This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
How is it that so many people who are in favor of criminal penalties for recreational drugs use also came to believe that the covid lockdowns were bad because they were an assault on liberty? I think that an authoritarian argument such as "we like small businesses but we do not like drug users" at least is logically consistent although I find it disagreeable. But how is it that so many people who think of themselves as fans of liberty do not notice the contradiction? I believe that even here on The Motte there are some people who make libertarian-ish arguments against the lockdowns yet support the criminalization of recreational drugs.
In general much of the non-authoritarian right's attitudes toward recreational drugs make no sense to me. I dislike the authoritarians but again, at their arguments are consistent. Is this largely a matter of conservatism still being dominated by older people who have a learned-long-ago and now reflexive dislike of the idea of recreational drug use? A reaction against the hippies, some sort of view that drug use in general is politically left-coded and/or linked to sexual promiscuity? As a new generation of currently-young conservatives becomes dominant in the movement will we see the right become more accepting of recreational drug use? Given that so many on the right now enjoy thinking of themselves as dissidents against establishment orthodoxy, perhaps they will at least begin view psychedelics more favorably given that those drugs have at least some power to liberate people's mental attitudes from orthodoxy.
My argument against legalizing marijuana(yes, I know, you mean all drugs, but I’m arguing against the most politically favorable interpretation) rests on the following points-
1: occasional pot use by adults is probably not that bad. But daily use- which tracks way up under legalization- and adolescent use both appear very bad. With alcohol, we accept some frequency of both daily use and adolescent use(even if it’s de jure illegal) as the price for legalizing; I’m not in favor of doing the same for pot.
2: occasional pot use by adults is not that bad, but it’s still not a good thing that should be encouraged except perhaps by people suffering from incurable pain or something like that.
3: marijuana culture is bad and I don’t like it, and like it or not the aesthetics of a society really do influence it’s values and priorities. Other societies- including some which I neighbor- have proven entirely unable to prevent marijuana culture and it’s aesthetics from running rampant and taking over absolutely everything in environments of more permissive pot laws.
4: it smells bad and places like Colorado or NYC which have permissive regimes seem unable to moderate its use.
5: with the society we have, laws are rarely enforced to their maximum extent. Legalizing marijuana even with tight restrictions to curtail undesired/problem use is likely to result in those tight restrictions being ignored or evaded at very high rates because laws are not typically enforced maximally. Additionally, with marijuana in particular, we can expect big city prosecutors(that is, those in the sorts of places where most people live) to be highly sympathetic to marijuana use in a way that creates even more room to evade regulations.
Yes, a lot of them are individually rather weak reasons, but that’s why I listed five of them. To my conservative view authoritarianism isn’t an intrinsic evil; it’s something societies need less or more of depending on how they normally behave. 50’s America would have been fine with legal weed, modern day America isn’t.
More options
Context Copy link
Conservatives are not libertarians.
-Frank Herbert
Except neither the left or the right are really the principled parties of individual freedom and when the other can gain the levers of power they're going to start pushing authoritarianism if not in general at least on their pet issues justified either with deontology or consequentialism.
More options
Context Copy link
If I put on my Antivax hat, there is a very simple argument that covers both: "don't put chemicals in people's bodies that are bad for them."
More options
Context Copy link
Finnish culture continues to be fairly strongly against the legalization of any recreational drugs, including cannabis, even if it is probably not quite as strongly as before. Meanwhile, many strong opponents of cannabis legalization or even decriminalization advocate for loosening alcohol laws (including having been against bar restrictions during the Covid era), something that cannabis legalization activists have pointed out as an inconsistency numerous times. Sometimes the cannabis restrictionists basically respond by - and I'm only slightly paraphrasing - that of course cannabis cannot be legalized, because it's a drug, and drugs are criminal.
Without a strong opinion on this topic myself, I've resolved that there is a strong correlation - in Finnish society, but probably also in others - between legality and morality, in the sense that something being illegal automatically takes it into the immoral territory and if something is immoral, well, that is already enough argument for not legalizing it. 'course, if the illegal thing is legalized, it pretty soon also becomes not-immoral, and there's no further argument needed for keeping it legal, and indeed proposing illegalizing it now becomes an onerous restriction on freedom.
Drug restrictions for lost people is a sort of disgust/purity issue, as a holdover from Christianity and other various religions. In my experience when pressed people don’t have good reasons against it.
People will bring up ODs of course but then if you point out that legalizing/decriminalizing heroin and allowing use in supervised scenarios will decrease ODs (like they did in Switzerland) you get the whole “I ain’t gonna pay for those people’s heroin!!”
So your saying someone is “lost” if they don’t want to fund someone elses drug use? Seems reasonable to me.
Besides the giant issue that not many drug addicts want to do their drugs in an institutionalized setting.
I’m saying someone is “lost” if they care more about arbitrary standards of purity than actually solving the horrific problem our society has with drug use. They’re going to pay either way, but the status quo means a lot of people are going to die for their foolish beliefs.
Whats the foolish belief ? Heroin is bad for you? That feels simplistic to me but it doesn’t feel like that bad of steelman to me.
Dope fiends are going to do fentanyl if it’s available. I don’t see a solution than lock a lot of people up. Some burnt out dope fiends will use your treatment centers but not most.
Afghanistan solved their drug issues since the US left by locking everyone up and forcing cold turkey quitting. Believing in that doesn’t feel “lost” to me.
The foolish belief is a standard chemical model of addiction, and the idea that it’s a failing of willpower. Drug addiction is caused by a society wide lack of purpose, meaning, etc.
Blaming addicts is foolish and unscientific, doesn’t solve the problem in fact it makes things worse. Again look to how Switzerland dealt with their heroin problem.
So your just going to ignore the Afghanistan model? Which has worked unlike say San Francisco?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I would largely put it down to severity of the imposition. It's not exactly positive restrictions versus negative restrictions, but that is a component of it.
To adhere to all Covid regulations and suggestions, you had to
1: Wear a mask whenever you go outside. This requires you to buy a mask, remember the mask exists, have this thing on your face restricting your breating and constantly reminding you of its existence, be unable to see the faces of the people you interact with, and have your adherence be publicly displayed.
2: Not travel to places or spend time with friends and family as much as usual. Not go to work for several months, possibly having severe repercussions on your finances. Change your entire daily routine, and that of your family. Watch your kids miss several months of proper schooling. Have you and your family potentially suffer negative mental health effects.
3: Inject yourself with a newly invented vaccine that may or may not work or be safe (it does work and is probably safe, but that's hard for a 100 IQ person to know when everyone is lying constantly). Multiple times, because apparently the first one isn't good enough.
This was a huge deal. The entire country changed, for years. The economy took a huge blow leading to supply chain issues and massive inflation that it still hasn't recovered from (though part of that is that it rolled into the Russia sanctions, but the bulk of it was Covid). And the rules kept changing every week and people had to keep paying attention and changing their behavior in response. The Covid lockdowns were a big deal. You can argue that Covid itself was a big deal and therefore it was worth the cost, but it was a huge cost.
Meanwhile, to adhere to recreational drug restrictions I have to.... do nothing. I can literally do nothing, go about my daily life, and be in compliance with the restrictions. I can not damage my health by inhaling or injecting foreign substances, and not spend my money on a thing that I don't need or want. People who don't know that recreational drugs exist are in compliance with these restrictions, because it's a restriction against doing something, not requiring you to do something, and it's not something most people want to do anyway. It has literally no impact on the majority of people, so they don't care. You might compare it to if the government outlawed Skiing or something. People would get upset and protest that the restriction was stupid, pointless, authoritarian and evil. But they would be less upset than the Covid lockdowns, because most of them would not be impacted and could comply by simply going about their daily lives not Skiing. And if Skiing had already been illegal for decades then people probably wouldn't get that upset about it, because they wouldn't have made it into a hobby they enjoy or bought equipment for it in the first place.
The ability to use recreational drugs is just not a big deal for most people.
I am a firm proponent of legalization, but I'd say this makes some sense. I am personally much more upset about the consequences of the drug bans (and the horrible "War on Drugs") and the theoretical loss of freedom aspect of it than by actual hardships involved in being personally unable to consume drugs (which for marijuana in the US is none anyway, you can get it practically anywhere easily, even if it's not legal there), especially since I never had any desire to consume any (besides alcohol). This does not apply to medical marijuana though - the fact that marijuana is still officially considered by Federal government as Schedule I - i.e. having zero medical uses - is a colossal idiocy. Everybody knows it's a lie and it harms a lot of people, and still this persists. But for recreational purposes - yes, I'd say the direct effect of such a ban on me is pretty much zero. I still oppose it on the other grounds, but probably I'd feel much less upset than about something that involved personally infringing my freedom and making my personal life worse. Such as COVID lockdowns, for example, which did insane, totally infuriating amount of harm.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A utilitarian frame is logically consistent. Recreational drug use kills a lot of people. In terms of preventable life years lost I would say it’s equal or higher than COVID. Weren’t we around 120k overdose deaths per year and the average death is probably about 40 years old? So you are talking about 40 life years losts per drug death versus like 5 years from COVID death (and mostly late life).
I believe a quant would have no problem making this distinction. Someone whose base a view from “libertarianism” I guess wouldn’t.
A lot of it probably is just tribal but I do think the math makes it rational to have those opinions. And you can probably make a religious argument for those positions too - COVID being natural deaths versus drugs being ungodly etc.
Those 120k deaths happened under a regime of prohibition, so how are they supposed to be evidence in its favor? Of course you can say drug deaths would be way more without prohibition, but that requires further argument (e.g. comparison with places or time periods that had fewer restrictions), which you haven’t given.
We prohibit drug use in the US?
I see needle exchanges in San Francisco and gift packs. I don’t see drug users getting 6 months in an institution to clean up when they use.
Yes, we do, and we spend an enormous amount of money and time enforcing that. Also, it's illegal to federally fund needle exchanges, they're all state or privately run and have to be authorized by state law, and almost all states have extensive laws against drug paraphernalia. And cherry-picking the city with the laxest policies on public drug use in the country, which actively encourages homeless junkies to come there, says next to nothing about what the rest of the US is like. Not to mention that in 2020 (the peak of ODs this decade) San Francisco's rate of OD deaths was about the same as that of Kentucky or Ohio, which are not exactly famous for their state governments' lax attitudes toward drug use.
I’ve never met someone in jail for drugs. Everyone I know has used them. And have known a few ODs. Doesn’t seem enforced in practice.
The plural of anecdote is not data. With that said, I'm not sure how that is even in principle supposed to show drug laws aren't enforced. It isn't per se illegal to be high, what is illegal is being noticeably high in public or possessing drugs/drug paraphernalia. And cops obviously can't just conduct random searches of people's houses to see if they're getting high/possessing drugs in private (without probable cause). So what laws did everyone you know break, or give authorities probable cause to think they were breaking, such that there would have even been an opportunity to enforce them against them?
It could also be that drug laws are being enforced, but they just aren't effective at curbing drug use, and that would produce the same outcomes you're describing. Since whether drug laws are effective is exactly the point at issue here, to treat these instances as proof that drug laws aren't enforced is question-begging.
Honestly think your just being argumentative or don’t go into the party scene. It’s not hard to buy drugs in a club. You could run a sting and find a bunch any night of the week.
And for probably cause. It’s standard for all services to carry narcan in a lot of places. That’s probable cause right there. Those people aren’t getting arrested.
Police departments already spend lots of time doing drug busts, because they get to seize the cash (and much of the other property) that they find, so it's often a major source of revenue. What evidence do you have that stepping up stings would actually make it hard to buy drugs in clubs and the like in the US?
I don't understand what you're saying. Why would it provide probable cause if someone is carrying narcan? And probable cause for what crime? Narcan is legal with a prescription in most if not all states, and half the time the person carrying it is doing so for use on others.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I highly doubt that most OD’s would otherwise be living til 80. Another 20-30 is probably reasonable, though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not opposed to recreation, I'm opposed to face-eating, overdose deaths, addiction-derived desperation, and the other negative consequences of drug use. Calling the substances in question "recreational drugs" is assuming the conclusion.
Lockdowns were a larger imposition with more missteps and less justification IMO.
Marijuana, at least, is not a big issue along these metrics. AFAIK it doesn't cause "face eating" or overdoses and from a pure addiction standpoint (let alone the direct health consequences) it's no worse than alcohol and substantially better than tobacco.
Yup, which is why I didn't oppose marijuana legalization back when it passed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's probably a way to square that circle and make the two positions cohere, but the better explanation of incoherent Covid stances on both the right and left is that it's just political tribes picking a side and circling the wagons. In March 2020 there were right wingers who were gungho on pandemic restrictions and left wingers who were blithe to the danger and also were anti-bigpharma vaccine skeptics. But a variety of factors pushed the median left winger to be pro-restrictions and the median right winger to be anti-restrictions. After that both sides rallied around the flag.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link