I don't know if I would truely call Ron a corporatist. The libertarian philosophy is far more radical than it gets credit. In many ways his ideas are very bad for large corps.

The federal government is, essentially, a one stop shop. If you want to do business everywhere in the US, you want to deal with them because they can set policy. Take away their regulatory abilities, and it all reverts to the states, which means that one stop shop becomes 50, which benefits the local businesses in each area over that of large multinational corps, who now have 50 times the number of palms to grease, if they intend to hit every state.

Thats just the tip of the iceberg though. He definitely sounds more Libertarian ideologue than corporatist. Hell, if he was really a corporatist, then why do they do everything they can to not support him? He isn't the one getting the huge corporate sponsorship.

Is it actually?

As technology improves, things only get easier and enter more hands. Every technology has evil uses. You can't realistically ever stop them from being used in any given way. Even if you keep your knowledge secret, anything you can invent, someone else can too. As each new layer of invention piles on the next, the idea that we can ever prevent evil is the most ridiculous pipe dream.

Not at all.... without prohibition there is no need for a "prescription" except for insurance purposes. If there was no law against people using drugs recreationally, why would they lie to get drugs? Nobody lies to get alcohol or nicotine except the people prohibited from getting it. Everyone else just goes and buys them.

Are there problems with addiction, sure but....

> Full stop. That's the issue. People are not honest. Sure, I am and you are, but your neighbor Bob isn't. Or his neighbor Sally.

I think you make a mistake to say we are honest and they are not. I have little need to be dishonest. Hell, I smoke pot. Its decriminalised here. I face all of a $100 civil fine for possession. I don't need to lie about it, unless I have more than an oz, and guess what....if I did...I would, and I wouldn't even feel bad about it.

We are not talking about honest in some abstract sense. We are talking about people doing what they feel they need to do in the situation they are in. People who decided that they want something already made their decision. They know what they want and what their reasons are. If you setup a situation where they need to lie to get what they feel they need or want, guess what they are going to do? Its not a matter of honesty as a principle, people are not principled like that. This is true....so don't make them be.

In fact, thats what I advocate.... don't make them be. Accept that they make their decisions, accept those decisions and.... ALLOW THEM TO BE HONEST. Most people will be honest when they feel its safe to do so, they only lie to avoid consequences.... so.... simple solution.... value truth over judgement.

Have you ever done cocaine? If so did you like it? Did it do anything for you?

The thing is, these drugs don't act on people who are being medicated by them quite the same as other people. I tried coke, and I should probably be looking into an ADD diagnosis and adderal script. The thing is, I didn't like coke, it didn't do much for me. It did little more than coffee does to me. I tried it...and then didn't do it again.

Now look at what these drugs do, and some of the models of ADD and this makes sense. Normal people take coke, or speed, and it sends their dopamine/norepinephrine systems soaring high. Ours, according to the model, are already depressed/low functioning so the addition of these drugs doesn't send us soaring so much as bring us up to a more normal level.

I suspect there are some large feedback componenets that fuel many addictions that you don't experience due to the fact that the dose is much lower for you than for others since you are overcoming an initial deficit that recreational users may not be...and you probably don't take extra doses, or particularly higher doses.

Well if it wasn't for the DEA, those customers wouldn't need to pass phoney prescriptions, nor would doctors give out massive ones. In a climate where drug use can be above board and people can be honest, its not clear that any of the real problems with meth, or any other drugs, are actually major issues....and even less evidence that prohibition and regulation to stop drug use does anything positive.

Generally the DEA has created a climate where violent gangs thrive, legitimate patients are often under medicated for pain (do you have any idea how many people will spend the rest of their lives in daily chronic pain for no other reason than their doctor can't give them heroin? or high enough levels of other pain meds?) and desperate people are preyed upon.

The alternative? Some doctors give some drugs to addicts? Oh my god what a horror! Above board drug use? Where it can be monitored and people can seek out help without stigma? Oh no! How terrible!

DO you have any idea how much I don't want to be a Ron Paul Supporter. I mean... the gold standard? Seriously?

Or the whole not using the bathroom of homosexuals thing.... or his statements on abortion but... in the end... hes the only one saying anything sane on drug policy, which is a bigger issue than all of them. He is the only one who says anything sane about wars, and how silly it is that we keep having them.

I so don't want to support that crazy old coot but.... when he is the most sane one out there....

Well thats scary.... but it doesn't make him less right on this issue. The DEA makes no sense. We have ample evidence that amphetamine use is not terribly harmful and its addiction can be managed and even beneficial for many people. Similarly to coffee.

Look at all the problems with meth addiction and...please....show me them before its prohibition. Meth was around for a LONG TIME. Meth addiction in this climate of expensive drugs and addicts being driven underground sucks for the addicts, and sucks for everyone else who has to deal with the results. All problems that didn't exist before prohibition.... when it was mostly regulated by doctors and use was above board.

Congress and their DEA lap dogs made every problem that they touched worst. They made the lives of addicts worst, they made the supply more dangerous, they drove people to do business with violent criminals, and created an atmosphere for violent criminal gangs to thrive. Its THEIR FAULT WE ARE IN THIS MESS!

This research has been fascinating me for a while too. Amazing what they did with such crude techniques... but it isn't hard to imagine how you could setup evolutionary courses to evolve the phages that are needed to combat some nasty bacteria. That said, the problem they tend to have is specificity....they tend to be overly specific to the point of not having general utility even against what we would otherwise call similar infections.

That is a phage that kills your MRSA infection, may not kill mine. However, that may be just a matter of further evolutionary pressures?

Sorry.... inflation.... not deflation. Inflation is good (up to a point).

Actually, I used to really like bitcoin and never thought most of the arguments against it held much water, since they mostly ignore that all the fiction in bitcoin is the same fiction in other currency. All currency is fake, because its all an abstraction. Nothing wrong with that.

However, the more I learned about it and dove into it...the more convinced I came of this simple fact... a currency wants deflation because currency isn't intended to be a savings instrument. People hoard gold. People hoarded bitcoins. Hell, I gave in to that temptation, even as I started to see the reall folly in it.

Inflation serves a purpose though...I am very much with the bitcoiners still in not trusting governments to be the arbiters. Worst though, allowing a few private hands to do it. I don't trust the fed as far as I can afford to pay someone to throw them

I still ove bitcoin for trying. It was a good attempt, just like some of the good attempts before it...I hope there will be more...and the community will keep trying until something wins out.