Hah, hah. Very funny. In what way are they not money?

If we define money as the form of payment a government will accept in satisfaction of debt, (as a Chartalist or MMTer might) the question becomes: In what way is Bitcoin money at all? Of course that is not the only definition of money and I personally doubt 'money' is capable of satisfactory definition at all. Since, however, you can neither discharge your tax liability, nor compel a debtor to settle in it, Bitcoin does fail to meet a core criterion of money, which is to say, it is not legal tender.

Now if you had asked instead, in what way it is money, my answer would have been very different, of course. ;)

There's a bit of fuss in Australia at the moment because despite our unemployment, they are allowing foreign workers to be imported.

That would be because unemployed Australians refuse to move to where the work is, whereas foreign workers are happy to.

And look mate, if I personally insulted you (say with my quip about what is pathetic in older men), I apologise. I can be a real arsehole.

WTF? Shit, I've either been feeding a troll or you're clueless about history. Mao Tse Tung was about as far from a libertarian as one could possibly get.

That's what the poking tongue smiley was doing there (I don't know how to do a tongue-in-cheek smiley), I simply pointing out the delicious irony. If that fits your definition of a troll, then troll I am. And no, I'm anything but clueless about history. Of course a naive libertarian (if I may use that term) might simply observe that Mao is honestly laying bare the true nature of the state. And I wonder if the prominence of this quote in years gone by may not have in some way influenced the tendency among the more extreme of contemporary libertarians, such as AC above, to see absolutely all actions of the state as an expression of violence.

C'mon, what AC wrote on his blog really made no sense at all, unless you remembered that they literally do believe that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Coming to "see the wisdom" of requiring helmets and goggles is violence!?

The reason I wrote "Libertarian fundies" (or "naive libertarianism" above) was not merely to be derogatory, but to distinguish myself. As you would know (if you followed that link) I do endorse what I called the "libertarian imperative," my own ethics are based in part on respecting the dignity of the individual human being (and liberty is a requirement for such dignity), even if this has led me to consider the problematic cases under which freedom might to some extent be curtailed.

Sorry, that would be mcgrew's original statement.

Listen, grandpa, I've been smoking pot for 41 years

Clearly it's addled your brain!

I'm only joking, and if your think I'm arguing in favour of drug prohibition your are wildly mistaken. See my last response here especially the last two paragraphs. The "wise"-crack was only because he accused me of being arrogant. And who you calling grandpa, I first smoked it for 35 years (mind I was relatively late in starting, no longer in HS)! Well I gave it up when I went to law school (fairly late in life), kinda goes with the territory

I value freedom. Apparently you do not.

I value freedom very highly. I just don't believe that it's the one word answer to every conceivable question.

You also refuse to look at the math.

Show me the maths. :)

The societal cost of drug illegality far outweigh the societal cost of the druggies ...

I could not agree more. The social costs both for any particular nation and internationally are simply atrocious. As I wrote in the linked post, prohibition is morally indefensible. It's so whichever way you cut it whatever ideological orientation you claim, if you claim to be acting to increase human freedom or to relieve human suffering.

In other words, failure to learn from your mistakes.

Yes it's that, but it's also learning from life's experiences that aren't necessarily failures and the position you are placed in as life progresses, son, friend, father, boss... More than that though it's also a question of the development of cognitive abilities. And on that score sadly many supposed adults are developmentally retarded, preferring the simple and false to the nuance and realistic. This in fact is a factor in the continued existence of the failed drug control regime.

I suspect that those in favore of continued prohibition are making tons of money because of those laws.

I have always thought so too. And because it is easier for the police to take the small time operators out, even without the existence of corruption (which the current regime undoubtedly fosters), honest police end up acting in the interests of big organised crime.

But this alone is not enough to account for the continued stupidity. We are having this debate in Australia at the moment (check out smh.com.au), and polls apparently show the vast majority in favour of continued criminalisation. Politicians are shit scared to do what many of them must know is right. Why is this. Simply because people don't like to think. Apparently studies also show the majority of adults are either incapable or disinclined to indulge in abstract thought.

One line I hear/read all the time is that decriminalisation will lead to vast increases in usage. But the empirical evidence (Netherlands, Spain) simply doesn't bear this out. The entire presumption that underlies the regime, namely that criminalisation leads to lower usage rates needs to be challenged. Once people see that there is no good reason to believe that, maybe the will be more inclined to think about it.

Oh, I see. You're making assumptions about my age, are you? Interesting "wisdom."

How so? Later I wrote " if you are still in your early 20s" just carry on and ignore us, which is a statement I would hardly make were I aware of your actual age. There is no basis for reading into my contrasting my opinions of 30 years ago, your opinions of now and my current greater wisdom, any assumption as to your age. To patronise you with a concrete example: What distinguishes my next door neighbour's motorcycle from my car (or the pushbike I rode as a kid for that matter) is the number of wheels.

I see. I disagree with your opinion, then.

You can't!

If you reject my "opinion," namely that not all opinions carry the same weight, you must accept the negation as true (ie in your opinion, all opinions are indeed of the same weight). Therefore you must hold my opinion as being of equal weight with yours and you can no more disagree with my opinion than your own (which would of course be a nonsense). And yes, I am presuming that you are not merely an irrational madman, which presumption is rebuttable. OTHO, I suffer no such impairment in disagreeing with your opinions.

The educated reader will recognise this as the famous argument against Protagoras from Plato's Theaetetus, of course.

There is nothing distinguishing your opinion from mine (unless you wish to appeal to a higher power).

The only "higher power" we are dealing with here is my ego. ;) That was a joke, of course, despite what you may think.

What is "appropriate"?

I would have thought it very clear what "appropriate behaviour" meant in the context of that sentence?! Your English comprehensions skills seem compromised, perhaps your love of the halfling's leaf has slowed your mind?

Define it.

Buy a dictionary! Better still, come to grips with the body of literature pertaining to child developmental psychology.

Well, if that's what you believe my current thought process is, then it shouldn't matter whether I'm 20, 30, or some other age.

Firstly, this isn't really about so much about your individual thought processes (go back to my original contribution). Secondly if you stop to consider what you wrote, namely that if I believe what is appropriate at one developmental stage may not be so at another, " then it shouldn't matter whether [said man is] 20, 30, or some other age" you will surely recognise the invalidity of your statement. Please tell me you can.

The point is that if you are a young adult male (I will not presume here to talk for women), you are not to be admonished for rejecting parental and especially paternal authority. And it is easy for this to transfer to authority in general. This is, especially in our culture, part of emerging into independent adulthood. However maturity allows you to develop a more nuanced relationship with authority. And as a mature person, when say you may be responsible not only for yourself but for others (who are perhaps subject to your authority), greater sagacity is called for.

Now, where did I say I was confident about anything?

Now, where did I say you were confident about anything?

I do not see anything wrong with my "solutions" even if you deem them "simple."

I agree you do not see anything wrong and I concede I used the wrong word when I wrote "simple." I meant simplistic, of course. What I can't work out is where the word 'solutions' is being quoted from? What "solutions?"

In closing allow me to clarify. I don't entirely disagree with your original statement that recreational "drugs should be legal because there should be no law against harming yourself." While I could not entertain the naive libertarianism which would so categorically shackle the legislature, I do believe that a libertarian imperative must enter into consideration when formulating offences. Namely the question should always be asked whether the mischief that the law seeks to cure (or for an operational law is curing), outweighs the restraint it imposes upon individual liberty.

This does not lend itself to easy measurement. But in the case of drug prohibition the law has been so spectacular a failure, providing little actual good (and arguably a great deal of evil), paid for by serious violations of individual liberties, as to render it morally indefensible. Incarceration for what is essentially a victimless crime is an outrage made all the more egregious by the fact that the victims of the current regime are, in the main, the very individuals it purports to protect.

That being said, there is perhaps an even better argument, that legalisation (as opposed to mere decriminalisation) would provide a better outcome by, perhaps counter-intuitively, extending an un-freedom to the drug market. That is to say, it ought to be at least as difficult for a minor to buy cannabis as it is to by alcohol.

And what does that even mean? Who decided that they "need" to grow up? What does "grow up" even refer to? Agree with someone else's opinion? Because that's all it is. An opinion. It sounds awfully arrogant to me.

Of course it's an opinion, just as yours is. What distinguishes my opinion from yours (or mine some 30 years ago for that matter) is simply my greater wisdom. I agree that must sound awfully arrogant to you and I would go further and point out that in truth the presumption that one opinion carries as much weight as any other is itself as much an opinion as it is a nonsense.

Who decided that they "need" to grow up?

Why put quote marks around the word you introduced into the conversation? I could have written "ought to", or "it is healthier if", or something similar, but I was replying to you. And why ask "who"? You can see whom you responded to, and who responded to you.

What does "grow up" even refer to?

It simply means that what is appropriate behaviour for a 5 year old when manifested in a 50 year old will be regarded as developmental retardation. That's clear enough, isn't it? But look, if you are still in your early 20s chronologically, pay us no heed, you just go ... sock it to the man! Simple solutions and overconfidence in their application are completely appropriate at that developmental stage.

Right. They just need to grow up if they don't agree with you.

I think the point is that the angry young libertarian males need to grow up if they are still manifesting their late adolescent rejection of paternal authority after about the age of 24. From the point of view especially of those of us who used to identify as "libertarian" (even though in years past that may have meant an anti-properterian libertarianism, or even anarcho-communism), older men who persist in imagining that political utopia is to be found in their unresolved familial issues seem slightly pathetic.

[H]ow do you get "respond with violence"

Oh simple. The Libertarian fundies regard all state action as violence since, following their unacknowledged philosophical mentor, Mao Tse Tung, they believe that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." :p

I think this is how libertarians get their reputation as being a little bit goofy.

This is surely not the sole source of their goofyness?