Comment by palmotea
20 hours ago
That's why laws against drugs are so terrible, it forces law-abiding businesses to leave money on the table. Repeal the laws and I'm sure there will be tons of startups to profit off of drug addiction.
20 hours ago
That's why laws against drugs are so terrible, it forces law-abiding businesses to leave money on the table. Repeal the laws and I'm sure there will be tons of startups to profit off of drug addiction.
There are many companies making money off alcohol addiction, video game addiction, porn addiction, food addiction, etc. Should we outlaw all these things? Should we regulate them and try to make them safe? If we can do that for them, can't we do it for AI sex chat?
The world isn’t black and white. Should we outlaw video games? No, I don’t think so. Should we outlaw specific addictive features, such as loot boxes, which are purposefully designed to trigger addiction in people and knowingly cause societal harm in the name of increasing profits for private companies? Probably.
> There are many companies making money off alcohol addiction, video game addiction, porn addiction, food addiction, etc. Should we outlaw all these things?
Yes
And that makes it all alright doesn’t it?
There are also gangs making money off human trafficking? Does that make it OK for a corporation to make money off human trafficking as well? And there are companies making money off wars?
When you argue with whataboutism, you can just point to whatever you like, and somehow that is an argument in your favor.
They aren't doing whataboutism. They are comparing prohibition/criminalization of a harmful industry to regulation, and the effects of both. Gambling isn't exactly good, but there is definitely a difference between a mafia bookies and regulated sports betting services and the second/third order effects from both. Treating drug use as a criminal act, as opposed to a healthcare problem, has very different societal effects.
Whataboutism is more like "Side A did bad thing", "oh yeah, what about side B and the bad things they have done". It is more just deflection. While using similar/related issues to inform and contextualize the issue at hand can also be overused or abused, but it is not the same as whataboutism, which is rarely productive.
How is ai sex chat like any of those things, whataboutism indeed
12 replies →
No need: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_...
The majority of illegal drugs aren't addictive, and people are already addicted to the addictive ones. Drug laws are a "social issue" (Moral Majority-influenced), not intended to help people or prevent harm.
Drug laws are the confluence of many factors. Moral Majority types want everything they disapprove of banned. People whose lives are harmed by drug abuse want "something" to be done. Politicians want issues that arouse considerably more passion on one side of the argument than the other. Companies selling already legal drugs want to restrict competition. Private prisons want inmates. And so on.
The Politician's syllogism in action:
That is terrible.
Se have to do something.
This is something.
We must do it.
It terms of harm current laws on drugs fail everyone but teetotaller who want everyone else to have a miserable life too.
> It terms of harm current laws on drugs fail everyone but teetotaller who want everyone else to have a miserable life too.
You think teetotallers have miserables lives? Come on.
There's a conservation of excitement for each human. If someone's life was exciting but then it got boring, unless they do a shit ton of work on themselves, they're gonna have to find that excitement somehow. We see this with Hollywood actresses who shoplift when they have more than enough money to buy the things they stole.
> Repeal the laws and I'm sure there will be tons of startups to profit off of drug addiction.
Worked for gambling.
(Not saying this as a message of support. I think legalizing/normalizing easy app-based gambling was a huge mistake and is going to have an increasingly disastrous social impact).
Why do you think it will be increasingly bad? It seems to me like it’s already as bad as it’s capable of getting.
what about laws against porn? Oh, wait, no, that's a legitimate business.
Respectfully, this is a piss take.
US prohibition on alcohol and to the large extent performative "war on drugs" showed what criminalization does (empowers, finances and radicalises the criminals).
Portugal's decriminalisation, partial legalisation of weed in the Netherlands, legalisation in some American states and Canada prove legal businesses will better and safer provide the same services to the society, and the lesser societal and health cost.
And then there's the opioid addiction scandal in the US. Don't tell me it's the result of legalisation.
Legalisation of some classes of the drugs (like LSD, mushrooms, etc) would do much more good than bad.
Conversely, unrestricted LLMs are avaliable to everyone already. And prompting SOTA models to generate the most hardcore smut you can imagine is also possible today.
> Portugal's decriminalisation, partial legalisation of weed in the Netherlands, legalisation in some American states and Canada prove legal businesses will better and safer provide the same services to the society, and the lesser societal and health cost.
You’re stretching it big time. The situation in the Netherlands caused the rise of drug tourism, which isn’t exactly great for locals, nor does it stop crime or contamination.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2022/11/change-starts-here-amsterda...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/24/bacteria-pesti...
As for Portugal, decriminalisation does not mean legalisation. Drugs are still illegal, it‘s just that possession is no longer a crime and there are places where you can safely shoot up harder drugs, but the goal is still for people to leave them.
>Portugal's decriminalisation, (..) prove legal businesses will better and safer provide the same services to the society, and the lesser societal and health cost.
Portugal's success regarding drugs wasn't about the free market. It was about treating addicts like victims or patients rather than criminals, it actually took a larger investment from the state and the benefits of that framework dissolved once budgets were cut.