On 8/9/2010 5:48 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 8/9/2010 11:36 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:36:16 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>
>>> [...]
>>
>> There's not a lot there I can (or would) disagree with. However that
>> seems to go against what you were saying earlier about needing to protect
>> people from themselves by making use of certain drugs illegal.
>>
>> How do you reconcile those two positions?
>>
>> Jim
> Not at all. The problem is that you can't make something illegal by
> simply declaring that it is, and everyone either stops using it, stops
> making it, or stops selling it. To have any such ban work, you have to
> fight a war of attrition. Remove the need, you remove users, which
> removes sellers, which removes makers. The entirely system of the "war
> on drugs" is run 180 degrees backwards from this reality. The need keeps
> increasing, even without new users, who also keep increasing, so we
> arrest everyone arbitrarily, in hopes it somehow fixes things, then play
> political football of manufacturers and sellers, which does litter more
> than shift those two aspects from one group to the next, without every
> getting rid of it.
>
> Only by addressing the root cause, which is the **need** for the drugs,
> can you make any headway at all with the rest. However, if you have no
> means the fix the core problem *at all*, then you are in a BP situation.
> You can't fix the core problem, so you spend what ever effort and
> resources you *do* have, and how ever ineffectual your results are,
> attempting to lessen the impact, and clean up the mess. But, the problem
> isn't ever going to go way, until you plug the real source in the first
> place. Its like trying to bail water out of a boat, on the assumption
> that the problem is solely how fast you can get the water *out* of the
> boat, while ignoring the fact that you parked the damn thing under a
> waterfall, water tends to fall down hill, for some odd reason, and your
> boat is basically "container" shaped. If all you look at is how fast you
> can pump out the water, (i.e., how many drugs you capture or people you
> jail), your entire effort is wasted. **BUT**, if you can't, or are not
> allowed, to move the boat, all you are left with is finding new ways to
> remove the water, without addressing the real problem.
>
> Thus, there is no conflict between making some drugs illegal, and fixing
> the problem on a user level. You do the former because its better than
> doing nothing, but you *must* pursue efforts to also do the later, or
> all you will ever manage to achieve is a slower disaster.
>
Sigh.. NEVER post when half asleep. lol I don't want to even count how 
many errors I made, given the ones in the first paragraph. :p

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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