I used to think the death penalty was justified. Now I think it's deserved. I used to think Lincoln was a great president. Now I think he was a socialist scumbag.
Look, D, I can't hang around all night, but I'll say this: Your position is entirely self-referential. It's as if you're colorblind, and you're telling everyone else that they can't see colors.
I think that would depend on the theory and the practice. Theory: only the guilty would be condemned and sentenced to death. Practice: Sometimes the not-guilty of that particular crime is condemned and sentenced to death. In which case, the theory is still sound, but putting it into practice still needs some work: making sure that the person sentenced to death is truly guilty of the crime.
Well, your statement either means, that believing a thing makes it so... Or...that imagining afterlife...is more imaginative. I don't abide to that at all... What takes more imagination, slowly building up a civilization where we not only head out to space, but conquer death with cloning, and grafting, and even downloading minds into new bodies? ...or just pretending there's an afterlife, century after century, eon after eon, while people keep kicking the bucket, and never coming back? My way contains millenniums worth of billions of fresh new imaginative leaps for all of those scientific steps. I don't see how the hell that's some kind of dead-end at all. It's the opposite on steroids. No, Hulk blood.
Back to the topic of this thread: I used to believe that the War on Drugs was needed. Now I just want the stuff to be treated the way alcohol is, including tax it like crazy. We have the laws for people who misbehave while under the influence of alcohol and most of those are so worded iirc to allow the inclusion of legal drugs. There are a few drugs that are on the market now that I would not include in this though, simply for the same reason that wood alcohol is not allowed to be sold as something to drink socially.
Yep! On Lincoln, I grew up in the same kind of public school system that you did. Hanging out with Liberals made me a Conservative. Hanging out with Conservatives made me a Libertarian. Hanging out with Libertarians made me realize that I'm not purely any of those.
"Tax it like crazy" and you'll shove it back into the same underground economy that it's in now. Simply regulate it. Convenience stores and package stores ask for an ID: drug dealers don't.
Unlikely. Much of the cost of illegal drugs comes from them being illegal. Eliminate those costs, there's plenty of room to tax without recreating an illegal market. Unless you live right next to a reservation, how many people smoke bootleg cigarettes?
Yes it does come from being illegal. Legalize it and tax it like crazy, and you'll make it about price. You'll also push the street emphasis back towards meth, crack, and prescription pills. That's why they're so popular right now. The WoD has made them cheaper than weed.
Yeah, like Gul, I'd say my views have been shaped quite a bit from being here. Seven years ago, I believed that welfare was necessary, but now I believe it's a necessary evil--not that I'm for starving babies, but when the benefits run out, the mothers are stuck with no skills in a system that rewards them by paying more to sit at home than to work or go to school. I also no longer give two shits if people light up doobies, either. Hard drugs like heroin should never be legal, but everything else, like weed and salvia? Eh.
- Homosexuality: when Zurich introduced civil unions in 2003, I thought it was disgusting and shouldn't be legal. Now I think it's none of my business and the government should have no involvement in "marriages" of any kind. - Drugs: when one of the parties in Liechtenstein put (limited) drug legalization on their platform sometime around 2003/2004, I thought it would and should kill their chances. Now I think all drugs should be legal. - Neoconservative foreign policy: I agreed with the war in Iraq and that war to liberate people was something worthy. Now I'm in favor of a non-interventionist foreign policy. - Death penalty: I used to be strongly in favor. Now I'm not sure the government can be trusted with it. - Christianity: Used to consider myself Christian. Now I'm a strong agnostic and almost atheist.
Wow. Those are some pretty radical changes in a very short time. Either way would work, and both were offered as possibilities in my Catholic education. Don't see what the others are so afraid of. Either God's omnipotent or he isn't, and if he is, mere humans have some helluva nerve dictating what he can or can't do...
I was also born in 1988, making it all a little less impressive. I basically moved from being a conservative to being a pretty hardcore libertarian, even flirting with anarcho-capitalism (but lacking the time to go deep enough to convince myself).
You take vicarious pride in the accomplishments of others. In addition, you squander your time trying to convert the religious to atheism. That's equivalent to Black Dove's standing outside Krispy Kreme yelling at the customers because they don't exercise.
Washington Law requires that every initiative or referendum going to the ballot have a fiscal statement in the voters guide. This is done by the non-partisan Office of Financial Management. Best case scenario for Initiative 502 (Fed's don't sue us to stop implementation, cut off funding, or otherwise fuck things up): "Assuming a fully functioning marijuana market and the assumptions following in this summary, estimated total revenue generated to the state could be as high as $1,943,936,000 over five fiscal years." http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/ar...e-19-billion-in-state-revenue-over-five-years (link to entire report at bottom of article) Fuck. Yeah. Now that doesn't include costs, like buying the equipment to test for DUI, or administering the tests, etc. But it also doesn't include the savings from NOT arresting 10k people a year for pot and all the costs that come from that.
Sorry, must have missed those scientific accomplishments. Last time anyone mentioned religion in the Red Room?
No, that's a snarky barb, proof please. Presenting an argument is an attempt to convert? I don't think so....
Can one of you just be the first to stop being a fucking child, the rest of us were enjoying the thread.
