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I doubt that murders will really have gone up massively with a persistent ban, but I would also expect that alcohol consumption that would diminish sharply with a small on/off switch would be down by less with a long-term, planned, codified ban. Telling people they can't buy something for a few weeks might engender a few oddball workarounds, but it doesn't result in the development of long-term, sustainable institutions of illegal production and distribution (which we see develop with any in-demand black market item).
I do agree that there's a stylized version of American Prohibition where people just accept a simple narrative and engage in some motivated reasoning about how their preferred policy was the right thing in all ways. I'm sure there really were tradeoffs and that some sorts of violence would go down with alcohol bans. Ultimately, I'm against prohibition because I like alcohol and don't like the government, not because I have high confidence that it actually increases violence. I don't think this is a luxury belief in the traditional sense - I am aware that this is probably bad for some people and I don't think I gain any performative social esteem from holding it.
Yup.
The Prohibition impact isn't really the problem. The first order effect of prohibition is to decrease availability of [banned thing]. The long term effect is to decrease legal availability of [banned thing].
The second order effect is to push the markets for [banned thing] underground, correlating more or less with how badly people still want [banned thing].
And the third order effect, or one of them: when merchants of [banned thing] can't use normal conflict resolution/contract enforcement methods, they have to invoke base violence in order to operate. Wars over turf, breaking kneecaps to collect on debts, burning down establishments that don't pay protection, killing snitches, those all become necessary to the business. And then it eventually becomes organized and systemic.
They can't use the court systems and the state-sanctioned violence, so unless you have a full-on police state, this stuff will spill over into civilian life.
So yeah, flipping a switch on and off between "banned" and "legal" will show some effect, but leave the switch on "banned" long enough and you'll ultimately see a system evolve which perpetuates violence. THEN maybe you can assess whether the additional violence is worth the actual harm reduction achieved by the ban.
It seems unfortunate that for many things there isn't a stable equilibrium of "Legally permitted but socially verboten" where a given activity or product is not banned, but the social judgment that comes from engaging in it is so severe that it necessarily remains hidden on the fringes of society, so there's 'friction' involved in accessing it, and most 'right-thinking' people avoid it because they don't want to risk the social consequences, even if they're curious.
One option would be to make the thing not 100% verboten, but a massive hassle to have legally, like Title II weapons.
For example, you could still sell alcohol in bars and restaurants, but they would have to close at 9pm. Not stop selling alcohol (easily exploitable), close outright. No alcohol in grocery stores, only in designated liquor stores that have to be at least 10000 feet away from the nearest grocery store, cannot open earlier than 10am or close later than 4pm, must stay closed on weekends and holidays, can't take cash, can't sell more than 200ml of ethanol to a customer per day.
Bringing alcohol for personal use from another county would be legal, but you would have to declare it before consumption. You would have to take it to the police station, pay a per-container fee if you have more than six containers and get the containers stamped within two days. If you were found consuming unregistered alcohol, it would be a crime and the fine would be 10x the price of alcohol levied on both the drinker and the owner of the premises. If you were arrested for public intoxication, you'd better be able to prove you had consumed enough allowed alcohol, or your BAC would be used to calculate how much you had drunk.
All this would mean that getting a beer after work would not be impossible but would be a hassle. Your best option would be having one at a restaurant. Or driving to a wet county for a sixpack every week. Or spending your lunch break driving to the local liquor store.
Not even disagreeing, but realize that when you try to create 'clever' regulatory schemes like this you're up against the innovative power of every entrepreneur in that space.
Every single exploit or loophole that can be found will be used to the hilt, so you'll probably have to constantly adjust your regulations to add friction back into the system as market actors find ways to remove it. Kinds of like, I suppose, how Zyn has taken off with the decline in smoking and the general low-status of chewing tobacco. Or more directly, how vaping stepped in to replace smoking as well.
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When marijuana was first legalized where I lived, it was a massive PITA to get it and there weren't that many dispensaries. The illegal trade still retained a huge portion of the market share. At a certain point, legal vs. illegal isn't what people are choosing based off. It also becomes convenient vs. inconvenient. If the above rules were put into place, you'd find no shortage of "beer guys" within the month.
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This is just taking the US experience of Prohibition and expanding it to cover all bans in all countries.
Taiwan and Japan ban drugs just fine. They are not police states. There are no gangs or violence associated with drugs.
Some things are hard to ban, some easier. And there is a large amount of cultural difference too. But most bans do actually reduce consumption of the banned thing without too many negative consequences.
This is not just US Prohibition. Drug gang violence is a major problem. A review of murder statistics implies our high murder rates are drug gang activity. We are indeed not a nation of Japanese people and Japanese Americans are not typically imprisoned or killed over illegal drugs.
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I've said it before, I am completely prepared to admit that Japanese people are less likely to be violent regardless of the policies they operate under.
See my point:
Japan doesn't have the huge drug-addled underbelly that the U.S. does, to my knowledge.
But they DO have Yakuza, who keep things orderly but, I emphasize, STILL rely on violence to enforce their business practices.
And allegedly the decline of the Yakuza is opening up space for more violent operations who are harder to police because they're less legible. Although as mentioned elsewhere, Japan is pretty close to being a police state.
So... my EXACT, PRECISE point still applies to Japan, even if less obviously so.
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Japan is totally a police state.
Have you been to Japan? I spent two and a half weeks there, spending time in various parts of the country, and I think I can count the number of police officers I saw on one hand.
"Police state" isn't just a function of uniformed officers. I don't totally agree with the description, but if you consider "fearing the police" a critical part of a police state, I'd point to the absurd conviction rate and the idea that you'd just expect to get arrested if you started any sort of disruptive crime as indicators that the Japanese largely "fear" (probably uncharitable, more like "respect and comply with" in practice, I think) law enforcement.
As compared to the US where I've seen no shortage of people doing (minor, mostly non-violent) crimes right in front of police officers.
The Japanese conviction rate being so high is mostly a result of two factors:
The Japanese take confession cases to trial (the confession is presented as evidence), so they show up as "conviction" in Japanese statistics whereas they show up as "not a trial" in almost every other country's. Because confessions are very common, this drastically inflates Japan's conviction rate.
Japanese prosecutors are actually quite reticent about pressing charges without a confession, so cases that might show up as "acquittal" in another country tend to show up as "not a trial" in Japan.
Japanese culture is indeed hilariously disgusted with criminals (the best example is probably the manga/anime Death Note, in which a vigilante who decides to kill all the criminals - but who can only kill the ones who the justice system has already caught - is presented as morally ambiguous rather than an utter lunatic), but AIUI their justice system isn't actually as vicious as you'd expect from that (note that Japan does not have jury trials, which is probably a good thing).
inaccurate, there are some cases shown where Death Note vigilante kills criminals before they could be caught
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They obtain the confessions by coercion, basically what detective novels call "the third degree". You can be held without bail for 23 days at a time, and if you don't confess in that time they can re-arrest you for another 23 days on your way out of the jail.
I mean, false confessions are a problem with the Japanese system, yes. Was thinking about editing that in but you pre-empted me.
Note that while they do push pretty hard, it's still AIUI hardly peine forte et dure (either in the original "food and water on alternate days" sense or the later "lol we crush you with weights" sense).
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I thought the Yakuza were pretty involved in the drugs trade.
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This isn't true. First link I found.
To a first order approximation it is true. The murder rate in Japan is around 0.3. In the United States it is 7.
Drug use is confined to a tiny minority. And with almost no junkies, there is almost no market for drugs.
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Why ban on commercial surrogacy or human cloning or CP or deepfakes doesn't result in breaking kneecaps, burning down, etc.
What does that have to do with prohibitions? Protection racket is a form of tax used by proto-state-actor with short time horizon.
Well as I said:
Drugs and alcohol are an ur-example because the people that want them REALLLLLY want them. Similar with prostitution. Gambling too. I imagine legalized sports gambling has made it far harder for criminals to make a buck on it now.
It helps when the thing is legal overseas or is more readily produced overseas and can be transmitted electronically so there's no need for interpersonal violence at the consumer level.
Like, we had a brief change in the drug trade when crypto was still new and allowed Silk Road to exist, and money could be exchanged for drugs without the need for violent enforcement. But the state cracked down and so we slid over to the standard equilibrium.
I do not think people "really" want alcohol unless acculturated into it by other people. There are many Muslim nations with ~0 alcohol consumption and these countries have none or little of these long-term effects you propose.
Many Muslim nations still have drug problems, but with drugs other than alcohol: qat and captagon come to mind most prominently, and aren't to my knowledge issues in the West. Opium was an issue in Afghanistan, but IIRC the Taliban was actually against it.
I don't know if the quintessential Western hard drugs (meth, fentanyl, probably missing a few because I like my life boring) are major issues elsewhere in the world these days.
Meth is a thing in developing countries with really long work days.
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I mean, with Islam they also abstain from Pork despite that being an insanely popular dish in most countries that can afford bacon.
They've got the sort of equilibrium that I suspect is hard to achieve for most places.
I've also noted before how unlike most other immigrant groups, Arabs/Muslims DON'T seem to create any organized crime syndicates in their host countries in the way that, say Irish, Italian, Russian, or various South American immigrants did in the U.S..
Instead, they tend to form political units which, in their worst instantiation look like ISIS, but even in milder form look like Hezbollah or the Taliban.
So, STILL engaging in violence, but directed to a very different objective.
What about rape/grooming gangs in Europe?
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Aren’t Arab criminals a major problem in some European countries, eg Sweden? I’ve certainly heard from Dutchmen that Moroccan organized crime is a serious problem over there, as well.
Sweden has seen a noted uptick in criminality in immigrant-heavy suburbs and it has significant boosted their violent crime rate.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisakim/2021/10/22/swedens-brutal-gang-problem-heres-what-officials-blame-it-on/
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Could you expound on that difference? My understanding of American immigrant crime syndicates is that they were also historically quite involved in machine politics like Tammany Hall. I'm not sure if the mafia, for example, became a bipartisan bugbear of its own volition, or more because it became politically expedient to oppose organized crime circa the 1930s. There are probably still rumors of involvement by organized crime in politics -- maybe see the current longshoremen union?
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Human cloning: not enough people want it badly enough. Same probably goes for surrogacy, with the added fact that anyone who could afford the criminal price could just afford legal workarounds.
In the case of CP I think it results in similar behavior to drug prohibition. Extensive criminal networks, child trafficking and all the associated crimes, etc. the people who want it want it bad, will pay for it, and have no easy substitutes.
Deepfakes are currently too easy and still readily available even when technically illegal. No market when the supply is nearly infinite and demand is relatively low.
None of those things are comparable. A better comparison is bans on drugs, which do result in broken kneecaps and gang shootings, and bans on prostitution, which result in the same.
How do you know when it's universally banned? Asking that question in a poll is like asking "are you a bad human who deserves to rot in jail?"
Wouldn't deepfakes solve previous CP problems? Deepfakes of any kind might be not so accessible anymore since we're still in yearly stages on banning it. E.g. in China it's OK with just "deepfake" watermark (or what it is) and South Korea only banned it 6 days ago.
I notice a complete lack of any social judgment towards those who'd like human cloning to be legal, or anything adjacent to that. For contrast, look at the social judgment towards those who want to look at naked pictures (including obviously drawn pictures) of young women (including the obviously fictional ones) who are 17 years and 11 months old.
If you looked at society without knowing the laws, you'd probably assume that human cloning is legal, it's just that there is no use for it and that's why no one does it.
No, people who want cartoon River Tam porn are not judged in any way shape or form by society except possibly for not being able to shut up about it.
There's a funny thread not long ago you may have missed.
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This.
Furthermore, alcohol is significantly easier to produce than other drugs, such as methamphetamine. With meth I would likely get caught the moment I tried to source precursor chemicals. With alcohol, all the precursor substances are easily sourced in any supermarket. Building a still is probably the hardest part, but the general principle is simple enough. If alcoholic were willing to fork over half their salaries to be supplied with shitty booze, then a lot of producers of shitty booze would pop up overnight. A total prohibition on alcohol seems about as enforceable as a prohibition on masturbation, but with a lot of people actually going blind.
Of course, prohibition will still deter some people drinking in the long run. But most of the discouraged drinking would not have lead to violent crimes down the road. Your median alcohol-induced murder or rape does not happen because someone drank two glasses of wine at a fancy restaurant, or by some partying kid who was fine to spent the night at a dry bar instead of finding an illegal booze-serving place.
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