It's easier to lug around $100 than it is to lug around six chickens and a goat.

So, I assume you propose a barter system then?

Be less ridiculous.

So, your mom's basement, then?

You're talking about slashdot, correct? Have you ever used that site and looked at the comments? I'll be surprised if half of the people even notice the page changed. As long as it's shiny, they'll be happy.

So all of those websites that you currently access for free then. They were around back in the early days of the internet? All of the free content you consume, it was available, too? All of the people who are currently connected, they've always been on-line then?

Like it or not, now that the entire world is connected, someone has to pay. Please note that I'm not saying I agree with the ad model we currently have, I'm just saying that your view is incredibly short-sighted and immature.

The fact that this isn't recreation to you makes me quite sad for your right hand.

Couldn't we just etch everything into stone, then encapsulate it in concrete or other similarly hard medium, and put it into orbit around the moon? Wouldn't that last a while?

Semicolon; damnit; why don;t people use that one more often; I find it can replace all other punctuation;

Hyperbole is a terrible argumentative tool

Seriously, though, here are the arguments against what you said first, according to a highly educated young officer that I'm friends with:

"They don't have to do the drugs. An increased cost, and more danger would tell me that I should probably stop doing opiates. Addiction is no excuse for breaking the law. Also, saying that addicts HAVE to break the law to provide for their addiction is really only half of the argument. They have another option: getting clean."

"Those two things are VERY dissimilar in how they act in your body. That's a bad argument. Coke heads don't go to meth. They go to crack. Meth use and cocaine use are in entirely separate areas of the country at the micro-scale, and in entirely separate communities at the macro-scale."

"You could, you know, do something else awe inspiring. Ever seen the grand canyon? If your life is so boring that you MUST have psychedelics to enjoy it, you need to evaluate the choices you make."

Again, I'm the messenger for him, I just felt the need to rebut your argument from one of those "pants on head retarded" people you're talking about.

There are, and this may be hard to understand, people who genuinely believe that the only way to remove drugs from the streets - regardless of proof to the contrary - is to make them illegal and put people in jail for them. These people believe that personal responsibility should be enough to keep people from doing drugs, and that if we make them legal, the problem will only get worse.

For proof of the fact that these people exist, and that they do not agree with your undergraduate statistics and crime course arguments, please consult anyone labeled 'officer'.

You do understand that the DEA enforces more than just marijuana laws, correct? This is a terrible argument, and it's modded insightful. For shame, /.. For Shame.

A badge does not equal a court order, court-ordered warrant or subvpoena. Hyperbole is not an effective argument tool, stop it.

Define "they" please.

The issue is that it's not a governmental idea. It's an idea forwarded through the government by private industry and international interests like the IMF and World Bank. But yes, that is the exact outcome, I just argue that the idea is from the very beginning to lock wealth away with the wealthiest people, and our government and its representatives are either too inept to figure it out, or in collusion with the folks pushing this agenda.

No, austerity means that we don't know how to fix the economy, but we believe that cutting governmental spending is the best way to do it. I've said it here before, I'll say it again. Big players got a taste of bigger money in the 70's, 80's and 90's in places like South Africa, South America, Poland, and Greece. They use a specific form of economic theory based on what is termed as "Shock Economics" spearheaded by many faculty and graduates of the University of Chicago School of Business.

These people got a taste of this big money in poor countries, and really, genuinely want to take a big-ass bite out of where the money is in the US and other 1st world countries: military, employee benefits and to a much, much smaller degree, education.

We've already seen the mass privatization of the military, through contracts and hired security forces. We're getting tastes of what's to come with all the talk of cutting government pensions (I pay into one, they're not as great as what mainstream media would have you believe - 50% of my salary average for the last 6 years I'm working, and the earliest I can retire without a penalty is 67). Private companies gamble with public pensions, lose the money, then lobby and purchase the media to make it seem as if it is the government's own fault.

Look for a wider and deeper call for privatization of education in the next 5 years. Look for harder pushes for vouchers and the complete dissolving of teacher's unions power.

Look for you to pay a private company directly to teach your kids using minimum-wage, unskilled workers as teachers reading from a prescribed electronic curriculum.

I say 20 years we have a completely private school system with an absolutely ridiculous gap between the have's and have-not's (more than we currently do).