high prices will be greatly lessened. Who needs to rob someone else for a coke hit when coke is 1 cent per ounce?

Drug laws not just exacerbate but cause the ills caused by the risk inherent in a black market. They also are a but-for causation of the increase in violent tendencies of people who were otherwise peaceful but foolish when they are sent to prison and are forced to adapt to the facility’s Lord of the Flies culture of violence.