Comment by achenet
4 hours ago
Please don't start randomly prohibiting things because you dis-approve of those things.
We have, at this point, over a 100 years of evidence showing that prohibition of psychoactive substances (alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, etc) doesn't actually do much to reduce consumption but do create an immense amount of suffering not just for anyone participating in the trade or consumption of those substances, but also anyone remotely connected to them - cf the immense violence perpetrated by drug cartels in the Americas, mostly because people living in the US seem to be in denial about their appetite for drugs.
So please, stop banning things you don't like, tax and regulate them instead. Use the tax proceeds to fund "social media rehab" clinics if you'd like.
Draconian "I don't like it, it gets banned" government wasn't a good idea in 15th century Spain, it's still not a good idea now. Let your fellow citizens make bad decisions, just ensure that the government is poised to profit from them.
"tax and regulate" isn't immune from second-order effects either. Set the tax high enough and you'll get smuggling gangs with all the same tendencies.
no, it's not a perfect system, but better.
Look at the alcohol market in the U.S.
Or even the tightly controlled Systembolaget [0] in Sweden, compared to the modern markets for cannabis and cocaine.
Tax and regulate lowers violence and increases tax revenue, outright prohibition/making it illegal increases violence and lowers tax revenue.
I do believe "sin prohibition" policies, for not just drugs but gambling, prostitution, etc, are one example of "low-hanging fruit", where there is a noticeably better option that is usually not implemented.
Really, for all trades usually controlled by violent criminals (so everything the Mafia/Yakuza/crime groups traditionally specialize in), I believe that the citizens of a given state will be happier if the trade is controlled by the state and not given over to criminals, which is functionally what "make it illegal" does.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget
BTW, Australia has shown the limits of sin taxation with our very high tobacco taxes. They got so high we induced a criminal black market in tobacco, that now is very hard to eradicate and is causing gang warfare, etc. Given we now have the crime anyway, maybe banning tobacco would have better outcomes than taxing it at this point.
I don't think it's at all obvious that a regulation-based approach could produce better outcomes than a prohibition-based approach. No doubt prohibition causes much violence and misery, but prohibition was a response to other great harms, most famously the condition of opium addicts.
Rather than rehash the arguments for and against, I would ask a meta-question: if the matter really were so clear, then why, over the last ~200 years, did every country introduce a prohibition-based stance, and why has no country switched to tax-and-regulate?
As if this guy had the power to ban anything, you’re begging him not to?
Australia is and always has been a nanny state. It's cultural.
Is there anything you think would be appropriate to prohibit?
things that directly harm other taxpayers - murder, physical violence, theft, false slander/reputational attacks...
prohibiting things that harm the individual should not be the role of government, IMO. Government, in the liberal/Enlightenment tradition, is there as a protector of your 'rights' to life, liberty, and property. While it has a duty to protect you from things which could harm you (eg junk food/sugary drinks), it also has a duty to let you do what you choose to do, even if it's 'bad' for you (eg eat junk food and drink sugary drinks).
Hence the compromise - you can smoke cigarettes and drink Coca-Cola, but the makers of cigarettes and soft drinks have to warn you beforehand, and the transaction may be more taxed than things like basic foods.
Does it harm other taxpayers if people are manipulated to believe that voting for Neofascists will make things better?
Social media addiction is definitely much more detrimental to society than drug addiction, imho. Drugs aren't used by foreign adversaries to sow discord and chaos. We should not treat drugs and social media the same.
I agree on your stance of 'tax and regulate' for drugs, but it should also be accompanied by heavy prevention efforts: people need to learn very early on how to have a healthy relationship with addictive things, whether it be gambling, alcohol, drugs, gaming, TV, or social media. This way they can protect themselves, in freedom.
The problem with social media is that it is very new, very broad, and in part quite innocent (just communication with friendly people). Even if we could magically update the education system to teach people how to not be manipulated by social media, we are way too late to prevent the terrible effects they are having in adults and seniors. We need a way to educate or protect those in a non-authoritarian way. Otherwise the slide developed societies find themselves in today will hit rock bottom again very soon.
My point (I'm the one you originally replied to) is that the effects of negative social media are on par with these things. Political violence, violence against minorities and specific genders, and worse. "Even" hurting the way children grow up and think should not be controversial to ban for children. Part of society's function is to protect kids as they grow.
I don't think likening it to Coca Cola, or even alcohol, is the same at all. And I did not ask to ban social media. I asked to ban harmful expressions of social media.
In countries with public health care and social security, harm to the individual is direct harm to other taxpayers. You must wear seat belts or wear bike helmets because the rest of us don't want to pay your rehabilitation bills.