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Originally Posted by BananaStand
ok, but I'm not seeing how that's particularly relevant to the 'drugs over the border' discussion.
It's relevant because the drugs over the border problem is not a single problem with a single solution.
IF the only solution is to keep more drugs out and further criminalize drug related activity, then obviously more law enforcement, more prisons, harsher sentences, etc. are in order.
It's just not that cut and dry.
We've been trying the criminalization of drug related activities and it's supremely expensive and questionably effective. Drug use hasn't gone down due to the war on drugs. It's a constant. People didn't stop drinking during prohibition, and prohibition didn't make America better by criminalizing alcohol use. I don't see why alcohol is legal, regulated, and heavily taxed, despite the known problems with excessive use, yet other inebriates can't be handled the same way.
There are a crazy number of deaths due to drunk driving in the USA every year, and we accept that as a cost of freedom. Your position that risk of death is adequate motivation to outlaw something is clearly belied by legal alcohol and legal driving. It's illegal to mix the 2, but either on its own is fine.
Legalization, regulation, and heavy taxation is a money maker. Criminalization is a money eater.
To be clear... my position is that this is all ugly and that our current tack is expensive and IF it is working, it's not working much or well. I'm not saying that I endorse drug use, I'm saying that if there is a way that we, as a society, can reduce the cost of this ugly humanity, then I'm in favor.
Originally Posted by BananaStand
The amount of folks in prison for drug use/possession is minute. People in prison for drugs are dealers, traffickers, or folks who were arrested for drug possession AND something else like having an illegal handgun. There may be a few exceptions, but the majority of inmates, by far, really do deserve to be there.
I hope you'll forgive me if I find your hubris to assert what other people deserve as not compelling evidence to sway my beliefs.
Originally Posted by BananaStand
It's not just a monetary issue anyway. Addiction ruins lives, destroys families, and kills people. If its a little more expensive to prevent that rather than tolerate it....I'm ok with the cost.
People are free to ruin their lives. This is one of the consequences of freedom.
I 100% agree with you that I would gladly support more comprehensive addiction prevention and addiction rehabilitation programs.
I'm in disagreement that incarceration is helping anyone, here.
I think it's very much like we, as a society, are waiting until someone to go over the edge, then we punish them for falling. If there is a better way, I want it.
Originally Posted by BananaStand
I only asked the Syrian question because you were posing it as a simple cost exercise. If border enforcement costs more than the benefits of cheap illegal labor, then don't enforce the border. Is that not your position?
That is not my position.
My position is that the current laws seem to be criminalizing good-willed people who are not hurting anyone.
My position is that perhaps rather than doubling down on a bad policy, we re-examine our actual goals, here, and find a way to better achieve them.
Originally Posted by BananaStand
I'm saying then, what benefit does a Syrian refugee bring to the table? Surely it's more expensive to bring in a refugee than an illegal. The refugee gets 'taken care of' to some degree. Giving them access to education and social programs costs money. What's the cost of simply leaving them out altogether?
What benefit, indeed?
You don't know. I don't know. This experiment hasn't been performed.
To go from, "I don't know." to "It must be..." with no steps in between is a hallmark hubris, not data.
The cost of doing nothing? Prob next to nothing.
The benefits of helping your neighbor? Hard to predict, but prob. good.
You'll prob need help someday, and it'll be nice if people see you as someone who helps others at that time. (Yeah, weak argument.)
Seems pretty rude to have your neighbor come over all beaten and bloody and ask if they can come inside to get away from that mess and for you to just give them a "Nah."
Originally Posted by BananaStand
Yet if I recall, you were against the travel ban when we discussed that a while back. Why are you using different standards for admitting people from different countries?
I did math and drew conclusions on this? Show me. I don't recall doing that.
In fact, I love math so much that I know I didn't do that. I'd remember it.
Are you talking about my meandering about non-0 this and that, which I ended the paragraph with IDK.
Paragraphs that end with IDK are categorically not drawing conclusions.
IDK how you can assert that a Syrian refugee fails the economic test. If we're talking in the immediate short-term, then yeah, but the long term benefits of helping someone and having earned their gratitude and respect are non-0.
Originally Posted by BananaStand
Yet if I recall, you were against the travel ban when we discussed that a while back. Why are you using different standards for admitting people from different countries?
You're not serious are you?
OMG, you're serious.
You just invented a position that I never said I hold and think you "got me" because your invented position is in opposition to my prior stated position.
I'm not using different standards. If you read my actual points, rather than invent some cartoon opposition to your positions, we'd have a more productive conversation.
To clarify: My position on the travel ban is, "If extreme vetting is necessary for one group of immigrants, then it's necessary for all groups of immigrants." Treating people differently under the law should only happen on an individual, case by case basis where there is evidence of wrong-doing. Anything else is bigotry of some form.
My position on illegal immigration is, "Are the laws we currently have actually any good?"
It's not even an assertion, merely a query about whether the current laws are falsely criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens.
Originally Posted by BananaStand
Unfortunately, I don't think you can use the 'humanitarian' argument as you've already stated that the government should be taking a callous, insurance-industry-like, approach to attaching $ values to the lives of people.
Seriously again?
SMH. It's like you barely read enough of my posts to fill up with emotion over some perceived position that I do not hold, then you type up a flurry of "gotcha" stuff at me over something I never said.
My position on this is that it is sad but true that the gov't has to do this. That doesn't reduce the humanity of anything, it only acknowledges that at some level, ignoring the harsh realities is folly.
If you're going to boil all my positions down to the complexity of a teenager, even when I've described the nuance of my understanding and my struggle to find a way to understand the world through more than just my own behavior, as an adult who is, and will always be, under-informed on the issues, then why are you here?
If you honestly understand my positions and disagree with me, then bring on that conversation.
As it stands, I feel like I'm talking to a pissed off teenager who is getting some perverse pleasure out of the melodrama of the situation.
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