Slashdot Mirror
Popular Dark Web Market Disappears, Users Migrate In Panic (vice.com)
An anonymous reader cites an article on Motherboard: Like the changing of the seasons, a natural stage in the dark web marketplace life cycle has once again manifested. Nucleus market, which primarily sold illegal drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and cannabis, has disappeared: The site is unresponsive, and the market administrators have not made any announcements about planned downtime. This has forced vendors to migrate to other sites and panicked users to figure out where to go next, all amidst a whirlwind of rumours and speculation of where Nucleus -- and its cash -- has gone. 'Nucleus is an awesome market. One of the best. Hope all the admins are ok and nothing serious happened,' someone identifying themselves as a vendor wrote in a comment on the news site Deep Dot Web. At the moment, it's not totally clear why Nucleus' website is unresponsive. It could be an exit scam -- a scam where site administrators stop allowing users to withdraw their funds and then disappear with the stockpile of bitcoins.
And nothing of value was lost.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
... for hidden services. Why the surprise?
It could be an exit scam -- a scam where site administrators stop allowing users to withdraw their funds and then disappear with the stockpile of bitcoins.
That's unpossible! You're telling me that a group of people engaged in a criminal enterprise would scam their customers? I thought criminals had higher standards than that. I mean, are they trying to act all reputable, like Enron or those companies that sell annuities and stuff?
I need some technical background here. You hear about exit scams a lot - my question is, why do users deposit funds into an account controlled by the market? Outside of escrow, Bitcoin seems to remove the need to have anyone but you hold your money. And I'd imagine that escrow is very short-term and for relatively small amounts. So what is the technical reason that people hand their money over to a market?
Or rather, HAAAAAAA Haaaaaaaa!
All are complete scum. It's not "an awesome market" -- it's part of the engine that kills tens of thousands of people per year in the US, fills our downtowns with violent, vandalizing junkies, and general erodes society to a point where we can "no longer have nice things"
Methheads are worse than rats, termites, or bedbugs.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable response... If you are batshit crazy.
The problem with these deep web markets is that they are centralized and have an administrator(s).
The solution to this issue are decentralized peer to peer markets, where there can be no administrators, thus no more problem.
One of these has just launched a few weeks ago:
OpenBazaar.org (based on Bitcoin Blockchain) ...and the other will launch within a few short months:
SafeMarket - https://www.reddit.com/r/SafeMarket - Based on Ethereum blockchain
PS. Full disclosure: I have never used these or any other deep web markets, so please do your homework. I'm just a blockchain enthusiast that is aware of many things in that space.
Every major bank, exchange, escrow service has been hacked or "hacked" in the sense that someone on the inside made off with the wallet(s) when they decided that doing business with other greedy crooks wasn't as profitable.. Or that they've extracted as much as they can from the gullible.
Oh nooooooooooe....
Pablo sold Coke
Regular, diet, or zero?
Nucleus market, which primarily sold illegal drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and cannabis
Nucleus market didn't sell anything, Nucleus market was a website that was free to use. Its users sold illegal drugs. Call me pedantic but I consider this to be an important distinction.
Regular, obviously. The cocaine was removed from the recipe long before diet or zero were invented.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"What?"
"Who?"
"Dave's not here, man!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
And fuck you if you support the DEA.
You know a place is going downhill when Etherium shills are soliciting suckers.
RIP Slashdot.
ONE can hope that.... it wont be THIS ONE.
THIS ONE hopes it was shut down in time to avoid any of that for anyone. The only people who deserve death sentences are the ones who made darknets like this necessary for free people to exchange goods between consenting adults.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Nothing batshit crazy about it. We have to preserve our precious bodily fluids!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Which was very unfortunate. Making cocaine illegal is what created the Mexican drug cartels, and subsequently made them crazy rich and extremely powerful. Which they still are.
If we made cocaine legal, not only could we tax it, but we would pull the rug right out from under the drug cartels. They would dissipate from a simple inability to compete with the legal market. History has proven this to be true. People sometimes imagine that the illegal vendors could offer lower prices than the legal vendors, and hence the drug cartels would remain just as strong as ever...this is patently absurd and has been shown to be false in practice as well as in theory.
Ah yes -- because cartels didn't exist before cocaine was made illegal.
You fucking idiot.
You have to understand that roughly half the American population *is* batshit crazy. That's why they vote Republican. There has to be someone seriously wrong with you mentally if you really care about what two people do in their bedroom and want to legislate against it. And a large chunk of the remainder isn't much better, since they vote for obviously corrupt Democrats like Hillary.
I don't "do" cocaine or meth, but here in Washington State, I buy my weed at the store and smoke it on my front porch as the cops drive by and wave.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Is there no honor among thieves?
You give ignorant people a bad name.
Name me a single cartel previously that could pay off the entire debit of a nation.
Such is the power of black markets with an item that is in high demand.
Violence tends to go hand in hand with high revenues and an inability to access courts to settle disputes.
Please fix your chatbot, Microsoft. This thing is spazzing the fuck out.
Helluva clean-up script those guys at 123-reg wrote!
Yeah. If wanting limited government is crazy then I'm crazy. The federal government be limited as per the constitution. It should be much smaller: not provide for the roads, not provide any social safety net. You want a social safety net get it from local and state government. By the way I'm entirely in favor of a safety net - just not provided by the Federal government. Why? Take a look at the constitution. Read the Federalist Papers. Educate yourselves instead of saying everything would be fine if the rich paid for it.
The (1/10 of one percent) rich have what at most 500 billion dollars in assets? You could kill all the undeserving rich, take all their assets - and how long would that last 2 months? Yah. Feel the Bern.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Coincidentally, I just came across this Ted talk from Alex Winter the other day. It was most excellent. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) He made a very compelling argument for the value of privacy in the marketplace, why Dark Web vendors such as Silk Road (which he made a documentary on) and others are battling to protect it, and why privacy needs to be protected.
Are you happy right now with private businesses, credit bureaus, banks, and the government all logging, monitoring, and referencing your entire financial history? Would you like it any more if any of these institutions were hacked, and all your data was made public? If you aren't, then you should be mourning the loss of a private marketplace.
Debeers.
Interesting. I never claimed that cartels didn't exist before cocaine was made illegal. Nor did I claim that there would be "no cartels at all" after it is made legal. I was talking very specifically about the Mexican drug cartels, and my statements in that context are all accurate.
So, you called me an idiot because you disagree with statements that I never made nor even implied.
What word do we use to describe people who have reading-comprehension skill at about the level of a child?
The constitution specifically calls for Congress to be in charge of the roads.
"Totes Legit. We Swear."
"De Beers underlying earnings jumped 74 percent year on year to $923 million in 2014."
Not real impressed, but obviously you were thinking of a small country. A very small country.
Pablo Escobar had a net worth of 30 billion. And he was only a small part of the total cocaine trade.
See how they scatter like cockroaches!
If you think the Republican party is interested in limited government, then yes, you are crazy. Or just very easily duped.
The rest of your post is kind of a buzzword salad, so I'm leaning towards the former.
Posts like that make me wonder: Is this just a prank? Or is it a steganographied command-and-control channel for some malware?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Name me a single cartel previously that could pay off the entire debit of a nation.
The Dutch East India Company. At their height in the 1600s, they were worth the equivalent of $7.4 trillion today. Not quite enough to pay off the US debit, but more then enough to pay off almost any other country's debt.
The (1/10 of one percent) rich have what at most 500 billion dollars in assets? You could kill all the undeserving rich, take all their assets - and how long would that last 2 months? Yah. Feel the Bern.
You're way off in your calculation. The top 1% in wealth starts at > $15 million (this was in 2007, it's certainly higher now). So, even assuming a totally flat distribution above 1% (which is *definitely* wrong), we're talking 15,000,000 * 0.001 * adults_in_USA. I don't know what population number they use for these calculations, but plug in any reasonable number for the USA and you're looking at a minimum of several trillion dollars.
You're absolutely bonkers if you think the top 0.1 % of the the wealthiest Americans only have combined assets of $500 billion. You could probably get to $500 billion *easily* with the top 100. That leaves a few hundred thousand left to go.
That being said, I do not endorse killing and taking the money of anybody, be they rich or poor =)
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
This is only because of prohibition, prices are artificially inflated because of artificial scarcity and risk. Even without insurance, one can buy a supply of hydromorphone at a pharmacy for far less than one can buy heroin on the street - even though the hydromorphone is higher quality, much more potent, and overall safer than street heroin. Millions of Americans walk around hopped up on legally prescribed opiates and amphetamines and don't suffer from any of these apparent evils that we hear about in the endless government propaganda. Fuck, do you have any idea how many elderly people walk around with a morphine pump keeping them doped to high heaven 24/7? And when was the last time grandpa robbed you to pay for a refill? Oh, and most illegal drug addicts would suffer withdrawal before robbing someone, because they're not shit bags - some shit bags are drug addicts but by no means are all drug addicts shit bags. Drug use and a lack of decency are totally unrelated. And yeah, fuck us white libertarians who hate a system that disproportionately cages minorities, while destroying families and creating poverty. If you seriously think locking someone up for nothing other than using drugs is OK, you're a fucking twat that lacks any human decency or morality.
And this doesn't get modded Flamebait?
Not crazy in southeast asia - most countries in that region have a mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking due to its history in colonial oppression. The middle east also has death sentences for varied historical reasons from both colonialism and religious fundamentalism.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_drug_trafficking
The (1/10 of one percent) rich have what at most 500 billion dollars in assets? You could kill all the undeserving rich, take all their assets - and how long would that last 2 months? Yah. Feel the Bern.
You're off by a little more than an order of magnitude on your estimate. I think the number is more like 11 trillion. That should bring in an income stream of more than 500 billion p.a.
So we could spend that every year, and still leave the richest 0.1% enough money for the bare necessities. Of course, that is an extreme, and extremes are usually a pretty awful idea.
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2015/jul/29/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-madison-claims-top-01-americans-hav/
From the numbers in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States, it seems that the top 1% owns 34.6% of 86.8 trillion, or around $30 trillion - so a conservative income stream of maybe $6 trillion p.a.
Mmmmokay, you don't believe in any form of insurance whatsoever, then. Legally mandated risk pooling is just you ripping me off, since I don't have car accidents, floods or house fires but you do, you freeloader. I am being forced by law to pay insurance to support your problems.
Welcome to the Brave New World of unthought.
Currently you pay three times as much as your insurance is worth, so that people who can't afford insurance can be treated in the emergency room for "free". And if you think they shouldn't be treated, get yourself down to the emergency room pronto and start protesting, OK? Because the staff there are going to treat them, unless you get in their way, because they have a certain basic level of humanity that causes them to want to relieve suffering, and you'll have to intervene.
Oh, that's unfortunate, there's no "-1, Imbecile" option for you. This comment will have to do it.
Riiiiiight....and we've all seen how well the "cut taxes to the bone" model has worked in Kansas and Louisiana. Both states are nearly bankrupt, are deeply in debt, and can't afford to pay for basic services like schools, police, roads, and other "socialist" infrastructure.
No one like paying taxes, but they're a necessary thing in a modern society. It's a fact, and no amount of voodoo tax-cutting theory will change that.
Some people complain that everything was great 100 years ago where there was no taxation. Yeah, there were no taxes 100 years ago, and you know what else we didn't have 100 years ago?
A standing army, the FDA, the EPA, clean, drinkable water coming from every faucet, 24-hour emergency rooms, fully-staffed hospitals waiting to give you life-saving care, fire departments, 12 years of public education, child-abuse investigators, controls on what toxic chemicals can be poured into your drinking water, nationwide 911 service, a national highway system, social services, drug treatment centers, Medicaid and Medicare, Social Security, community colleges, public schools, water and sewer systems, parks and recreation services, food inspection, electrical utilities, gas service, a National School Lunch Program, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, foster care services, School Breakfast Programs, State Children's Insurance Programs, Unemployment insurance, Worker's Comp, Senior Community Service Employment Programs, street lights, mass transit, zoning, planning, building permits and inspection, housing and development programs, road maintenance, the State Board of Health, building inspections, building and fire codes, disaster relief, FEMA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the FBI, flood mitigation, pollution inspections, drug treatment centers, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the Library of Congress, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and on and on and on.
Frankly, I like those things. I I like knowing that the medication I take has been tested. I I like knowing the food I eat has been inspected. I I like having 911 to call for help. I I like roads and sewers and electrical service. I I like Social Security.
I'm no fan of taxes, believe me, but that's how things are paid for- the roads we drive on, emergency services, the Post Office, libraries, Medicaid and Medicare, Social Security, etc etc. Taxes have enabled this country to be able to pay for the things that make it a good place to live.
If you don't like taxes, from the list of things above, which one(s) should be cut or eliminated? Seriously, which ones would you do away with?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I've been to countries where taxation is almost non-existent, and most of them suck. Most of them are NOT places you'd want to live unless you were fairly well off in comparison to the rest of the population, and often not even then.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You want a social safety net get it from local and state government.
Yeah, and that would work great in a country with a few million people...but not in one with 300 million. That "local safety net" concept just doesn't scale the way you think it does.
Some places are richer than others and need little or no safety net, other places aren't so lucky and need more help than they can generate. It has always been this way, and always will be this way. It's a simple fact of life.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Another white "libertarian" who lives in the suburbs. Idiot.
Llibertarians are basically anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. I'm always amazed at their childlike gullibility as to how their libertarian society would function primarily to their benefit. Libertarianism just helps conservatives pass off a patently pro-business political agenda as a noble bid for human freedom.
“Libertarians are not the brightest lights in the candelabra, a fact that is evident from the alternatives they tend to offer to public prevention of private abuses. For example: if you don’t like working a hundred hours a week for twenty-five cents a day, then find another employer!” -- Michael Lind
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Nope, big city, born and raised.
Nice straw man though, I am glad you made him for me. See the vast majority of drug users have never committed a single B&E. In fact, the best evidence we have is that, even the few that do, mostly wouldn't if not for bone headed drug laws that are entirely ineffective at anything but filling prisons and increasing crime.
Hell, even Heroin users have been found to be able to hold down jobs and not require or seek out illegal income when they are able to get high at reasonable prices with safe product.
All in all, there is little to no evidence supporting any real benefit from drug laws, unless you consider jobs for white suburban guys in the prison system to be a benefit. In fact, going back to the arguments in congress about marijuana in the 1930s, its pretty clear that job creation was one of the primary motivating forces at the time; the biggest and most well known proponent of marijuana laws, for example, was the head of what would later become the DEA. His main motivation was fear for his own job after the end of alcohol prohibition.
Then we have the Nixon years were drug laws were actively pushed as a way to attack grass roots political campaigns and to oppose civil rights.
But seriously, thanks for bringing out this straw man, he is one of my favorite to set alight
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
OK. Say the total wealth is 2 trillion dollars and you merely confiscate 99% and leave them alive - then what? You get to run the government for 6 months.
The point of this is - even if you took everything from the greedy, disgusting, contemptible, super rich (channeling the Bern here) you still won't have the worker's paradise that you think you would have.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
My guess is that it's "down for maintenance" while the feds move the server(s) to their offices.
Once that's done it'll be back in business, with a little extra "oversight" *cough*.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
> hydromorphone is higher quality, much more potent, and overall safer than street heroin
Even worst.... "Krokodil", that nasty "street drug" that has been killing and disfiguring people in the most horrible ways.
Turns out that is because of impurities in home manufacture. The actual drug is much much safer than many other opioids , and making it available in a grade fit for human consumption would actually save lives.
That is what really gets me.... how inhumanely callous prohibitionists are. Their policies have been nothing but harmful, yet they just sit back and smug over their victims suffering.
No houses burned before meth was made profitable. Now half the burn units are idiots who tried making meth. How is that not an atrocity? How do you blame that on the idiot addict and not the politicians who should have known better?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
All that stuff you mention can only be supported by a modern, industrious capitalist society.
Again, people put the cart before the horse, while calling the horse an evil useless asshole plague.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
But now where is Rush Limbaugh going to get his meds?
Things were going fine until the consultant management brought in advocated "eating your own dogfood". Now none of the admins care if the servers are down.
Nullius in verba
There are no taxes because there is no economic dynamism to tax. You need to protect property rights from both thieves...and the corrupt who go into power to demand kickbacks.
Once you do that, and a farmer (or industrial equivalent) can feel safe investing in long-term projects without fear of seizure by thieves or corrupt officials, only then do you get a more powerful economy and higher employment with better jobs (compared to dirt floor existence) and only then can you generate enough taxes to do pretty little leftist projects.
The problem is stopping the projects from charging so much they are no different from corrupt officials in wrecking the expected success of an investment. "Pay us 50%, or your factory might get...broken. Shame if that happened." Where 50% is the combined taxation and regulatory burden. "Shame if the burden went to 62%."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I've no problem paying taxes. I've a problem with my taxes paying for a large standing army, hospitals and doctors being compelled against their will to kill human beings both at the beginning of life and at the end, pyramid schemes disguised as a retirement plan, social programs designed to destroy families and ensure children will be raised in environments scientifically shone to ensure they will have the least chance of success, medicines which are approved not based on their safety, or effectiveness, but on how much they will make their manufacturers, a system of protection for large financial institutions that ensure that those with the most money will incur the least risk, while those lower down the economic ladder will incur the greatest.
Taxes are a necessary evil. How they are used in the U.S. is not necessary.
P.S. many of those items sited in JustAnotherOldGuy's post are the responsibility of local government and should be paid for with local taxes. So "cut taxes to the bone" and let localities raise taxes if they need to.
P.P.S. Kansas is run by the Republicans and Louisiana by the Democrats, so I'd say corruption is the common denominator not too low taxes.
That's why people can move. There are small Scandinavian countries that are "roll" models here in the states - so population isn't really the problem. Re the some places richer than others -- that's why people can and do move. How about you let the states decide; then people will live in the states that best suit their personality.
Don't like the hillbillies and rednecks and other ignorant republicans? Don't send them your hard earned money. According to many liberals the blue states are supporting the red states. So stop supporting them. If you're right then the rednecks will be forced to accept the wisdom of the liberal welfare state. And if they still prefer to live in their ignorance and squalor - well that's on them isn't it?
The new American liberal: scared of freedom. We go from home of the free to home of the serfs.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
This is a false argument. True, if the whole world packed itself into a dark alley, leapt out and mugged Bill Gates for every penny he had, that would have made something like $2/person at one point - a whole day's salary for many people and a pack of Starburst Fruit Chews for Americans.
But Gates is also the person who would be losing money if he saw a $100 bill on the sidewalk and stopped to pick it up.
The One-percenters aren't living off fixed assets, they're constantly having their assets replenished. To the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
And the problem with letting them keep it all is that sooner or later we're going to run out of everyone else's money.
The same people who told us tax-and-spend was a Bad Thing brought us tax-cut-and-spend.
And the problem with letting them keep it all is that sooner or later we're going to run out of everyone else's money.
You can't have a 1% without other people having money.
Most of the wealth of the rich is in things like stock, which has a variable value and isn't actually durable goods. Without the stock price being maintained at a certain level, they deflate like a dry rotted tire.
You can't have the rich in the current economy without people who buy things. There is no economy if there are only robots making things that no one else can pay for. If that is the case, they sit in the warehouse and become a net expense.
All that stuff you mention can only be supported by a modern, industrious capitalist society.
Can be and will be are two different things.
In the Capitalist Paradise, you only get these things if someone decides they can make a profit at them. That means that if you're rural, don't expect electricity or communications services. If you live in a poor neighborhood poisoned by toxic mine talings, don't expect affordable health care. If you live anywhere and someone decides they can make money by flooding it with carcinogenic waste products - well, good luck.
And don't expect anyone to hand you money to move if you don't like it.
Most of the "wealth" of the rich isn't in per year earnings like income or dividends, it is simply in held stock assets.
If you lower the price of Microsoft stock, for instance, Bill Gates deflates by billions of dollars.
Stock isn't income, it is an asset that has variable value.
Does Bill Gates have income? Absolutely. He certainly has diversified and probably has some safer investments in some bonds and such which provide millions for living expenses per year that is more like a salary or annuity, but he doesn't make billions per year like a salary. He could end up with a windfall due to a stock price rise, but he could just as easily lose money as well.
The problem that people run into when they estimate what they can extract from the 1% is that they are also counting assets, and once assets are removed, they aren't regenerated. So if Bill Gates has 90 Billion Dollars as a worth, and you remove 89 Billion of it, he's not going to have 90 billion again next year. He might not even have 2 billion next year. To charge him 89 billion, he had to sell most, if not all of his Microsoft stock, most likely at a price below what it is worth because he's probably going to have to dump a lot of it on the market for a considerable amount of time.
The reason we even consider that stock "wealth" as real wealth is because the rich can use it as for collateral for loans. Otherwise, it's like a lottery win... worth a certain amount unless you try and take it as a lump sum.
I actually estimate you get one trillion dollars out of the 1% of the US population and then it drastically reduces from then on. The 1% will continue to make 1% salaries and dividends if they have CEO jobs and all of that, but that will be a considerably smaller portion of the pie than they had the previous year.
Seriously, which ones would you do away with?
The corporate welfare payments, which account for 2/3 of my tax dollars.
Former drug user here, have never committed a B&E. Never robbed anyone. Never committed any crimes other than buying illegal plant-derived products. I am however, highly educated, well compensated in a great career, and living happily. Even during my worst drug abusing days (when I was regularly using a laundry list of different drugs) I was able to maintain 2-3 different part time, and then 1 part time and 1 full time job, in addition to being a full-time student. It is absolutely possible to use drugs and be highly functioning. The biggest impact I had was on my grades - cocaine makes you incredibly over-confident, which is a VERY bad thing for testing in school.
Actually, the countries that Bernie Sanders loves are the size of US states. So why couldn't a US State manage its own program? It might actually work better.
Putting everything through a large Federal government considerably increases the waste due to administrative costs and makes health care into a permanent Federal level hot button issue that we really shouldn't be having at that level. You want to be talking about foreign relations, defense, and global trade at that level, and it would help if you could kick the health care issues down to a level that would be more responsive to begin with. In that way, we have Federal candidates who we can hold to task for a much less generalized set of responsibilities.
Also, creating a good health care program in a state could induce large economic growth in that state, thus providing incentives to less interested states to do the same thing.
So, besides the aqueduct and everything else you mention, what has taxation done for us?
He was referring to drug cartels, not tulip dealers :-P
In the good old days, moron was used to designate somebody with an intelligence below that of a five-year old, while an idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs... which is to say a modern American republican
While you probably meant to be funny, this is one of the characteristics of a free society: Some level of crime. A characteristic of a police-state is that the police can go after most crime (and will become more and more like the criminals in the process but never gets punished for their crimes). Freedom comes at a price, but human history shows that it is a worthwhile one to pay and the price of the alternatives is far, far higher. To maintain freedom, the police must be severely limited in what they can do and be restricted to their original task: To keep crime at a level that society still functions. Suppressing drugs, putting teenagers in jail that send pictures of themselves to others, arresting prostitutes, making sure the prisons stay full, etc. are all not part of that task.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm sorry, but there is nothing safe about actual opiates taken for recreational purposes. Yes, pure forms of opiates aren't going to disfigure or kill you from impurities, but the level of physical dependency on opiates is real and quite considerable. This isn't pot we're talking about here. You should only be using opiates for something like actual painkilling, not for getting by in life.
Do I think that prohibition is necessarily the best idea? Not really. On the other hand, I feel about opiates the same way I do about many other things that are legal: Legal or not, you should simply never do it unless medically necessary.
I think there is a considerable state interest in keeping people off of hard drugs like opiates. I agree that the approach of treating them like criminals is not helpful, because ultimately, one reason to not want widespread drug use is the possibility of addiction fueled crime which consigns people to jails. So throwing people in jail to prevent people from going to jail is sort of silly.
I do think that opiates should be legal and available, but taxed heavily and as unfairly as possible. I think the government should keep a pulse on the black market and then keep throwing them off by lowering the prices to run the dealers out of business every time they make something cheaper. And at the same time, that money is to be thrown right back at the problem by funding anti-drug programs and education.
My only real concern with taxation making money off of drugs is that it will get thrown to the general fund, like Social Security, and then we end up as a country where we fund our government via addictions. That would bother me unless the only goal and target for that revenue source was getting people off those addictions and health care related to that.
Or ISIS
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
> On the other hand, I feel about opiates the same way I do about many other things that are legal: Legal or not, you should simply never do it unless medically necessary.
Your opinion is noted, I mostly share it. Where I disagree is that this translates into some legitimate power to imprison people because they do something you don't approve of.
Why have a black market? There is no evidence that drug laws decrease use. There was never any real justification for these laws other than looking down on other people and judging them for being different. All the evidence I have seen points to social isolation and stigma being driving forces that lead to drug use, not solve it.
Have you ever looked at a graph of spending on the drug war vs addiction rates? One of them is a horizontal line, and it isn't spending. I see no evidence that maintaining a black market so you can feel good about doing nothing is a good thing.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Pretty little leftist projects like the internet or universal education for example? I'm sure capitalists don't get any advantage from those Commie wastes of money.
That high-cost form of care adds up too. Here in Canada, publicly-funded health care — together with retail health care costs outside of the public system (like prescription drugs) — cost about 9% or 10% of GDP...I forget the exact number. By the same yardstick, U.S. health care is 13% of GDP. So tlhingan is right, the user-pay system *is* more expensive. Obamacare will have reduced U.S. costs a bit by now, but maybe not by enough to make a dent in the 13% figure.
That's why people can move. There are small Scandinavian countries that are "roll" models here in the states - so population isn't really the problem.
Maybe you missed the part where I said, "...that would work great in a country with a few million people...but not in one with 300 million. That "local safety net" concept just doesn't scale the way you think it does."
-
Re the some places richer than others -- that's why people can and do move.
Some people cannot afford to move, or can't afford to move to where they'd like to. Will you give me the money so I can move to Beverly Hills or San Francisco and live there? Or is being too poor to move just tough shit for those who can't afford it?
-
How about you let the states decide; then people will live in the states that best suit their personality.
How about "no"? Because some of those states if left to their own devices would happily make slavery legal again. Some would make interracial marriage illegal. Some would make child prostitution perfectly legal. Too bad you can't afford to move out of that state. Or maybe that state has decided you aren't allowed to move out, period. Yay for state's rights!
-
Don't like the hillbillies and rednecks and other ignorant republicans? Don't send them your hard earned money.
Assuming I was a big enough dick to deny assistance to "hillbillies and rednecks and other ignorant republicans", just how would I go about denying them my hard earned money? Does that principle also work for blacks and Hispanics? If I don't like them, can I just say, "Fuck you, you ain't gitt'n none of mah money"? If I don't like people from Louisiana or Texas, for example, how do I "not send them" my money?
-
And if they still prefer to live in their ignorance and squalor - well that's on them isn't it?
No, it's not always on them. Some of them might want to move but can't afford to do so. Then what?
-
The new American liberal: scared of freedom. We go from home of the free to home of the serfs.
News Flash: I'm liberal. I'm probably way more liberal than you, and I'm not scared of freedom. I'm scared of those who work to take it away or deny it to others.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
And yet, in a Libertarian society, the existence of unions to protect workers from abuses would be completely legal and just as effective, if not more so. There is nothing about that solution that required any government intervention at all. Indeed, the original unions and strikers were opposed by governments and law enforcement which turned out against them at the behest of large business owners.
And once government became the "friend" of organized labor, you started to see the abuses from the other side as well from those parts of the government that were attempting to ensure the union vote on their side.
Even though I don't think that perfect anarchy is ever going to work, there are options with a more limited government. You need government for a lot of things, I just don't think we need it for everything and that is where it is going.
Putting everything through a large Federal government considerably increases the waste due to administrative costs and makes health care into a permanent Federal level hot button issue that we really shouldn't be having at that level.
You're right, we should disband the Veterans Administration immediately because clearly it doesn't work and it does not provide health care to millions of people every year. We must move to shut down all of the 1,700 VA sites of care across the country, as well as the VA medical centers, community outpatient clinics and Vet Centers. I mean, it's just a permanent Federal level health care system that OBVIOUSLY doesn't work, right?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
To charge him 89 billion, he had to sell most, if not all of his Microsoft stock, most likely at a price below what it is worth because he's probably going to have to dump a lot of it on the market for a considerable amount of time.
And this in turn will reduce the wealth of everyone else that owns Microsoft stock, which likely means retirement funds and the like start losing money. I sympathize with the "1%" movement and "stiggin' it to the man!" sounds good on the surface, but there are a lot of follow-on effects that need to be considered before taking a drastic action like that.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Waste of time to argue with someone who starts by mis-defining his opposition. The next time you feel the urge, just punch yourself in the nuts.
In other words: 'Never answer a false premise.' It's old advice, but still good.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Opiate junkies get to the point where they can't go 8 hours without getting sick. At that point they can't hold a full time job unless they can do it very very high.
On the other hand tweakers will work their asses off to continue to get bags. Until they melt down.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Riiiiiight....and we've all seen how well the "cut taxes to the bone" model has worked in Kansas and Louisiana. Both states are nearly bankrupt, are deeply in debt, and can't afford to pay for basic services like schools, police, roads, and other "socialist" infrastructure.
No one like paying taxes, but they're a necessary thing in a modern society. It's a fact, and no amount of voodoo tax-cutting theory will change that.
Some people complain that everything was great 100 years ago where there was no taxation. Yeah, there were no taxes 100 years ago, and you know what else we didn't have 100 years ago?
A standing army, the FDA, the EPA, clean, drinkable water coming from every faucet, 24-hour emergency rooms, fully-staffed hospitals waiting to give you life-saving care, fire departments, 12 years of public education, child-abuse investigators, controls on what toxic chemicals can be poured into your drinking water, nationwide 911 service, a national highway system, social services, drug treatment centers, Medicaid and Medicare, Social Security, community colleges, public schools, water and sewer systems, parks and recreation services, food inspection, electrical utilities, gas service, a National School Lunch Program, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, foster care services, School Breakfast Programs, State Children's Insurance Programs, Unemployment insurance, Worker's Comp, Senior Community Service Employment Programs, street lights, mass transit, zoning, planning, building permits and inspection, housing and development programs, road maintenance, the State Board of Health, building inspections, building and fire codes, disaster relief, FEMA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the FBI, flood mitigation, pollution inspections, drug treatment centers, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the Library of Congress, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and on and on and on.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
and you know what else we didn't have 100 years ago?
...the aqueducts?
What do you think the net worth of the extended family that owns De Beers is?
You compare earnings to net worth, it's no wounder you're not impressed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Because I can operate google, and the inference was inherent to the comparison.
From wiki-
"During the height of its operations, the cartel brought in more than $60 million per day (making roughly $22 billion in a year)."
Good enough for you, dipshit?
That's why people can move. There are small Scandinavian countries that are "roll" models here in the states - so population isn't really the problem.
Maybe you missed the part where I said, "...that would work great in a country with a few million people...but not in one with 300 million. That "local safety net" concept just doesn't scale the way you think it does."
Correct. Then we agree a Federal solution isn't the correct way to go. NY can provide health care to it's citizens, in the same fashion that the UK does. Other states may chose not to. We agree to not having a Federally provided health care solution because, for among other reasons, it doesn't scale well.
Re the some places richer than others -- that's why people can and do move.
Some people cannot afford to move, or can't afford to move to where they'd like to. Will you give me the money so I can move to Beverly Hills or San Francisco and live there? Or is being too poor to move just tough shit for those who can't afford it?
Poor people move all the time. My parents moved here with nothing. I moved with nothing from one state to another. Nobody needs to pay you nothing. Sell what the sh!t you have and move.
How about you let the states decide; then people will live in the states that best suit their personality.
How about "no"? Because some of those states if left to their own devices would happily make slavery legal again. Some would make interracial marriage illegal. Some would make child prostitution perfectly legal. Too bad you can't afford to move out of that state. Or maybe that state has decided you aren't allowed to move out, period. Yay for state's rights!
The fact that states rights have been abused doesn't invalidate the concept anymore than people who abuse the right to free speech. The United States separates powers between the states and the federal government. Otherwise everything would be micromanaged from by one omnipotent bureaucracy. It's better to have the federal government focus upon international affairs and treaties and have the states do other things. Hey, isn't that what the Constitution says.
Don't like the hillbillies and rednecks and other ignorant republicans? Don't send them your hard earned money.
Assuming I was a big enough dick to deny assistance to "hillbillies and rednecks and other ignorant republicans", just how would I go about denying them my hard earned money? Does that principle also work for blacks and Hispanics? If I don't like them, can I just say, "Fuck you, you ain't gitt'n none of mah money"? If I don't like people from Louisiana or Texas, for example, how do I "not send them" my money?
-
Again, You don't seem to understand. It's not denying to particular groups. It's the liberal BS that states that Blue States are supporting Red States. It's easy to not subsidize people from other states. If your money isn't sent to the federal government and then redistributed then you would not be sending your money there. Then everyone would be happy. If people from those other states want change they will either vote the change in (in other words vote for liberal progressives) or move. Either case is a win for progressives.
And poor people can move. I did. My wife did. I moved to three states with nothing. And I mean nothing besides my backpack and a dufflebag. My parents did. I live in NYC and people move here with nothing every fu(king day of the week.
News Flash: I'm liberal. I'm probably way more liberal than you, and I'm not scared of freedom. I'm scared of those who work to take it away or deny it to others.
If liberal == progressive then you certainly are. I'm a classical liberal and want to live as a free man rather than under the watchful, loving gaze of Comrade Government.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Are you actually defending Federal heath care with the VA system? You know... the one where people with terminal illness never get appointments and then *die* of treatable illnesses so that Federal officials can get bonuses?
Actually, the VA system is an excellent argument for why the Federal government sucks at health care.
Of course, we can't shut down health care in the VA system, promises have been made, but please don't pretend that having to keep that promise means that is an argument that the government is doing a *good* job and it should expand its efforts to continue to provide underfunded health care to people who the government clearly doesn't actually care enough about to properly fund it.
And don't go blaming this or that party. When you have a health care system run by the government, you have now made health care a political football. If that's going to happen, let's bring the level of government down to the level where the legislators actually see people as humans and not as blocs of votes and special interests.
How long has De Beers operated vs an already dead cartel.
You're believing estimates from groups with agendas. Likely the police estimated gross street price of the drugs moved.
You still don't have a reasoned comparison. Wiki SUCKS for anything remotely controversial.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Having travelled extensively around the world my experience is that countries that are 1st world but more socialist than the US have better infrastructure. Particularly when it comes to the maintenance of their roads.
I drove from LA to Miami back in 2008 and the difference in the standard of repair of major arterial roads between states was huge. You would go from ultra-smooth machined concrete to sections where the slabs had rotated under the traffic giving you mini jumps every couple of meters.
It's the liberal BS that states that Blue States are supporting Red States.
Except those pesky numbers and facts disagree. Red states use more than they give back, and this is not hard to substantiate. Blue states produce more than they take, also not hard to substantiate.
Blue states generally higher per capita of people with college degrees, lower teen pregnancy rates, lower incarceration rates, higher per capita of home ownership, lower infant mortality, better "neighborhood advantage scores", higher personal incomes, and so on. Blue states invest much more in education, investments in education result in better educated kids, and better educated kids go further in school. Blue states, not surprisingly, also have higher graduation rates.
States that consistently vote Republican and against their own best interest suck more money from the federal government than Democratic states. Again, these figures are not hard to find.
American poverty is concentrated in the south, from Arizona all the way to the East Coast; additionally, Michigan, West Virginia and Kentucky are high-poverty states. With the exceptions of Michigan and New Mexico, these states are exclusively conservative-leaning. Conversely, on average, more progressive/Blue states, particularly in the northeast, tend to be the most well off states in our nation.
Income mobility and the ability to “work your way up” (or down) is closely tied to the state in which you are living. All but one (Utah) of the states which have higher than average upward income mobility rates lean progressive/Blue, while all of the states with low upward income mobility rates lean conservative/Red.
The right wing’s southern stronghold is composed of states that have, far and away, the worst life expectancies in the United States. This isn’t a purely a partisan issue, and involves a mixture of culture and bad policy.
The south is home to extreme poverty, a lack of accessible health care (ex. Texas leads the nation with 25% uninsurance), lax worker/environmental protections, and a culture that consumes massive amounts of fatty fried foods. These factors create a perfect storm of bad health that severely erodes the life expectancy of huge portions of the southern population. The health care systems of the Deep South and southwest are the worst in the nation, while those in the northeast and north-central regions are the best. This defies a purely partisan divide (ex. a lot of rural states suffer from low hospital accessibility), but the fact remains that the most conservative states in the nation tend to have the worst health care systems.
I could go on, but facts are facts, and the fact is that Red states do poorly in almost every quality-of-life metric when compared with Blue states.
This isn't my opinion- do some searches for "red state versus blue state" and you'll find plenty of studies that make this abundantly clear. When you look at all of these statistics in totality, you're left with the inescapable conclusion that Red states are correlated with a less developed society.
If you can find me stats which state the opposite, I'd be glad to look at them. But you won't, because they don't exist.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Of course they don't get an advantage, not with these communist rules like "network" "neutrality" around.
The capitalists who own the roads will only achieve true profit once they can bill you for walking on the road AND bill the place you're walking to for the service of "allowing" you to walk to them. What's that? The store didn't pay their share of the walking fee? Well Tiny here will be along shortly to make sure you can only crawl.
The Dutch East India Company was running drugs in the 1600s. They were huge in the opium business.
Are you actually defending Federal heath care with the VA system? You know... the one where people with terminal illness never get appointments and then *die* of treatable illnesses so that Federal officials can get bonuses?
Yes, because it is not perfect it should be scrapped. Great thinking.
The fact is the VA serves millions of people per year and the vast, vast majority of them them get quality care. FFS, people die in private hospitals from all sorts of shit (nosocomial infections, anyone?), but do we scream to shut those hospitals down?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
No, because my point was completely proven by so many responders in this thread.
Here is a good sub-list of things that shouldn't exist:
Publicly funded:
A standing army, the FDA, the EPA, clean, drinkable water coming from every faucet, 24-hour emergency rooms, fully-staffed hospitals waiting to give you life-saving care, fire departments, 12 years of public education, child-abuse investigators, controls on what toxic chemicals can be poured into your drinking water, nationwide 911 service, a national highway system, social services, drug treatment centers, Medicaid and Medicare, Social Security, community colleges, public schools, water and sewer systems, parks and recreation services, food inspection, electrical utilities, gas service, a National School Lunch Program, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, foster care services, School Breakfast Programs, State Children's Insurance Programs, Unemployment insurance, Worker's Comp, Senior Community Service Employment Programs, street lights, mass transit, zoning, planning, building permits and inspection, housing and development programs, road maintenance, the State Board of Health, building inspections, building and fire codes, disaster relief, FEMA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the FBI, flood mitigation, pollution inspections, drug treatment centers, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the Library of Congress, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and on and on and on.
Those things must not exist as government 'services', they are affront to individual rights, liberties and dignity.
You can't handle the truth.
If you believe what you just wrote, why not move to Somalia or Nigeria? It would be your paradise on Earth. But you don't really believe a word of what you wrote, do you?
The problem most libertarians have is they never think that they'll be the ones getting fucked. It's never YOUR wife or YOUR child who'll die from some untested medication or contaminated food or unsafe electrical appliance. It'll always be the other guy whose wife or kid dies, and then the Magical Invisible Hand Of The Market will punish that company and force them out of business, so you'll be safe, right?
But it won't be your wife or your kid, no way. And if it IS your kid or your wife, well shucks, you can just take them to court for damages, right? Because that will bring your child or wife back to life, right?
Fuck you, I like the EPA and the FDA. I like public education and parks and recreation services. I like the idea of a School Breakfast Program for kids. I like all the things that make this a great country to live in. It's why people want to come here, fool. How many people in the US want to emigrate to Nigeria or Laos or Namibia or Somalia? NONE, that's how many.
My wife comes from a very poor country in SE Asia, and she's blown away by things like 911, public schools, food testing, public libraries, and all that stuff that you think is wasteful. She appreciates them and is more than happy to pay taxes. Unlike you, she realizes that these things are what make this country so great and why so many people want to come here, and not, for example, to emigrate to Somalia.
Her family had no money for schooling, so tough shit for her, is that it? Let the poor among us fail so that we may climb over their bodies on the way to our penthouses, right?
You selfish, ignorant fucks grow up swimming in these kinds of services and yet still find a way to complain about them. You'd likely be dead of a childhood disease if not for the publicly-funded health initiatives this country has. After all, what did this country ever do for you?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I hope those retarded fags who founded our country don't stop our police from abusing free Citizens. So sick of hearing about law enforcement having to get warrants and due process. Shit needs to be rebalanced so that government has unlimited power to spend trillions of dollars on wild goose chases and fucking over people I don't like.
Fortunately a super-majority disagrees with you, and that's how our country is run. Perhaps you could find a country run in a way closer to your liking?
I do blame the addicts, their addiction is not an excuse to commit further crimes, or to undertake projects, like drug manufacture, they're not trained or experienced in. I also blame politicians, it's their job to help everyone, even the addicts. But if a country preaches 'tough on crime', the politicians have an excuse for throwing anyone under a bus. It's another version of 'Fuck you, I got mine'.
Those things must not exist as government 'services', they are affront to individual rights, liberties and dignity.
[Citation needed]
Seriously though, the vast majority of the people in this country disagree with you on nearly every single one of those things. And that's why we have them- because people thought they were worth having. You're in the minority here, and not by just a little bit.
However, if you do not like having those things, you are free to move to a country where they don't exist and where you won't have to pay for them. But you won't do that, will you? Why not? Do you not have the courage of your convictions, or do you just want to have your cake and eat it too?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Why? A criminal doesn't have to pay taxes on the sale, or employee benefits, or minimum wage, or provide quality assurance. The legal manufacturer will probably have the edge in the cost of sale, since he can use established infrastructure. (Although, a good number of legal shops sell tax-free (illegal) tobacco.)
The point of legalizing is three-fold: The monopoly benefiting criminals ends and prices drop; the consumer gets a quality-assured product and other consumer protections; the government gets a reduced enforcement/imprisonment burden plus increased revenue (from taxes). The government also needs to create safe consumption policies and PSAs but that will consume a fraction of the increased revenue.
Criminals can and will offer a lower price, but excluding taxes, the criminal is just another supplier in the market and has no advantage.
So you do know where I am, yes? By the way, I moved my business a long time ago, myself, I move around, I don't consider myself a slave to any government on this planet.
You can't handle the truth.
Oh, no, casual drug users aren't addicted, not at all. What nonsense.
Moving the goalposts!
Those pesky numbers you refer to include social security payments (not a handout - it was a forced input into well-meaning but still an irrationally run retirement benefit). It includes money for military bases and military personnel. It just so happens that military states are slightly more red. Not to mention the Blue States that have kicked military bases out (hence receiving less "govt" largess. It includes NASA which happens to now be red states. (They weren't in the 1960s).
It also includes farm subsidies (which should be eliminated ASAP). Interestingly these farm subsidies were put in place by Dems over Rep objections (see FDR).
So that leaves individual handouts (welfare). Interesting isn't it that the Red states that are so dependent on handouts (West Virginia, Kentucky and Mississippi were deep blue until a few years ago.
The best solution is to give these voters what they want. Curtail government involvement and largess. If you're confident that's what people really want and need then these redstate fools will vote out all these tea party extremists and the Democratic / Progressive Party will have the presidency and huge majorities in Congress.
This would be a win/win for you. All small-government, uneducated morons or fools (like me) would be relegated to the fringes of society and could safely be ignore.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I don't think the Republican Party leadership is. Not at all. That's why so many people are pissed with them. I think that Ted Cruz, Justin Amash, Rand Paul and others are for shrinking the government - which could be why the GOPe tried to primary Amash in 2014.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
No. The combined worth of all the billionaires in the US is under 2.5 trillion (of course a good portion of their wealth is in stock and the value of said assets would plummet on the announcing of such a taking). Say the combined worth is 4 trillion. (It takes 10,000 one-hundred-millionaires to equal a trillion dollars. Don't know how you got to 11 trillion dollars unless you're including two income families making over 250,000.
So no. You would get a fraction of what you think you would get. Keep dreaming about the good life by taking other peoples money; keep dreaming that confiscatory taxing of the mega-rich will bring much of anything.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
And, did you ever look at what the distribution of this one percent is? Or are you conflating the 0.0001 with the 1%?
There are, what, 500 billionaires in the US? Say 640 for easy calculations.
There are 320,000,000 people in the US. Those billionaires are 1/500,000 of the population which equals what? 0.005 of one percent.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
We absolutely should disband the VA. It would be far more rational to purchase Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance for the vets (as payment for services rendered) and let them go to the hospital of their choice. The cost savings in bureaucracy, maintenance, etc... would be tremendous. It would bet that the cost of hospital and mental health care would drop and the care would improve tremendously.
So yes. Disband the VA.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
If you don't like taxes, from the list of things above, which one(s) should be cut or eliminated? Seriously, which ones would you do away with?
There's one easy way to cut out a couple: Work as a Contract Employee – 1099, instead of being a permanent employee – W-2.
Just don't get injured or become unemployed! Because you chose not to pay into that system, you are not entitled to Unemployment or Short-term Disability benefits. (This is a CA example, but UI & SDI are all state-level).
So go ahead and avoid those taxes. Break a leg!
Due to the krokodil epidemic, the Russian Government put very strict controls on the availability of codeine tablets. It's not over-the-counter any more, so obtaining the main ingredient to home-brew your own highly impure batch of krokodil has become very difficult. That is good.
The active component in krokodil is desomorphine – an opiate discovered about 90 years ago in a search for less addicting painkillers. As it turned out, desomorphine was w-a-a-a-ay more addictive. It is illegal in most countries, even as a hospital-administered pain-management drug. Morphine and dilaudid are what provide the most pain-relief per addictive potential. After surgery, you'll get a push-button morphine drip, but only for three days, to avoid addiction.
Rehabilitation is not easy, especially with such high unemployment. But basically, give them a two-day series of naloxone, plus benzos because accelerated withdrawal sucks. Then keep them on naltrexone for a couple of years. But such programs must include re-entry into society, leading to employment or something that feels meaningful—It was desperation tht drove the to krokodil in the first place.
DO NOT search YouTube for videos of flesh-rotting and live-limb-cutting (to avoid sepsis) un-anesthetized. Unless you have a strong stomach.
Here is a link to test your mettle (excitement begins at 2:20.
DO NOT search YouTube for videos of flesh-rotting and live-limb-cutting (to avoid sepsis) un-anesthetized. Unless you have a strong stomach.
Here is a link to test your mettle (excitement begins at 2:20.
But god-forbid that a nipple is visible in a YouTube video (in the US)! That could scandalize someone –especially a child under the age of two!
Then we have the Nixon years were drug laws were actively pushed as a way to attack grass roots political campaigns and to oppose civil rights.
Mod this up!
This was the sole purpose of the War on Drugs.
Search google news for the recent revelation – made after the malfeasors who admitted in interviews that they created this monstrosity – are all safely in their graves.
The best solution is to give these voters what they want.
If it was only them, sure, but why should their children suffer because their parents are idiots? These children will grow up to be our doctors, engineers (and yes, even politicians), and I for one want them healthy and well-educated. So no, you don't get to fuck over a generation of children because their parents, Mr and Mrs Goober, are too stupid to make good decisions.
-
small-government, uneducated morons or fools (like me) would be relegated to the fringes of society and could safely be ignore.
I already ignore people like you for the most part.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Former drug user here, have never committed a B&E. Never robbed anyone. Never committed any crimes other than buying illegal plant-derived products.
Former drug user here. I have committed B&E. But not why you are thinking.....
But the B&E's were committed for fun and exploration, and were completely unrelated to any drug use. I had enough money for drugs. (BTW, in the B&E's, I usually didn't take anything, except maybe a token item. It was for the thrill.)
It would be far more rational to purchase Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance for the vets (as payment for services rendered) and let them go to the hospital of their choice. The cost savings in bureaucracy, maintenance, etc... would be tremendous. It would bet that the cost of hospital and mental health care would drop and the care would improve tremendously.
Sure, get them to put it on the ballot and I'll vote for it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Of course what you consider to be a good decision others may consider to be foolish. You want to live as a serf, a ward of a nanny-state. OK. I don't.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You live in Florida and have money hidden from taxation in several jurisdictions.
Cheap storage VM.
Florida, ha! :) Money hidden in several jurisdictions... I have business interests in a number of different countries and I do not reside in the USA.
You can't handle the truth.
11. electrical utilities
So you think you can afford the cost of running a wire from your house all the way back to the generation plant? Let's not forget the transformers, safety mechanisms, rights-of-way, poles to erect or trenches to dig and pipes to lay. Not to mention the cost of mining or reclaiming copper, extruding it into wire, and wrapping it with insulation. No, you can't use that pole or pipe that's already there, because you didn't pay for it.
I guess really you ought to build your own generation plant as well; we can't have any electrons flowing to your house for which your own money is not responsible.
tl;dr: You're an idiot.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
I have to place a lot more blame on the politicians. You can talk individual morality all you want, the fact is, when you make something profitable, you incentivise it being done. The addict may have burned the house down and he may be individually responsible..... but the politicians made it certain that houses would burn and will continue to burn.
The existence of people who will circumvent the law is a foregone conclusion, therefore those making law bear responsibility when they increase the harm caused by such circumvention, far more so than any individual transgressor.
A man making meth burns down a house, the politicians have guilt in every single house that burned.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Of course drug laws do important things: how do you fund illegal wars without the high margins they give to drug lords, all (or nearly all) ranging from close allies to proxies of the CIA?
Free public education is one of the demands in the Communist Manifesto, after all.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The social safety net is covered under the general welfare clause.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Really? Then where was it for the 140 years before FDR?
It existed. It was the churches and the local community.
Take another look at the constitution. Take a look at Article1 : Section 8.
Don't read your desires into it. Read Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson. And if you want to get into it add Locke, Blackstone, de Vattel and others.
The more you want Washington to do - the more you turn Washington into an Imperial Power. Have the federal government do what it was created to do and leave the rest to the states.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Of course what you consider to be a good decision others may consider to be foolish. You want to live as a serf, a ward of a nanny-state. OK. I don't.
Then stop driving on my roads and drinking my water and using my streetlamps. Stop using the US Mail, and stop using the internet, because you're a rugged individualist who don't need no stinkin' gubment, right?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I guess you haven't read the US Constitution for a while; nor have read the Federalist Papers. Give it a go. You may then have reason based objections instead of hyperbole. The US Constitution isn't an anarchist document. There is a role for government. But "a role for government" doesn't mean that politicians and bureaucrats run your life.
We are citizens. Not serfs.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I saw a video not too long ago, the speakers were several Intelligence community whistle-blowers from the past. Their basic thesis was, the war on drugs is ending because the intelligence community no longer needs it to justify everything they want, terrorism is much more effective.
Ahhh here we go...found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
We are citizens. Not serfs.
Yes, I know, probably more than you realize. Just because I won't march in lockstep with you doesn't mean I don't respect the Constitution and what it means.
I also believe that as humans and Americans we have a duty to help those less fortunate, and not through a lot of meaningless hand waving and lip service, but by actually doing something.
All that "rugged individualist" shit worked great when there weren't 295 million other people competing for the same resources and when there was no such thing as a global economy that could outsource your job overseas. That shit is done, those days are over, and if you think you can go it alone without the intimate involvement of the government then you haven't been keeping up with the news.
I don't like government interference any more than the next guy, but it's an unfortunate fact of life in a country of 300 million people who all have to live together.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
So this mythical Capitalist Paradise you mention has no laws or courts?
If you live in a poor neighborhood poisoned by toxic mine talings,[SIC]
Sue the company that poisoned you than.
If you live anywhere and someone decides they can make money by flooding it with carcinogenic waste products - well, good luck.
Again, lawsuit material.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You're creating a strawman and willfully ignoring what I wrote.
I do not believe that the VA has been successful, and therefore it is not a good example of the government being able to do health care well. That doesn't mean I think it should be shut down, but it does mean that I don't think it should be duplicated for all Americans in a new program for universal health care.
The VA program is there and as people rely on it, I wouldn't just shut it down, but it is an example of how the government is bad at health care. It is not a good example of why we should trust the government with health care, in fact, it is quite the opposite.
Brought peace?
Thanks for your civil reply. I was a little snarky in my post and I shouldn't have done that.
If people in one state vote for more government aid in say health care. Fine. But if people in another state vote against it. It's also fine. The same applies for other things. Let the people in states decide. One good reason for this is simply managing expectations and getting 300 plus million people in a continent sized country to agree on things. If the people of NY decide on "x" then fine. If Texas disagrees, then also fine.
The federal government should not do everything. It should do what it was authorized to do. If you, the citizen of state "x", think that the government should distribute gluten-free, all organic gummy bears to everyone for free and you persuade the legislature of that state to provide said gummy bears. Great. More power to you and the citizens of your state. If I, however, don't want this, and the citizens living in my state don't want to do this. Then fine.
And this applies to everything: from drug laws to prostitution to free birth control to x,y and z.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
If people in one state vote for more government aid in say health care. Fine. But if people in another state vote against it. It's also fine.
In theory this seems like a fair solution...but in practice I think it would lead to some states having populations that were highly benefited by virtue of their expanded services and freedoms, and other states would become 'ghettos' or severely marginalized. Once that cycle starts it's a downward spiral for the "have not" states. People will (if they can) move to a "have" state, further depleting the tax base and livability of the "have not" states.
And that's not just for taxes and services, that would inevitably apply to social freedoms and discrimination laws. Hell, there are quite a few Southern states that would like to make interracial marriage illegal and re-institute some forms of slavery (debtor's prisons as well as outright slavery).
These aren't my opinions, these are the result of polls taken in places like Mississippi, where they asked the state's GOP voters if "interracial marriage should be illegal".
46 percent of them said "yes", they would outlaw it. They'd outlaw interracial marriage. Think about that for a moment- that's almost half of the GOP voters in that state, and another 14 percent responded that they were "not sure." That means about 60 percent of these Southern Republicans would either do it or consider it doing it. That's insane. That's a recipe for widespread discrimination backed by state law.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of places where unfettered states rights would result in all sorts of abuses, and those abuses often trickle down to the poor and disadvantaged- including their children.
I'm not a huge fan of Federal oversight, but there are times and places it's needed. Just look at all the voter suppression abuse and sleazy tactics that immediately popped up after the Supreme Court invalidated key parts of the Voting Rights Act.
Basic human rights shouldn't be put to a vote, and one of the Federal government's jobs is to see that they aren't. The real problem with "state's rights" is that they're all too often used as a sword rather than a shield.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
A state can't pass ANY law it wants. We do not live in a democracy. We live in a Constitutional Republic. State laws still needs to pass Constitutional muster. I'm not saying that states have historically done a great job, often times they were horrible and the Federal Government needed to intervene. BUT there is a difference between intervening when a state does not follow the Constitution and for the power of all states to be transferred in perpetuity to the Federal Government.
As you said basic human rights cannot be put to a vote. Government exists for a purpose - namely to uphold the social contract (I promise not to kill you and take your stuff if you promise not to kill me and take mine), legal contracts, ensure domestic tranquility (namely keep robbers and rioters at bay) , run the military, courts and police.
We can ask (or not) the government to provide services to the general population (say garbage collection and fire departments) and then change the populace through use taxes for these services. We can expand this to include water and sewage, education and the like. But each of these additional services are subject to agreement by the population of that state. I, as a radical small-government type, am more than comfortable with contracting the government for the above mentioned services.
This doesn't mean that anything and everything that someone feels is important should be done by the government. People in states can decide what.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
There is nothing in the Constitution that requires Congress to spend on any particular part of the General Welfare. The churches and local communities do well in some respects, terribly in others. As the size and diversity of society grows. these become increasingly inadequate.
I have read the Constitution. Multiple times. I'm aware of Article I, Section 8, and it places no restriction on General Welfare spending. That may not have been the intention of some of the people who helped write it, but if they really wanted to restrict that clause they should have written it differently. I really doubt that Locke had anything to say about the General Welfare clause.
Don't read your desires into the Constitution. You seem to want the General Welfare clause restricted, but it isn't.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you believe what you just wrote, why not move to Somalia or Nigeria? It would be your paradise on Earth. But you don't really believe a word of what you wrote, do you?
Somalia and Nigeria are not libertarian nor even "free" in any sense. You knew that, but you're too busy hurling invective and getting yourself worked up into a proper self-righteous tirade to bother actually coming up with a real argument.
The problem most libertarians have is they never think that they'll be the ones getting fucked.
I'm not a libertarian, nor did I say that I was, nor did I imply that I was.
It's never YOUR wife or YOUR child who'll die from some untested medication or contaminated food or unsafe electrical appliance. It'll always be the other guy whose wife or kid dies, and then the Magical Invisible Hand Of The Market will punish that company and force them out of business, so you'll be safe, right?
1. If you check the things I listed you'd see that I did not list the FDA as being an entity that I would de-fund.
2. You just made it personal. Spare me the hysterics and emotional bullshit. The government won't save you from bad things happening to you or to the people you care about-- but you obviously don't give two shits about anyone who merely disagrees with you on the internet so I doubt that the list of people you care about besides yourself is very long. It also gives me reason to doubt that you are arguing out of anything other than selfish "gimme more gubmint money" motivations.
3. Yes, it's in the company's best interests to not kill their customers.
4. Let's say that your worst nightmares come true and the corps start filling up pills with rat poison: murder and poisoning are already illegal and I did not list the judicial branch as an item to de-fund.
5. Since you like hyperbole let me just trot out the good ole nazis, stalinists, and maoists and the Khmer Rouge and all the other bald-faced mass murders just of the last century that were carried out by "big gubmint"
Fuck you, I like the EPA and the FDA.
1. Keep up the name calling. It's a really great argument.
2. I don't like the EPA.
3. I did not list the FDA for a de-funding target. Nice straw man.
I like public education and parks and recreation services.
1. Education doesn't need to be publicly funded. But even if we did have public funding for schools I see no reason why those who have no kids that go to a school should be taxed to pay for it.
2. Parks and recreation don't require government funding. They could be paid for by those who visit them. Really, what's the overhead of keeping a forest running?
I like the idea of a School Breakfast Program for kids. I like all the things that make this a great country to live in. It's why people want to come here, fool. How many people in the US want to emigrate to Nigeria or Laos or Namibia or Somalia? NONE, that's how many.
1. The thing that makes this a great country is the freedom of individuals to live and improve their lives without someone robbing them of half of it. When the government starts mandating what my kids eat then they're less free. When the government starts taxing (confiscating / stealing) huge portions of my income and spending it without my consent on projects and priorities that I don't benefit from or want then what's the real difference between that and living under some asshole dictator? At least the asshole dictator doesn't lie about what he's doing. Meanwhile in the USA we've got self-righteous ideologues-- like you-- who force others to pay for stuff that they want.
2. The fact that you think stuff is what is so great about a country really just shows how materialistic and shallow you are.
3. Nigeria, Laos, Namibia, and Somalia are nothing like free countries. And you knew that. So the fact that you list them
Ha ha! So in capitalist utopia, you have to sue to get clean drinking water? Wow, the lawyers must love it in capitalist utopia. Not rich enough to sue? Oh well, you don't deserve to live very long anyway.
No, you sue the people who contaminate the water. By default water is pretty damn clean, if someone comes along and massively contaminates it, than yeah, they should be sued. Just as the state of Michigan should be sued for screwing up Flint's water supply, and all their pipes, you sue the people that do you harm. This is how it works in many countries, including the US. It looks like they are also looking at criminal charges for the person responsible for Flint, but that doesn't prevent you suing them as well.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
A state can't pass ANY law it wants.
So are you saying that Federal oversight is what prevents a state from passing any law it wants? Because if that's so, then where does a state's right to pass laws start and stop?
-
As you said basic human rights cannot be put to a vote.
Except this is exactly what they're doing in many of the Goober States by passing these transgender bathroom restriction laws and (still) trying to pass laws that prevent same-sex marriage. Those are just two examples. If states are allowed to do this kind of thing unfettered and with no oversight, what's to stop them from nibbling away at other human rights until we're right back where we started?
As I pointed out, in places like Mississippi they would vote to make interracial marriage illegal if they could...but the Federal government puts a stop to things like that. But they would if they could, and if they were autonomous in terms of state's rights we'd see anti-miscegenation laws being put in place in Mississippi tomorrow.
This doesn't mean that anything and everything that someone feels is important should be done by the government. People in states can decide what.
This would be great if people in large groups could be counted on to make rational decisions and not have an "I got mine" mentality. Or if there weren't those among us who would exploit every loophole to their own benefit to the detriment of others. But the sad, sorry fact is that people like this exist everywhere and it only takes a small number to fuck up the works for everyone else. It's the "tragedy of the commons" writ large. Sometimes an overriding authority is needed, and sometimes it's beneficial.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Now after all the vitriol I would like to qualify some of the items on my little list:
#14 Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program and #16 State Children's Insurance Programs:
In the case of orphans, I do think the State should provide for them.
Oh fuck no, why should those unlucky little parasites get a dime of my precious money? Just because they're orphans? Tough shit on them, let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps like everyone else. Why should orphans get a break?
See, you have your favorite little exceptions for things that you think are "worthy", but how dare anyone else have a longer list, eh?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Oh fuck no, why should those unlucky little parasites get a dime of my precious money? Just because they're orphans? Tough shit on them, let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps like everyone else. Why should orphans get a break?
Outright mocking a position that I do not hold... Slashdotters are smart enough to see through this so it just makes you look bad.
See, you have your favorite little exceptions for things that you think are "worthy"
My argument has never been that the government should do absolutely nothing and spend no money. Straw man.
but how dare anyone else have a longer list, eh?
Yes, I do object to immoral, ineffective and/or grossly inefficient wastes of money and resources. And that's what I attempted to put on my list: things that are either immoral/unethical for the government to be involved in, are ineffective programs, or are gross wastes of money compared to alternatives.
I do object to immoral, ineffective and/or grossly inefficient wastes of money and resources.
You object to the things that you personally think are "immoral, ineffective and/or grossly inefficient wastes of money and resources", but thankfully not everyone feels as you do.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...