Moral question: Should we permit everything that doesn't "harm others"?

grip said:

What, that churches and bibles exist or that you want to talk about them, having no knowledge of them?

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Clearly any attempt at intelligent conversation with you is out of the question...I suggest you just move on...

ThePlayDrive said:

The problem is that my comments have nothing to do with legalizing drugs. They are specifically about your question as to why individual drug use can be harmful. A nation filled with addicts is harmful whether or not drugs are legal or illegal.

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There is a major difference between the harm caused by legal drug use and that caused by illegal drug use. Legalizing drugs would actually reduce the level of crime, gang activity, and poverty associated with illegal drug use. The legality is the main issue of the thread, and it makes a difference in the harm caused by drug use.

I didn't predict the future actions of every member of society. My comment doesn't even talk about every member of society. You are now distorting my arguments.

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"A society of addicts" implies that everyone is an addict, or at the very least, the majority.

I don't actually need to prove anything. If you can't understand why large scale individual drug use would harm society, then that's your own easily rectified problem. Anybody who knows what the consequences of addiction are would agree with me.

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Drug addiction harms the individual. It doesn't physically or financially harm the individual's neighbors. You're assuming that legalzing drugs would automatically mean large scale drug use, as if you and your employer and your pastor would go shoot heroin tomorrow if it were legal. Large scale drug use does not even equal large scale addiction.

The easiest thing for you to have responded to my comment would have been, "Yes, you're right. A nation filled with a bunch of addicts would be bad."

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It certainly would not be productive. But it is no more harmful to you if I smoke pot or snort coke as it would be to me if you got drunk on a Friday night.

specklebang said:

There is no major illegal drug category that I don't have experience with.

There is no major drug category that I can't acquire within 3 hours despite all the laws.

If drugs were legal and required a prescription, I would have been much less likely to experience them. Legality would destroy the black market and I wouldn't have casually gone for a Doctors appointment. Indeed, my MD offered me a marijuana license recently (68 and arthritic) and I just couldn't be bothered since I can buy pot anytime I want anyway and I don't feel like paying for the license.

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Well, if things like Marijuana obtain a full legal status, you won't need a license for it anymore than you do to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco.

MaggieD said:

Illegal drug use is harmful to others.

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How?

Prostitution is harmful to others.

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I would say that human trafficking and/or PAYING for sex are far more harmful to others than prostitution itself.

Addiction to substances is harmful to others.

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Not in any direct, universally-applicable sense. And does this harm outweigh the harm of waging a war on drugs? In fact, is this harm even mitigated at all by waging a war on drugs?

I thought you probably meant those kinds of so-called victimless crimes. They are not victimless.

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For the most part, they are. Certainly they're victimless to the extent that the prohibition itself creates more victims than the act does.

To answer the OP's question...I can think of a few things that don't "harm others" that should be regulated:

- Safety/preemptive laws. Driving while intoxicated, driving on the left side of the road, having fire hazards in your workplace...These regulations don't harm others in and of themselves, but the laws are designed to prevent possible future harm.


- Economic regulations. Operating a store that only accepts euros as payment (in the US), offering a health insurance plan that doesn't cover certain basic treatments, buying up all of the businesses in competition with you, running both a commercial bank and an investment bank using the same pile of cash...These regulations don't harm others in and of themselves, but are designed to correct market failures or economic externalities, which the free market is generally unable to correct on its own.

digsbe said:

Most things people would debate are currently illegal drug use, forms of sex, addictions to substances, and other things.

I can't really give you an example of that, because I'm not of the persuasion that just because something doesn't "harm others" doesn't mean it should be legal or permitted.

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You can't give and example because their are none......for example legal drugs affexts a lot of people druggies driving cars and getting into accidents comes to mind.

digsbe said:

Moral question: Should we permit everything that doesn't "harm others"? If something doesn't "harm others" should it be legal and permitted? Should we have societal standards? Should we have some legal morals? Do people have a right to do all things they wish so long as others aren't harmed?

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For the most part, yes.

Adults are adults, and they should have the freedom to live their lives however they choose. I don't see why they shouldn't just because someone else doesn't like it.

digsbe said:

Most things people would debate are currently illegal drug use, forms of sex, addictions to substances, and other things.

I can't really give you an example of that, because I'm not of the persuasion that just because something doesn't "harm others" doesn't mean it should be legal or permitted.

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Fair enough.

But if that's the case, what standard do you propose we use to decide if something should be legal and permitted or not despite that activity not harming others?

And remember - whatever standard you use we have to pay taxes to get those laws enforced.

Kandahar said:

To answer the OP's question...I can think of a few things that don't "harm others" that should be regulated:

- Safety/preemptive laws. Driving while intoxicated, driving on the left side of the road, having fire hazards in your workplace...These regulations don't harm others in and of themselves, but the laws are designed to prevent possible future harm.

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Why have several different laws to punish the same crime?

MaggieD said:

Individual drug use fuels drug cartels.

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How many alcohol cartels are there? It's illegal drugs that fuel "cartels" not legal ones.

Legal drugs only fuel capitalism and there are laws against price-fixing.

MaggieD said:

Illegal prostitution attracts crime to neighborhoods and lowers property values. Plus, of course, all prostitution is not voluntary. Ask Leroy about his "commissions."

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Illegal prostitution, yes, but if it's legal and regulated?

MoSurveyor said:

How many alcohol cartels are there? It's illegal drugs that fuel "cartels" not legal ones.

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Moonshine is illegal and it certainly does have it's "cartels", although it doesn't have a huge following and that keeps the power of the moonshiners relatively low. That said though, I'll bet you still have moonshiners buying political influence, etc. in areas where moonshine is commonplace.

Illegal prostitution, yes, but if it's legal and regulated?

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There's always going to be a point at which anything, be it drugs or alcohol or prostitution, where you cannot justify having it be legal. All you can do is move the line further along the continuum. Past that line, no matter where that line is, you're going to have problems.

Yes we should permit everything that doesn't harm others.

Crucial to this position is that we must also allow behavior that harms the self, because to disallow people from self-harm means spreading the consequences of the behavior to others. In other words, if we entitle self-sabotaging people to benefits, treatment, and other help, we are allowing the person's self-destruction to also harm others (financially).

Therefore, to permit everything that doesn't harm others means also permitting everything that does harm the self (and refusing to guarantee help for self-harm).

What a society and/or a community tolerates invariably affects others, whether intentionally or not, so, in answer to a vague and rather nebulous question, yes, many things that appear to be 'victimless' should be illegal. Whether a society or community uses criminal or civil sanctions is the debatable issue, not whether 'Anything Goes' is an acceptable meme here.

Children starving or being denied health care in Kansas City doesn't bother somebody out in the Burbs of Silly Con Valley, hence their ignorance or just not caring is indeed harmful; people just don't see it so are conveniently free to claim they aren't 'harming others' by passive inaction, as examples.

There's always going to be a point at which anything, be it drugs or alcohol or prostitution, where you cannot justify having it be legal. All you can do is move the line further along the continuum. Past that line, no matter where that line is, you're going to have problems.

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Yes. Circular reasoning will take anything to extremes, as a function of definitions. That's why ideological constructs will never resolve real life problems, personal or public, and some 'illogical' positions are necessary, however imperfect they may be, to achieve real progress.

Cephus said:

Moonshine is illegal and it certainly does have it's "cartels", although it doesn't have a huge following and that keeps the power of the moonshiners relatively low. That said though, I'll bet you still have moonshiners buying political influence, etc. in areas where moonshine is commonplace.

There's always going to be a point at which anything, be it drugs or alcohol or prostitution, where you cannot justify having it be legal. All you can do is move the line further along the continuum. Past that line, no matter where that line is, you're going to have problems.

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Almost everything that has regulations attached has an illegal market. There are companies making millions a year from knock-off handbags, perfumes, etc. - so we need to ban designer purses and perfumes?

Goshin said:

That is the $64,000 question isn't it? It is fundamental to how we want to govern/be governed.


Personally I think going to either extreme would be disasterous; I favor a middle-of-the-road approach. We should have some basic standards yes... for instance we've decided that a 15yo cannot consent to sex, even if she does consent, because her consent is too uninformed and so on. Public sex doesn't "hurt" anyone but I don't think it should be allowed; some fundamental standards of public decency make for a better society.

OTOH trying to legislate virtue into law is something that ought to be done very sparingly and very carefully, when it is done at all.... else we could fall into a dictatorship of the well-meaning.


EXACTLY where to draw that "go no further" line is always the question of course.




Keep to the middle of the road please. :mrgreen:

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I voted for the first option, but I'm not completely there. I think age of consent doesn't count, as the children are still being manipulated even if they are consenting. Drug use is more complicated. The psychological effects on family, seeing their own children, brothers and parents becoming addicted to vile substances such as meth. However mature consensual prostitution and gay relationships are things that I feel should be supported.

Yes, as I believe we should have control over own lives so far as that is possible, including ending them if we so desire, I can't think of an example of something that doesn't directly harm others that I think should be illegal. We can reasonably debate what constitutes harmful and whether indirectly harming others is ever permissible, or whether we should take a utilitarian approach. To me, that sometimes depends on the circumstance. While you wouldn't want some 40 year old creep flashing school kids, what about running in the naked mile or nude beaches? With the mile, there were dozens of cops, some on horseback, with nothing better to do than ruin everyone's fun apparently and threaten the runners with sex offender arrests. What about girls who are minors sending nudes of themselves on their cell? How can someone be simultaneously victim and perpetrator?

Often the behavior neither is harmful to others nor self-harmful, for example certain drug use, yet still illegal. That really is nonsense to me. If we operated on more of a free, live and let live system, you wouldn't see such absurd and embarrassing stories as "Woman arrested for planting vegetable garden in her own yard." Yes, that's Detroit's problem, too much vegetation. The result of the alternative is constant fear of arrest for basically doing nothing. It benefits no one.

MoSurveyor said:

Almost everything that has regulations attached has an illegal market. There are companies making millions a year from knock-off handbags, perfumes, etc. - so we need to ban designer purses and perfumes?

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There is *NOTHING* whatsoever out there without regulations attached. Nothing. It's not possible to find anything, from food to clothing to drugs to cars, that have no regulations.

Cephus said:

There is *NOTHING* whatsoever out there without regulations attached. Nothing. It's not possible to find anything, from food to clothing to drugs to cars, that have no regulations.

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Exactly my point - and most of their illegal side is like alcohol/moonshiners, not big enough to make a real difference (cars are a notable exception because of their individual value). The handbags and alcohol are legal and their "cartels" mean nothing. Drugs are illegal and their cartels are dangerous to say the least. Prostitution and gambling are similar where they are illegal with "organized crime" usually picking up the pieces there. We spend billions a year fighting the various wars on all these illegal activities, billions more supporting the criminals created by these crimes and for what? Morality's sake? I mean, who are we protecting unless it's protecting would-be addicts from themselves, which isn't working anyway. It would be cheaper to regulate these industries and treat the resulting addicts openly than it is to ban the products/services.

MoSurveyor said:

Exactly my point - and most of their illegal side is like alcohol/moonshiners, not big enough to make a real difference (cars are a notable exception because of their individual value). The handbags and alcohol are legal and their "cartels" mean nothing. Drugs are illegal and their cartels are dangerous to say the least. Prostitution and gambling are similar where they are illegal with "organized crime" usually picking up the pieces there. We spend billions a year fighting the various wars on all these illegal activities, billions more supporting the criminals created by these crimes and for what? Morality's sake? I mean, who are we protecting unless it's protecting would-be addicts from themselves, which isn't working anyway. It would be cheaper to regulate these industries and treat the resulting addicts openly than it is to ban the products/services.

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We don't really fight most of those things. We talk about it, we make a show of it, we just don't really fight these 'wars. We ought to, we just don't.