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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33969 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Victimless crimes that harm no one should not be crimes.

This is just a slogan, not an argument. It is exactly what I mentioned with the first principles thinking. Plus it is interesting that you say this right after you talk about how jury can convict somebody who did something criminal under influence. Victimless crime, right?

This is just a slogan, not an argument. It is exactly what I mentioned with the first principles thinking.

Punishing activities that harm no one is nothing but a waste of resources. When you want to deter negligent car crashes, punishing drunk driving separately just because it may lead to negligent car crashes is unnecessary.

Plus it is interesting that you say this right after you talk about how jury can convict somebody who did something criminal under influence. Victimless crime, right?

  • Driving intoxicated: No victim

  • Hitting someone with your car while sober: Victim

  • Hitting someone with your car while intoxicated: Victim (extra penalties for negligence)

I disagree. The problem with legalizing vices on the premise that there’s no immediate victim creates social problems that the general public will often have to pay to fix damages. If we allow people to drive around drunk, obviously the risk of eventually hittIng someone is a serious problem and one that could be prevented by simply not allowing people to drive cars while intoxicated. This also avoids the problem of the state having to support the medical care of the driver and whoever he hit for a good long time.

With other vices, it can be a problem for much the same reason. If I’m high I am unlikely to be able to keep a job, much more likely to injure themselves or other people, more likely to be abusive (depending on the drug). These are burdens on the state that the taxpayers are going to have to pay to clean up.

Punishing activities that harm no one is nothing but a waste of resources. When you want to deter negligent car crashes, punishing drunk driving separately just because it may lead to negligent car crashes is unnecessary.

This ignores so many other effects of drunk driving. You get in a car drunk and manage to make it home without hitting anyone? Great. But only because you were lucky, and meanwhile you were increasing the risk to everyone else on the road. People like you will cause a higher number of accidents and fatalities, increasing the cost of everything from insurance to health care to everyone else. People will make have to make strategic decisions about when and where it is safe for them to drive (with their families) based on the knowledge that people like you can legally be blitzed on the highway and they can't do anything to avoid you except not share the road with you.

This is where I think most libertarian principles fail. Yes, you can take everything to the extreme that "if you might possibly impact someone else the law gets to regulate your behavior" and we end up in a hyperregulated safetyist society. There is a balance between public interest and personal rights. But it has to be a balance. You don't get to just live in a society and say "I can shoot guns in the air, the police can't stop me or do anything about it unless and until one of my shots lands on someone and kills them."

This ignores so many other effects of drunk driving.

As a driver - alcohol is way less dangerous than sleepiness. I personally think that we should have field capacity tests - for reflexes and judgment. If you fail them no matter of the reason - inebriation, drugs, tiredness, old age - you get fined massively.

Anyway with self driving taxis now reality this discussion will probably be rendered moot.

Too many people would never pass such tests. Some people have better reflexes and judgement while impaired than other people have when awake and sober. The impacts of such a policy would also be too disparate.

Too many people would never pass such tests.

Such people should perhaps not be driving then?

It is a slogan as it just steers the discussion into what is crime, if it has to have some violent or social impact component, what is victim and all that. Plus I am unwilling to accept the premise of your slogan before we even begin the discussion.

I put it into GPT and apparently trespassing, prostitution, gambling, public intoxication, loitering, public nudity, vagrancy, unlicensed hunting or jaywalking are all examples of "victimless crimes". So yeah, I will bite the bullet and just admit that actually victimless crimes should be crimes. Because I do not want to have a society where intoxicated nude vagrants trespass and loiter on streets outside of pedestrian crossings, hunt local birds and sell their gambling scams and their bodies for everybody else to see. Go bark your slogan up somebody else's tree.

I don't see any upsides of legalizing weed, there may be only hidden downsides. Exactly how Scott Alexander now realized.

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