One could also mention the blatantly racist methods used to promote prohibition of both cannabis and cocaine. But like Nixon's control-freak hatred, that was a means to an end. The lobbyists I mentioned wield the real power in Washington and decide what becomes or remains the law of the land.

The cannabis plant is too easy to cultivate and has too many non-drug uses that threaten several powerful industries with lots of lobbyists. That's why something with demonstrated medical use that is practically impossible to overdose on is listed as a Schedule I. That's the only reason why.

If by "regulated out of existence" you mean "supplied by the black market" with all the problems that go along with that, then yes.

The question is whether jail is an environment that will make them better people and help them overcome these problems. A related question is whether armed police, not doctors/therapists, should be the ones we send to deal with people who have not used fraud or violence against another person.

It's hard to think of a more damaging long-term effect than expanding the definition of "crime" to include "something other than using force/fraud to harm another human being", the subsequent mutilation of the Fourth Amendment, the asset forfeiture abuses that continue to happen, and the increasingly aggressive paramilitary police that even the law-abiding are afraid of. Ask an older person about what police used to be like sometime.

What data does a messaging app require other than your chosen username and your IP address? I mean okay, your public key would be nice too so that end-to-end encryption can be implemented...

As part of the general descent into fascism, there is a movement within the US to prevent veterans from privately owning guns by declaring them mentally unfit. She couldn't understand that because she was directed not to. Lots of people she reports to have told her that you're potentially very dangerous, and a few high-profile shootings were likely blown out of proportion in order to reinforce this point. The lack of hard science in the field makes psychiatry particularly easy to influence.

The truth is, the more tyrannical a government becomes, the more afraid they are of highly trained men who have a deep sense of honor. It really has nothing to do with public safety, preventing shootings, or giving you the best psychiatric care.

For something like a criminal trial, a scientific (falsifiable) theory, or a matter of logic, I fully agree with what you said.

For something like whether I love a woman, whether blue is my favorite color, or whether there is a God, one has to recognize that these are not scientific questions. It's ridiculous to pretend that they are. The insistence on pretending this is a scientific matter is a rather selfish motivation: to claim a superior position when the truth is, no one has any indication either way in terms of hard evidence.

It's amazing the lengths people will go to in order to tell someone else they're wrong/stupid/etc. This one is cheap because it requires no work and no effort, just a declaration. It's the low-hanging fruit picked by those too dishonest and insecure to admit that in terms of hard evidence, no one really knows.

If you actually are willing to consider it as a real question, there is one thing you may find fascinating. The Golden Ratio keeps popping up everywhere in nature, even when many other values would work. This is not what one would expect from randomness. It particularly pops up in astronomy. I find that most interesting though I would not call it proof.

As for me, I consider the existence of God to be a personal question. I am not arrogant enough to tell you what you should believe, given that same lack of hard evidence. The question itself is not falsifiable and is therefore outside the domain of scientific inquiry. Someone who doesn't understand that is extremely ignorant of the very science they claim to cherish.

Yes but a fine that only represents a fraction of your net profits is hardly a disincentive.

I propose that when corporations commit criminal acts that would land an individual in jail, we should put the corporation "in jail". That means freezing all their assets and bank accounts and halting all sales for as long as a real person would have been locked up. This is certainly doable and would actually be consistent with the (foolish) notion that "a corporation is legally the same as a person".

If your social system requires systematically killing even more people than Hitler did, I propose that your system is broken.

... and society also benefits from having people go outside and experience quality time with loved ones rather than consuming the shallow, infantile bullshit most heavily promoted by the entertainment industry.

At least that's my hypothesis: that those who have had meaningful contact with nature are more likely to form healthy relationships and less likely to demand songs from manufactured "artists" that whine about failed relationships from a self-centered emotional perspective that should have been outgrown during childhood.

The record companies would probably still blame piracy I'm sure.

If half the effort spent fawning over American Idol and pop music were spent peacefully marching on Washington DC, that would change.

Anyone who needed to have that explained to them did not have an opinion worth listening to. Consider it a litmus test.

The small-minded and emotionally immature are perpetually concerned with fault and blame, be it international conflicts or their own personal lives. They have neither the presence of mind nor the objectivity to focus on cause and effect. For as long as they engage in such self-limitation, true understanding remains beyond their reach.

You could do it out of altruism and grace. That is, you could respect freedom so much that you don't need to always approve of what other people do with it.

If you need a self-centered reason, like most people do, there is one: you want them to respect your lack of religion, right? You had the same choice they did, to believe or not to believe. They simply chose differently. The way this works, is that either everyone has the freedom to make that choice, or eventually no one does. Because the moment you find an excuse not to respect another's right to choose, you harm your own freedom. Eventually that list of restrictions will be expanded to include you (sooner rather than later, considering how vastly outnumbered you are). Tyranny has always been done that way, over time by means of incremental expansion.

Honestly you sound like a short-sighted person who hasn't thought this through, probably because thinking it through would interfere with feeling superior to religious people.

Incidentally, no one with a hive mind is aware that they have one. Every such person believes they are an individual. You can see that right here in the Western world any time a trend suddenly catches on. Trends are almost never useful things that fulfill needs lots of people had. They're overwhelmingly frivolous things that no one needs that suddenly become popular. That's a hive mind too, led by various marketers who never openly identify themselves and their goals.

No it doesn't stop them. It makes them feel justified and tends to greatly boost their recruitment efforts. There's nothing quite like a foreign army marching on your soil for the flimsiest reasons (WMD anyone?) to piss off the locals. Then we have reason to send our military out there again.

From the point of view of the military-industrial complex, all of this is great for business. I wonder if we sold our old weapons to them in order to arm them first, like we did with Desert Storm and Desert Shield a couple of decades ago.