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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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Amphetamine salts are simple and cheap to manufacture, less than a penny per dose in an unregulated market. Yes education is competitive, what is fair about being born smart or more in control rather than taking drugs? Ritalin me that.

The sorts of people who take illegal drugs are mostly not the sort who use adderal for its performance enhancement.

I can't disagree with this statement more.

Methheads are known for deep concern with their test scores.

Those aren't the only people taking drugs - cocaine is rather famously a rich person's drug extremely popular with people in finance who absolutely abuse whatever drugs they can get for performance enhancement.

Why do you disagree with it, or on what grounds?

It seems clear to me that most people who use illegal drugs are not using them for performance enhancement, but rather using them for pleasure. If that's true, wouldn't the above statement necessarily be true as well?

I'd assume that most people who use illegal drugs don't care about violating rules if they can get away with it. This would mean they're more likely to violate rules against using performance enhancers as well as rules against recreational drugs. It's not because the pleasure drugs and the performance enhancers are similar, it's because the same kind of people use both.

That has not been my experience.

Just an FYI, AhhhTheFrench’s comment is filtered and not visible.

Wake me up when we're dealing with an unregulated market or a fairness-based reality.

We are discussing currently non-existent future states of humanity, and what it would take to get there. An unregulated fairness-based reality would be preferable, at least for me, to a gilead style oligarchy where everything is permissible for the .001% and everything is prohibited for everyone else.

I don't think 'we cannot realistically prevent the 0.001% doing things they want to do' and 'oligarchy where everything is permissible for the .001%' are equivalent, morally speaking. To take a provocative example, we cannot prevent sufficiently powerful and motivated individuals from having parties at Mr. Epstein's island, but that doesn't mean we should legalise paedophilia.

I'm more inclined to agree with you at the 1% and especially at the 10% mark, where I think hypocrisy and two-tier policing are more corrosive (because more frequent and visible) and more preventable.

I've been to epstein's island. Post conviction, on a lark with our tour guide/captain. But as you say, far below his level of depravity and privilege the double standard becomes an issue.

These drugs are long term bad for you. The true cost of long term use is not a penny per dose.

Yes I already addressed this.