On 1/24/2011 3:20 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:17:01 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Point is, usually the "method" goes hand in hand with the failure to
>> learn the facts needed to make an effective decision. Odds are, the vast
>> majority of people with Tarot cards *do not* use them as a system to
>> work out what to do, based on knowing sufficient facts.
>
> Sure, there are bad people in the world.  That's also a consequence of a
> free society - some people will take advantage of other people.
>
> The solution isn't to remove the thing that people use to be dishonest,
> it's to address the dishonesty head on.  Which is what law is intended to
> do.
>
> The same argument can be made about gun control:  rather than heavily
> regulate guns in the US, make the bad usages illegal and deal with those
> who break the law.
>
> Jim
The only flaw in that is you can't go back and "undo" things that 
already happened. Making bad uses illegal is meaningless if the "bad 
use" is something like people dying, or losing all of their money. 
Ironically, there **are** laws on the books, lots of them, making doing 
either to someone illegal. Oddly enough, they have no effect at all at 
either preventing the misuse of a gun, when they are easily available, 
or preventing people's money stolen from them for what *they* are 
convinced is real, but the shop owner only gets by with even selling at 
all by labeling it "entertainment" (this rule can vary from place to 
place, but in most cases the law says its legal only as an amusement).

Its con artist lying about being a magician, so that they can rob people 
that believe magic actually works. Or, its someone that thinks it does 
work, pretending to be a magician, because its not legal to do it 
otherwise, unintentionally robbing gullible people that also believe in 
it out of their money. Either way, its not strictly legal for them, at 
least under a lot of laws, to claim they can *actually* do any of it, 
any more than it is legal for someone selling a bottle of mostly water 
(i.e. homeopathy) to *actually* claim that their tap water can cure 
cancer. The problem is, more than half the idiots writing the laws 
either have stake in the same game/business, or believe in it, and thus 
these giant loopholes exist, like being able to sell, say, Airborne, 
with no evidence, fake credentials, fake creators, fake "research 
institutes", outright bold face lie about all of it, then get by with it 
because the only "legal" requirement is that they do not specifically 
claim that it "cures" anything (though you can claim it helps, even if 
the evidence is all fishy, inconsistent, and not generally accepted by 
anyone but the quacks), and it says it is a "supplement". Same, as I 
said, with Tarot card readers, and the like. As long as its 
"entertainment", it doesn't matter if the thief charges the target 50 
cents, $50 dollars, or $50,000 dollars, they paid for an 
"entertainment", and can only get in trouble of the person scammed 
actually sues them, and can prove the thief *actually* claimed it was real.

Thankfully, or perhaps sadly, this isn't often too hard, whether it be 
the rather inconvenient corpse resulting from lax gun control, or the 
fact that nearly every practitioner of bullshit, not matter how cleverly 
they work the loopholes, tends to "believe" their own BS, making it hard 
for them to argue they charged someone $50,000 to be "entertained".

Or, to put it another way, you can't legislate human behavior, 
gullibility, or wishful thinking by making the *outcomes* illegal. You 
can only do it by limiting the range of situations where those behaviors 
will produce a negative outcome. And you *definitely* can't do it if the 
consequences are purely post-hoc, do not address the underlying reason 
why people keep doing it, like mental illness, or poor education, and 
instead do nothing but increase the jail time, or otherwise fiddle with 
the punishment. You either have to prevent the behavior on some level, 
or you have to make sure as few people as possible see it as a viable 
option.

Some things, like psychic BS is so easy to pull, and so close to the 
pre-existing "wish fulfillment" people seek anyway, that the "costs" of 
getting caught, never mind the likelihood of failing to find a victim 
are both easily accepted. Like a pick pocket in a room full of blind 
people, with bad counting skills, and no guards. The odds that most of 
them will even notice you lifting a few coins is small, and you only do 
get in trouble of you are stupid enough to get overly greedy. The 
cost... might be fairly high, or it might be simply not being allowed 
into the innumeracy club for the blind again. If its the later, its 
simple enough to just find new people to pick pocket. And *that* is the 
case with "psychic" gibberish (and religions, but that is another 
matter). With guns, its a bit different. We know the consequences are 
stupidly high for the victim, we have set the consequence about as high 
as we can get it (or as high, in places with death penalties), yet... we 
have lowered the bar, in some places, to the risk of it actually 
happening, the availability of the tool used to do so, and all other 
factors, including the "need" some people insist they have to own dozens 
of those tools, to the point where its like hoping that people don't 
show up at the next comic con wearing cheesy costumes. You will *always* 
be disappointed, since nearly everyone will do it, and no matter how 
much you legislate the consequence, there will be the one person that 
tries to show up as "the nude avenger", or something else that crosses 
what ever line you placed on how bad, cheesy, or questionable the costume.

In short, make it so every has a gun, anyone can carry one, and do 
**nothing** to address **any** of the other issues, or what ever excuse 
there is for allowing people to get by with so many other things via 
loopholes, or easy access, or failure of any oversight, when the 
*actual* thing they did is illegal as hell already, and can't be made 
any more so... well, the value of that is highly debatable when the 
people that are injured as a result of failing to address anything but 
the post-hoc punishment of the shooter, or scammer, or bank baron, or 
rapist, or whatever, are either dead, scarred for life, bankrupt, or 
otherwise seriously/permanently injured.

In case you are not getting what I am saying, I have no problem with 
people selling Tarot cards. I have a set myself, though I found them 
pretty useless for "anything" at all, unlike you. But, I would lay odds 
that you are the rare exception, with a fair certainty of being right, 
with respect to the number that have them, and don't either believe the 
stuff they are selling (which doesn't change scamming people with them 
being illegal), or *intentionally* scamming them with the things. This 
doesn't mean you ban the cards, it means you make frakking law so that 
they can't "entertain" anyone with them either, with being very precise 
what that means, and that it doesn't mean, "Charge them stupid amounts 
of money for it, or less, lot and lots of times."

-- 
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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