Reply #110: and the kitchen sink ... [View All]

[iverglas]

Fine, I wasn't going to finish any more work today anyhow. But I'm tired, nonetheless ...

Your girlfriend's mum is a good example of victimizing the victim, as I was talking about. It's sad.

"I know that the state of Washington, a very high priced state to live in, does the exact same thing for $60. So someone has to milking this cash cow youre talking about."

Okay, that's a start. But there's always the possibility that the great tax-paying public of Washington State is in fact subsidizing the costs already -- that is, they charge the applicant $60, but they aren't actually "doing the exact same thing" for $60, they're just covering the rest of the costs of doing it out of general revenue. More facts needed. Surely *some* "RKBA enthusiast" outfit has addressed this??

"How could you disagree with a cigarette tax, which is only put there to make people quit smoking, and yet agree with an alcohol tax that is put there for the same reason?"

The big reason? One person's smoking doesn't have much impact on anybody else. What impact it has can be reduced to close to nil by other rules: like no smoking in restaurants, no smoking in classrooms, etc.

Before you ask -- I support anti-smoking by-laws for bars and restaurants, even though I'm a smoker and this limits my opportunities for fun. Of course I'll agree with the anticipated next objection: yes, going to bars and restaurants is entirely a matter of personal choice -- for the customers. For the workers, it ain't. In our highly civilized societies, we don't say to any other class of worker "like it or lump it" -- live with the health hazards of your job, or leave it and get another one. Disease caused by second-hand smoke just isn't a risk inherent in the job, and the risk can be easily eliminated by eliminating smoking. If the only concern were the customers not being able to go somewhere without enduring smoke, I'd say: let the market prevail. Patronize non-smoking establishments, which that invisible hand will doubtless provide, or open your own.

Alcohol is different. It's not the drinking of it that is dangerous to others the way the smoking of tobacco is; it's what people do after they've been doing the drinking of it. They kill and abuse and crash into other people -- in many, many cases where they would not have done that if they hadn't been doing the drinking. We can tell people not to do something, like smoke or drink in public places, and effectively enforce that rule. We can't tell people not to be something -- drunk -- and expect to be able to enforce that rule.

Smoking is "dangerous to others" in that it generates costs that have to be borne by non-smokers. But so do a hell of a lot of other behaviours, and we don't super-tax or prohibit them. Eating doughnuts comes to mind, as does having unprotected sex and then having babies that will cost society. (And I'm not attacking poor people here; rich people's children cost society a lot more than poor people's do.) Or having abortions, which up here are covered by the health care plans. We don't outlaw doughnut eating or unprotected sex having, despite the costs that can reasonably be expected to result.

I'm against prohibition of alcohol and drugs because (a) it doesn't work, and (b) it causes more harm than it prevents. The latter is indeed a very sound argument, based on "harm reduction" -- which also calls for carrots rather than sticks (like treatment programs rather than jail sentences), and allowing the undesirable behaviour to be engaged in more safely, rather than making it more unsafe, when you can't stop it (like by offering needle exchanges).

"Why do you disagree with legal gambling? Even when its illegal, it still takes place. Its like prohibition, it doesnt work to keep it illegal. Whats your opinion on legal prostitution?"

My best friend, who is teetering on the edge of destroying her life with gambling, was doing just fine before the casino across the river opened. Fifteen years ago, she bought her stupid instant lottery tickets and scratched them all over my dining table -- and even in that, she was spending money that she didn't have without taking it from something more essential. But at that time, she had kids at home, and her inhibitions -- her commitment to feeding and housing them -- did override her gambling impulses for the most part. Then they left home, she got a real job and could afford discretionary expenditures, and the casino opened. And she gambled (and lost) the rent money most months (I'm her landlord), her daugher's savings, the utility bill payments ...

Very few of the people whose lives have been wrecked by legal gambling were actually going to go looking for a back-room poker game, or a back-alley bookie. The social acceptability of gambling, not to mention the incessant promotion of it by the very body supposed to protect the public, the bloody government, is what gave them the opportunity to ruin their lives. In fact, they may never have had any urge to gamble before they actually did it. I have no urge to shoot smack, but if I did it a few times I might develop an urge before too long.

Nobody needs to gamble. There is no individual or social need being fulfilled by permitting gambling. Prohibiting gambling is an entirely reasonable restriction on the exercise of liberty, justified by the horrible effects on the gamblers themselves, the other individuals in their lives, and the economy (e.g. bankruptcy, and crime to acquire the funds to gamble with). This is a case where prohibition actually does have the desired effects, to enough of a degree to make it reasonble and justified.

"Whats your opinion on legal prostitution?"

Opposed. Numerous reasons.

We place limits on the exercise of liberty when there is a strong likelihood that individuals will be exploited.

We do not permit individuals to work for less than the minimum wage, even if they "want to". The only reason that people would do that is if they were desperate and someone else was exploiting them for his/her own ends. Similarly, we do not permit people to work in hazardous conditions, for the same reasons. And we don't permit people to indenture their labour, or pay usurious rates of interest, no matter how badly they need money.

Prostitution isn't a "career choice" made by upwardly mobile people with lots of options. And no anecdotes about happy hookers will rebut that assertion. It is a "choice" made mainly by women, virtually always because other choices are closed to them -- usually, in our place and time, because they are addicted to something, and also because their choices are limited by the damage done to their own personalities as a result of abuse, an absence of education and training resulting from poverty, and so on. No healthy person with other choices chooses to be a prostitute; really.

In a society that protects the extremely vulnerable from exploitation for the exploiter's profit or pleasure, which our societies do, there is no more reason to permit prostitution than to permit people to "volunteer" to be paid $1 an hour by Mcdonalds. People don't generally work at Mcdonalds for the fun of it, and women don't generally allow strangers to use their bodies for sexual gratification for their own pleasure. Prostitution is exploitation in a very classic sense.

Obviously, that doesn't mean that prostitutes should be charged and jailed and all that. Exploitation is normally combatted by targeting the exploiter, not the exploited.

The fact that the practice is widespread and long-lived doesn't persuade me of anything. So are slavery, and child abuse, and sweatshop employment. Prostitution will undoubtedly go on as long as those "root causes" aren't addressed, just as child abuse does today. That doesn't mean that society should sanction it, any more than it sanctions any other extreme form of exploitation.

And all that is just the reasons based on protecting vulnerable individuals from exploitation, without addressing the social harm associated with prostitution. Would you expect an African-American to support "voluntary" slavery? - say, one-year slavery contracts? I think that said African-American might regard that as a very regressive step in terms of the advancement of a people already suffering from severe disadvantage, stereotyping, and so on. Well, I'm a woman. Colour me ditto. A society that sanctions prostitution is no different from a society that sanctions "voluntary slavery". Different disadvantaged, stereotyped group; same principle.

Back to our sheep ...

"Im not disputing that there shouldnt be some costs. I am disputing that they are pricing the cost way above actual costs in order to keep a class of people in their place. I think we are kind of on the same page here. I think the fees associated with approval of a permit is fine. But $400? Thats just outrageous. There is no way in hell it could cost that much."

I would agree in principle: if a fee is unrelated to the direct costs ... I think I'd have to throw some "indirect costs" in here too, though I'd have to think more about it ... then it should not be priced out of certain groups of people's reach (and the good/service in question shouldn't be made less accessible to them by other improper means, e.g. choice of location where the good/service may be obtained) for some other illegitimate reason.

*Even if*, in this case, firearms possession is not a 'right'.

Discriminatory pricing really isn't my idea of a reasonable and justified limitation on the exercise of a right, no question. But if it is "adverse effect discrimination" and it relates to the discretionary exercise of a right, based purely on personal choice, and no public good comes out of the exercise of the right, and there are costs associated with the exercise of that right, then I don't see the pricing in question as any more discriminatory than any other pricing structure.

*All* prices will have a greater adverse impact on poor people, and on any other group (people of colour, women, very old people, very young people) who are disproportionately poor.

I see getting health care as a "personal choice" that involves a public good -- a healthy population is in everyone's interest, and allowing people to make that discretionary choice ("discretionary" at the very margins of that notion: the decision to try to stay alive is of course discretionary) prevents the significant harm to the public interest that happens when people are disabled or bankrupted. So I'm more than willing to subsidize the prices paid for that choice.

If you're agreeing that firearms ownership should not be "subsidized" in this manner -- by charging back the costs of putting the reasonable and justifiable limitations on the choice to exercise the 'right' to the public rather than to the user -- then we're basically on the same page, yes. I think that other mechanisms that are more rationally related to the objective (my own being to stem the proliferation of firearms in private hands) and not as violative of equality rights should be used.

And I'll bet you're happy now.

Smiley-face tongue sticking out/in cheek winking.

But seriously. Amazing how understanding is sometimes possible, ain't it?

Now if only we knew how much it costs to perform all those firearms-acquisition-related services ...

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