I actually don't see why money laundering itself is even a crime. It seems to be a way to hide actual crimes. Maybe "hiding a crime" should be considered a crime, rather than money laundering. For example, if one were to launder money to hide something embarrassing, rather than something that was a crime, should it still be illegal?
I am not even sure that hardware raid is any faster than software raid at this point. The bottleneck is surely the spinning disks. If anything a CPU can probably do a better job at RAID and have enough spare processing power that you wouldn't notice a performance hit.
I don't think it really matters that much for a simple mirror. I think the only real benefit of a software raid in this case would be better reporting of statistics related to performance and integrity. You can use any software you want to do this, while with a hardware raid you are relying on the driver from the manufacturer to do this.
An advantage of software on larger RAID arrays is that often only some of the ports on a motherboard support raid, with software RAIDs, all the ports can be used in a RAID.
If it were a competition between republicans and democrats, the republicans would have won this round. Unfortunately both parties suck so hard that I would be ashamed to be on either side.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I wouldn't be bragging about this if I were a republican. Being better than the democrats only once in a while is pretty pathetic.
Instead of making the names of our laws acronyms, we make the texts of the laws into rap lyrics. That should make everyone realize how important and official they are.
Onboard raid is for suckers. Just do a software raid. Processors are really fast now. You don't need dedicated raid hardware anymore, especially the cheap chips they put on motherboards just to say they do raid. Also, with a software raid, you are not relying on a particular chips implementation of raid. You can take the drives out, stick them on a different controller in a different computer and still have access to your data as long as you are running the same raid software.
Why would you want to turn your ram into swap? Isn't swapping what happens when you run out of available ram? By turning your available ram into swap, you are causing the need to swap.
Why would it be cheap? A bus that carries 50 passengers doesn't cost 50 times as much as a car.
Maybe some bus systems are more efficient, but it takes me an hour and a half to get somewhere by bus that it would take me 20 minutes in a car. They are inefficient with peoples' time. This is the reason why only poor people take buses in many cities (because the value of their time falls below that threshold).
Unless you get people to share huge coaches, I fail to see how self driving cars will reduce the number of vehicles on the road. If I currently drive to work on my own, I am going to want my own individual car too. And everyone will be driving to and from work at similar times to what they do already.
It won't reduce the number of cars on the road. I forget the exact number, but it's something like 95% of the time on average a car is sitting in a parking space. Yes there will be a time (rush hour), when we have a peak amount of vehicles on the road, and that will determine how many vehicles are needed. This number is less than the number of cars that exist.
Even though rush hour (by definition) is the time of peak cars on the road, this says nothing about the percentage of cars on the road at that time. It could be high, it could be low. I don't have the figures. But I'm guessing it's around 20%. This problem is easy to solve by having more flexible work hours. It seems that having a person get to work an hour late because of bad traffic is not better than having them come to work an hour later as a congestion mitigation method.
As for parking, the vehicles have to go somewhere while they're not being used, and there's a limit to how far away from their customers you can store them, since people aren't going to want to book them hours in advance.
If you have less total cars, then there are less parking spots needed. Also, cars can be used to make the bus/train systems more efficient, by driving passengers to the nearest large hub. As for where to store the cars, you just keep them spread out so that there is always one available nearby 24/7.
And what kind of insurance do you have? Third party. third party, fire and theft. fully comprehensive. full comp and other drivers? Does it cover injuries to the person in your car?
We have laws requiring minimum insurance coverage in California. I don't think I have ever seen any insurance ever be "fully comprehensive".
So there needs to be a minimum level of insurance. The insurance companies will also want to know, and will force you to have some set of minimum maintenance on your vehicle.
I have already agreed there needs to be a minimum level. What I am saying is that we don't need special regulations for taxi drivers and uber drivers to achieve this. You can have a law that says "All drivers must have $X coverage of Y different things", and another law that says "You must be truthful in the information you give to insurance companies", and we can let the insurance companies decide what to charge a taxi driver that drives X hours, and an uber driver that drives Y hours, and a pizza delivery man that drives Z hours. We don't need special government regulations for taxi drives. In fact it's better if we don't have them, because then we don;t have to worry about Uber skirting the official definition of a taxi.
All in all it is simpler to make it a requirement for taxis/minicabs to be licensed and for that license to have minimum set requirements.
It is simpler to have the minimum requirement be for everyone. I am not more likely to have higher medical bills if injured in a taxi than if injured in a friends car.
Here Taxis have a fixed price meter. Minicabs have to be dispatched and a quote given beforehand (there are no hard and fast limits on the number of minicabs)
Quote given beforehand is good. I don't think the fixed price is necessary if the price is given beforehand. I rather like the surge pricing of uber as a way to incentivize more drivers to be on the road at times when they are needed.
I think the surge pricing could be executed better. The goal is to get more drivers on the road (not for the price to be super high). I think if they used smarter algorithms, they could get more drivers on the road with more moderate price increases.
Why shouldn't you be able to sue the driver for damages if their actions have harmed you?
The main purpose of the insurance is to pay for the damages caused by the driver.
Honestly what is the difference between the driver's insurance paying for the damages or the taxi company's insurance paying for the damages? You might say that the taxi company's insurance will pay more, but that is not necessarily the case. There could be a law requiring *every* driver to have adequate insurance (taxi driver or not). This would seem to be a much more useful law as it would offer full protection rather than only partial protection when riding in a friend's car.
I really dislike Hillary, even more than Rand. I really hope she is not the nominee (but I'm not betting on it). If she is the nominee, I think I would rather have Rand as her opponent. The fact that he is allegedly "left" of Hillary on some "libertarian" issues, might make the debates more interesting. Not too mention, if the republican were to actually win, I can't say I would like any of the other any more.
Apparently Gary Johnson will run for the libertarian nomination. I voted for him in 2012. I thought he was pretty good. He seemed like a younger, saner version of Ron Paul. He was certainly more likeable than Rand.
I don't take a good libertarian party candidate for granted. In 2008 they had a Bob Barr/Wayne Allyn Root. I never thought I would have voted for a Republican because he was more of a libertarian than the libertarian candidate.
Wikipedia is factual enough for me. I actually looked at that article, but I was searching for "gay marriage" rather than "same-sex marriage".
Parts of that section of the article actually seem pretty good. He agreed with striking down of DOMA. One could almost infer (though I would be careful), that he is proposing the removal of "marriage" from the federal government, and replace them with "marriage reference-free" contracts.
He says he believes in the historic religious definition of marriage, but I can't imagine that he would support the prohibition of allowing religions other than traditional Christianity from marrying people. (For example: I don;t think he could/would oppose a gay friendly church from marrying people if it's not federally endorsed)
And surely he wouldn't try to prohibit a state from eliminating the state sanctioned marriage (states rights and all).
I would like to see not only equal rights for gay people, but equal rights for unmarried people. I would personally like to see the supreme court striking down federal and state marriage as unconstitutional (equal protection clause), due to the fact that it creates different classes of people (married vs unmarried), even if we assume everyone is onboard with providing gay people with equal rights.
I kind of doubt he would support removing the right of States to sanction marriages, even though it is a rather libertarian position. I don't even think Ron would support this (given the fact that he voted for DOMA to combat "judicial activism")
But the devil is in the details, and good luck getting Rand to answer a controversial question with the appropriate level of nuance, if it has the potential to hurt him politically.
I would be in favor of converting all past marriages into a default civil contract as well.
I also think it is important that marriage not bestow any unjust benefits (i.e. like tax breaks) or any unjust penalties (like higher taxes). It should just be for determining powers of attorney, beneficiaries, custody, etc, and even then it shouldn't be phrased in a way that prevents any 2 or 3 or 15 people from receiving the same benefits.
On the personal side of things, I don't think churches (or any person or organization) should be forced (not that they are) to marry anyone they don't want to.
I wasn't able to find an official position from Rand Paul on gay marriage (or marriage abolishment), but his comments aren't encouraging. If you know of an official position, please link me.
What's sad, is that he still may in fact be the best Republican candidate.
OK so they need to know your risks regardless of who you work for.
This seems to be an argument for a law requiring accurate reporting of information to insurance companies.
But the insurance is higher as any possible claims for damage may be much much higher.
Higher than what? Regular drivers? *All* regular drivers?
There are some regular drivers out there that are much more of a risk than an uber driver. Why should the uber driver have to pay more?
I am all for reporting what you do for a living to the insurance companies. That's valuable information for them in determining risk. All I am saying is that we don't need the government telling insurance companies what that risk is. That is (should be) their job. That's what insurance companies do. They manage risk.
Speaking from personal experience, I don't like regular taxis. I want to know the price of the ride beforehand. I don't mind the surge pricing model. Usually surge pricing indicates that under normal circumstances you wouldn't be able to get a cab, at least if you are really in a jam, you still have the option to pay a high price and still get a ride.
I don't even know how to get a cab if one is not in front of me. I assume I would google a phone number for a taxi service and call them. With Uber, I can just pull up the app on my phone and get an instant quote, and have a ride within a few minutes. They already know where I am and where I want to go, and I can see how far away my driver is. It's super convenient. The first time, I even tried to tip the Uber driver and he refused the tip.
I don't think the researchers will be *stuck* without jobs. They will be jobless until they get new jobs. They have very useful skills and those skills will no doubt still be in high demand even if Uber goes under.
If the tech bubble bursts, then there are bigger problems than the jobs of this relatively small group of people.
I tend to be more of an optimist. If Uber gets self driving cars up and running, we will have potentially very cheap and effective public transportation. We could probably reduce the total number of cars to a fraction of what we have now. We wouldn't need parking spaces anymore. Even cities with horribly bad or non-existent public transportation systems can have an incredibly versatile system without all the infrastructure costs.
I think some people are more trustworthy than others. I don't know if Rand is trustworthy or not. But there's other people out there that are definitely not.
I also would rank my preferences to stands on gay marriage as follows:
1. Wants to abolish state sanctioned marriage, doesn't think gay marriage is a sin.
2. Wants to abolish state sanctioned marriage, does think gay marriage is a sin.
3. Wants legalize gay marriage
4. Doesn't want to legalize gay marriage, because it's a sin
I am not sure where Rand stands, but I know his father was a #2, which in my book is bigger step in the right direction than being simply pro gay marriage.
There is a difference between wanting to allow gay marriage because you have nothing against gay people, and wanting to allow gay marriage because you believe in the ideal of freedom so completely that it doesn't matter how you feel about gay people.
I might not want to be friends with someone who just doesn't like gay people, even if he supports their right to marriage free of government intrusion, but I think that's the best attitude for a public servant to have. It shows that someone has integrity, and will stand up for everyone, not just those he likes.
That said, I do worry that Rand is just pandering to his father's fans, and doesn't actually embrace those ideals, but is rather just grandstanding and seeking more power and glory.
He seems to dodge tough questions, rather than just answering them honestly like his father did.
When asked "So you would legalize crack and heroin?" Ron says "Yes!" then explains why he would, and Rand tries to change the subject. I certainly think Rand is more of a politician than his father. Which makes him appeal more to Republicans, and less to me.
I never said only the meth addict is affected. I said that "victimless crime" is a better name for drug use than a "non-violent crime". While drug use is certainly non-violent, there are lots of non-violent crimes which have a victim, and drug use does not.
There is a difference between your dad missing your 1st birthday because he's out shooting up, and your dad murdering someone. I am not saying drug use doesn't harm anyone. I am saying that to equate both these examples as "harm" trivializes the kind of harm that would constitute a legal victim.
Furthermore, I would argue that imprisoning people for drug use actually causes more harm than the drug use itself. You are tearing apart families, ruining people's careers, and exposing them to real (e.g. violent) criminals in prison.
So if you are going to say that people are harmed by drug use (i.e. it's not victimless), then I will say that most of that harm is actually caused by the criminalization of drug addiction, and the state is actually the perpetrator and the victims are the people sent to prison and their friends and families.
His argument seems to be something like "Chinese people get ahead by cheating. Here is and example of one experience I had with an incompetent cheating Chinaman as a supporting argument."
I think it is possibly to destroy this argument without ad hominem attacks (i.e. cheating in a debate).
I'm not changing any goal posts. The concept of leadership doesn't only apply to nations. The fact that you appear to think it does, highlights how/why your definition is wrong.
Thanks for showing me how ugly the world is, I would have never known without some random person on slashdot simply stating that fact./s
As I have repeatedly said. I am not even debating whether the world is ugly or not (despite your continued belief that I am). I am contesting your use of the word "leadership".
You are confusing a common quality among leaders with the defintion of a leader.
I think you mean "victimless crimes". There are plenty of non-violent crimes like (e.g. money laundering) that are not victimless. Victimless crimes are those who have no unwilling partcicipants who are harmed (i.e. victims).
Drugs certainly harm lots of people, but these people are "willing participants" in the legal sense of the word, and therefore not victims in the legal sense of the word.
The illicit drug industry is certainly exploitive, like how payday loans are exploitive, but these people are still making their own (albeit very poor) decisions.
They could probably be considered victims in some broad and indirect way, but not in the same way as someone who is murdered or assaulted.
Slashdot Mirror
I take this as you volunteering to be responsible for any future government abuse of power.
I actually don't see why money laundering itself is even a crime. It seems to be a way to hide actual crimes. Maybe "hiding a crime" should be considered a crime, rather than money laundering. For example, if one were to launder money to hide something embarrassing, rather than something that was a crime, should it still be illegal?
I am not even sure that hardware raid is any faster than software raid at this point. The bottleneck is surely the spinning disks. If anything a CPU can probably do a better job at RAID and have enough spare processing power that you wouldn't notice a performance hit.
I don't think it really matters that much for a simple mirror. I think the only real benefit of a software raid in this case would be better reporting of statistics related to performance and integrity. You can use any software you want to do this, while with a hardware raid you are relying on the driver from the manufacturer to do this.
An advantage of software on larger RAID arrays is that often only some of the ports on a motherboard support raid, with software RAIDs, all the ports can be used in a RAID.
If it were a competition between republicans and democrats, the republicans would have won this round. Unfortunately both parties suck so hard that I would be ashamed to be on either side.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I wouldn't be bragging about this if I were a republican. Being better than the democrats only once in a while is pretty pathetic.
Instead of making the names of our laws acronyms, we make the texts of the laws into rap lyrics. That should make everyone realize how important and official they are.
I find the overt references to 1984 to be too cliche. A more subtle homage would have been more appropriate. Less is more.
There are 30 Republicans who vote the opposite of whatever Obama wants, and 23 that want to catch all the muslims even if it means working with Obama.
Onboard raid is for suckers. Just do a software raid. Processors are really fast now. You don't need dedicated raid hardware anymore, especially the cheap chips they put on motherboards just to say they do raid. Also, with a software raid, you are not relying on a particular chips implementation of raid. You can take the drives out, stick them on a different controller in a different computer and still have access to your data as long as you are running the same raid software.
Why would you want to turn your ram into swap? Isn't swapping what happens when you run out of available ram? By turning your available ram into swap, you are causing the need to swap.
Why would it be cheap? A bus that carries 50 passengers doesn't cost 50 times as much as a car.
Maybe some bus systems are more efficient, but it takes me an hour and a half to get somewhere by bus that it would take me 20 minutes in a car. They are inefficient with peoples' time. This is the reason why only poor people take buses in many cities (because the value of their time falls below that threshold).
Unless you get people to share huge coaches, I fail to see how self driving cars will reduce the number of vehicles on the road. If I currently drive to work on my own, I am going to want my own individual car too. And everyone will be driving to and from work at similar times to what they do already.
It won't reduce the number of cars on the road. I forget the exact number, but it's something like 95% of the time on average a car is sitting in a parking space. Yes there will be a time (rush hour), when we have a peak amount of vehicles on the road, and that will determine how many vehicles are needed. This number is less than the number of cars that exist.
Even though rush hour (by definition) is the time of peak cars on the road, this says nothing about the percentage of cars on the road at that time. It could be high, it could be low. I don't have the figures. But I'm guessing it's around 20%. This problem is easy to solve by having more flexible work hours. It seems that having a person get to work an hour late because of bad traffic is not better than having them come to work an hour later as a congestion mitigation method.
As for parking, the vehicles have to go somewhere while they're not being used, and there's a limit to how far away from their customers you can store them, since people aren't going to want to book them hours in advance.
If you have less total cars, then there are less parking spots needed. Also, cars can be used to make the bus/train systems more efficient, by driving passengers to the nearest large hub. As for where to store the cars, you just keep them spread out so that there is always one available nearby 24/7.
And what kind of insurance do you have? Third party. third party, fire and theft. fully comprehensive. full comp and other drivers? Does it cover injuries to the person in your car?
We have laws requiring minimum insurance coverage in California. I don't think I have ever seen any insurance ever be "fully comprehensive".
So there needs to be a minimum level of insurance. The insurance companies will also want to know, and will force you to have some set of minimum maintenance on your vehicle.
I have already agreed there needs to be a minimum level. What I am saying is that we don't need special regulations for taxi drivers and uber drivers to achieve this. You can have a law that says "All drivers must have $X coverage of Y different things", and another law that says "You must be truthful in the information you give to insurance companies", and we can let the insurance companies decide what to charge a taxi driver that drives X hours, and an uber driver that drives Y hours, and a pizza delivery man that drives Z hours. We don't need special government regulations for taxi drives. In fact it's better if we don't have them, because then we don;t have to worry about Uber skirting the official definition of a taxi.
All in all it is simpler to make it a requirement for taxis/minicabs to be licensed and for that license to have minimum set requirements.
It is simpler to have the minimum requirement be for everyone. I am not more likely to have higher medical bills if injured in a taxi than if injured in a friends car.
Here Taxis have a fixed price meter. Minicabs have to be dispatched and a quote given beforehand (there are no hard and fast limits on the number of minicabs)
Quote given beforehand is good. I don't think the fixed price is necessary if the price is given beforehand. I rather like the surge pricing of uber as a way to incentivize more drivers to be on the road at times when they are needed.
I think the surge pricing could be executed better. The goal is to get more drivers on the road (not for the price to be super high). I think if they used smarter algorithms, they could get more drivers on the road with more moderate price increases.
Why shouldn't you be able to sue the driver for damages if their actions have harmed you?
The main purpose of the insurance is to pay for the damages caused by the driver.
Honestly what is the difference between the driver's insurance paying for the damages or the taxi company's insurance paying for the damages? You might say that the taxi company's insurance will pay more, but that is not necessarily the case. There could be a law requiring *every* driver to have adequate insurance (taxi driver or not). This would seem to be a much more useful law as it would offer full protection rather than only partial protection when riding in a friend's car.
I really dislike Hillary, even more than Rand. I really hope she is not the nominee (but I'm not betting on it). If she is the nominee, I think I would rather have Rand as her opponent. The fact that he is allegedly "left" of Hillary on some "libertarian" issues, might make the debates more interesting. Not too mention, if the republican were to actually win, I can't say I would like any of the other any more.
Apparently Gary Johnson will run for the libertarian nomination. I voted for him in 2012. I thought he was pretty good. He seemed like a younger, saner version of Ron Paul. He was certainly more likeable than Rand.
I don't take a good libertarian party candidate for granted. In 2008 they had a Bob Barr/Wayne Allyn Root. I never thought I would have voted for a Republican because he was more of a libertarian than the libertarian candidate.
Wikipedia is factual enough for me. I actually looked at that article, but I was searching for "gay marriage" rather than "same-sex marriage".
Parts of that section of the article actually seem pretty good. He agreed with striking down of DOMA. One could almost infer (though I would be careful), that he is proposing the removal of "marriage" from the federal government, and replace them with "marriage reference-free" contracts.
He says he believes in the historic religious definition of marriage, but I can't imagine that he would support the prohibition of allowing religions other than traditional Christianity from marrying people. (For example: I don;t think he could/would oppose a gay friendly church from marrying people if it's not federally endorsed)
And surely he wouldn't try to prohibit a state from eliminating the state sanctioned marriage (states rights and all).
I would like to see not only equal rights for gay people, but equal rights for unmarried people. I would personally like to see the supreme court striking down federal and state marriage as unconstitutional (equal protection clause), due to the fact that it creates different classes of people (married vs unmarried), even if we assume everyone is onboard with providing gay people with equal rights.
I kind of doubt he would support removing the right of States to sanction marriages, even though it is a rather libertarian position. I don't even think Ron would support this (given the fact that he voted for DOMA to combat "judicial activism")
But the devil is in the details, and good luck getting Rand to answer a controversial question with the appropriate level of nuance, if it has the potential to hurt him politically.
I would be in favor of converting all past marriages into a default civil contract as well.
I also think it is important that marriage not bestow any unjust benefits (i.e. like tax breaks) or any unjust penalties (like higher taxes). It should just be for determining powers of attorney, beneficiaries, custody, etc, and even then it shouldn't be phrased in a way that prevents any 2 or 3 or 15 people from receiving the same benefits.
On the personal side of things, I don't think churches (or any person or organization) should be forced (not that they are) to marry anyone they don't want to.
I wasn't able to find an official position from Rand Paul on gay marriage (or marriage abolishment), but his comments aren't encouraging. If you know of an official position, please link me.
What's sad, is that he still may in fact be the best Republican candidate.
OK so they need to know your risks regardless of who you work for.
This seems to be an argument for a law requiring accurate reporting of information to insurance companies.
But the insurance is higher as any possible claims for damage may be much much higher.
Higher than what? Regular drivers? *All* regular drivers?
There are some regular drivers out there that are much more of a risk than an uber driver. Why should the uber driver have to pay more?
I am all for reporting what you do for a living to the insurance companies. That's valuable information for them in determining risk. All I am saying is that we don't need the government telling insurance companies what that risk is. That is (should be) their job. That's what insurance companies do. They manage risk.
Speaking from personal experience, I don't like regular taxis. I want to know the price of the ride beforehand. I don't mind the surge pricing model. Usually surge pricing indicates that under normal circumstances you wouldn't be able to get a cab, at least if you are really in a jam, you still have the option to pay a high price and still get a ride.
I don't even know how to get a cab if one is not in front of me. I assume I would google a phone number for a taxi service and call them. With Uber, I can just pull up the app on my phone and get an instant quote, and have a ride within a few minutes. They already know where I am and where I want to go, and I can see how far away my driver is. It's super convenient. The first time, I even tried to tip the Uber driver and he refused the tip.
I don't think the researchers will be *stuck* without jobs. They will be jobless until they get new jobs. They have very useful skills and those skills will no doubt still be in high demand even if Uber goes under.
If the tech bubble bursts, then there are bigger problems than the jobs of this relatively small group of people.
I tend to be more of an optimist. If Uber gets self driving cars up and running, we will have potentially very cheap and effective public transportation. We could probably reduce the total number of cars to a fraction of what we have now. We wouldn't need parking spaces anymore. Even cities with horribly bad or non-existent public transportation systems can have an incredibly versatile system without all the infrastructure costs.
I think some people are more trustworthy than others. I don't know if Rand is trustworthy or not. But there's other people out there that are definitely not.
I also would rank my preferences to stands on gay marriage as follows:
1. Wants to abolish state sanctioned marriage, doesn't think gay marriage is a sin.
2. Wants to abolish state sanctioned marriage, does think gay marriage is a sin.
3. Wants legalize gay marriage
4. Doesn't want to legalize gay marriage, because it's a sin
I am not sure where Rand stands, but I know his father was a #2, which in my book is bigger step in the right direction than being simply pro gay marriage.
There is a difference between wanting to allow gay marriage because you have nothing against gay people, and wanting to allow gay marriage because you believe in the ideal of freedom so completely that it doesn't matter how you feel about gay people.
I might not want to be friends with someone who just doesn't like gay people, even if he supports their right to marriage free of government intrusion, but I think that's the best attitude for a public servant to have. It shows that someone has integrity, and will stand up for everyone, not just those he likes.
That said, I do worry that Rand is just pandering to his father's fans, and doesn't actually embrace those ideals, but is rather just grandstanding and seeking more power and glory.
He seems to dodge tough questions, rather than just answering them honestly like his father did.
When asked "So you would legalize crack and heroin?" Ron says "Yes!" then explains why he would, and Rand tries to change the subject. I certainly think Rand is more of a politician than his father. Which makes him appeal more to Republicans, and less to me.
I never said only the meth addict is affected. I said that "victimless crime" is a better name for drug use than a "non-violent crime". While drug use is certainly non-violent, there are lots of non-violent crimes which have a victim, and drug use does not.
There is a difference between your dad missing your 1st birthday because he's out shooting up, and your dad murdering someone. I am not saying drug use doesn't harm anyone. I am saying that to equate both these examples as "harm" trivializes the kind of harm that would constitute a legal victim.
Furthermore, I would argue that imprisoning people for drug use actually causes more harm than the drug use itself. You are tearing apart families, ruining people's careers, and exposing them to real (e.g. violent) criminals in prison.
So if you are going to say that people are harmed by drug use (i.e. it's not victimless), then I will say that most of that harm is actually caused by the criminalization of drug addiction, and the state is actually the perpetrator and the victims are the people sent to prison and their friends and families.
You have no idea what *anyone* will do as president
I agree that all that stuff is bad. How is it any worse than what the right does?
His argument seems to be something like "Chinese people get ahead by cheating. Here is and example of one experience I had with an incompetent cheating Chinaman as a supporting argument."
I think it is possibly to destroy this argument without ad hominem attacks (i.e. cheating in a debate).
I'm not changing any goal posts. The concept of leadership doesn't only apply to nations. The fact that you appear to think it does, highlights how/why your definition is wrong.
Thanks for showing me how ugly the world is, I would have never known without some random person on slashdot simply stating that fact. /s
As I have repeatedly said. I am not even debating whether the world is ugly or not (despite your continued belief that I am). I am contesting your use of the word "leadership".
You are confusing a common quality among leaders with the defintion of a leader.
I think you mean "victimless crimes". There are plenty of non-violent crimes like (e.g. money laundering) that are not victimless. Victimless crimes are those who have no unwilling partcicipants who are harmed (i.e. victims).
Drugs certainly harm lots of people, but these people are "willing participants" in the legal sense of the word, and therefore not victims in the legal sense of the word.
The illicit drug industry is certainly exploitive, like how payday loans are exploitive, but these people are still making their own (albeit very poor) decisions.
They could probably be considered victims in some broad and indirect way, but not in the same way as someone who is murdered or assaulted.