Category Archives: American Laws

October 17, 2017

My Opinion On Online Piracy, Sharing, and Etiquette

By wise sloth

I recently received an E-mail from a woman, which read,

 

“Hey there Wise Sloth. Not so wise about copyright. You’re using one of my images on this post without permission. Please either remove this image or provide credit/copyright info and a link back to my website. Many thanks.”

 

I’m not going to give the person’s name or the details of the image because I don’t want to start a flame war. All you need to know is the image was a picture of an animal captioned with a popular quote. I hotlinked the picture to one of my blogs without linking it back to the author’s page or giving attribution in the caption. This situation raises some important points regarding online piracy, copyrights, and hotlinking that everyone should think about, but I’m going to write my analysis directly to the author of E-mail.

 

Dear Stranger,

I apologize for hotlinking your picture to my site without using attribution. I have removed the image and will not put it back up. Now I’d like to share five pieces of wisdom for you to think about.

 

1: You never know the full story, and it’s rarely as bad as you think.

Most of the images on my site are linked to their creator’s website because I know I’m supposed to do that. I’ve spent 200 hours in the past month fixing 550 blog posts that broke when I transferred my domain to a new host. After the 100,000’s click, delirious with exhaustion, I got lazy and skipped a few clicks. That doesn’t make me a bad person with criminal intent who has zero respect for the work of anyone but himself and deserves to be personally insulted. Next time you feel like attacking someone, take a breath and assume the best about your enemy instead of jumping to the worst conclusion.

 

2: People tend to treat you the same way you treat them.

You chose to send a snarky E-mail to a stranger. You didn’t cuss, but your words had rude intentions. If you were under a lot of stress already, I apologize for triggering your anger and pushing you over the red line. However, you chose to behave uncivilized, and as you well know, there are consequences for bad conduct.  If you had approached me politely, I would have apologized sincerely and linked your site with a caption encouraging people to look at your work. I’ve even been thinking about buying a print of your picture because I liked it so much. But since you came at me incorrectly, your window of opportunity for free advertising is now closed permanently, and I’m not going to buy your picture. If money is important to you, your actions were unwise.

 

3: Look at yourself before casting stones at others.

Money might not be as important to you as the principle that people on the internet should have the professional courtesy and respect for the law to give proper credit where credit is due. If that’s how you feel, you’re not wrong, but find me a courteous person who doesn’t plagiarise to give me that speech. Even though your E-mail was discourteous, I probably wouldn’t have said anything because of that alone. However, your image didn’t give attribution to the original author of the quote you used. How am I the bad guy for doing the same thing you did?

You’re actively selling physical prints of someone else’s work. I just used a copy of your image to illustrate a point. You didn’t lose anything, and I didn’t gain anything. The only person who really benefited was my viewers, who just got to see a picture. Your actions fit your own definition of stealing and are well within the legal definition. What I did more closely fits the definition of sharing and barely meets the strictest definition of stealing.

 

4: It doesn’t matter.

In a perfect world, nobody would fault us for cultural appropriation enough to bother us about it, because nobody would care. Even now, nobody has contacted you about your plagiarism because nobody cares… because it doesn’t matter. No one would have ever seen your picture on my site and assumed I drew it. So I was never going to steal your valor.

Using your picture would never have dissuaded anyone from buying yours. If anyone saw my page and wanted to buy a physical copy, they’d quickly realize I don’t sell pictures. Then they’d do a Google search for the quote and find your site. So you could have only gained by ignoring my actions. The chances of that happening were small, but there was never any possible negative consequence of ignoring the problem. Maybe if a problem doesn’t have any negative consequences, then it isn’t really a problem.

 

5: It’s good to share.

Before you ask, “How would you like it if someone used your work without permission?” I can tell you from experience, it hurt a little at first. I’ve seen people steal my words and art over a dozen times. If you look on Zazzle or CafePress you can find multiple vendors selling mugs and magnets with my Wise Sloth logo that I own the rights to. I could go after those people, but I decided the cost/benefit analysis doesn’t add up. They’re not hurting me. I’m helping them, and it might inspire someone to do a Google search that leads to my site. I have nothing to lose and everything gain.

I used to put all my books up on the Pirate Bay in hopes someone would steal them. I even made a comic book titled, “Steal These Comics and Sell Them.” I finally took them down because nobody ever did. I discovered more people would buy my stuff than accept it for free. So I started selling my books on Amazon.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get rich, but I do know I’ll die one day. When I see my creator and have to explain how I spent my life, I’d rather say I shared things that made the world brighter, than have to confess I put my lamp under my bed. At any rate, science has proven, generosity makes people happier than selfishness.

 

 

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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in American Laws, Technology

October 17, 2017

4 Illogical Arguments Against Polygamy

By wise sloth

1. God hates polygamy.

Some conservative Christians Americans would argue that, according to God and the Bible, marriage is supposed to be between one man and one woman. This is simply not true. Polygamy is very common in the Bible. So legalizing polygamy would be a step towards Biblical standards of marriage. However, while there are good reasons to legalize polygamy, the fact that the Bible approves of it isn’t one of them. If we’re going to base marriage laws on Biblical law, then women should be slaves, and fathers should sell their daughters for silver and beat them to death with rocks if they’re not a virgin on their wedding night… unless they were raped. In that case, the father should sell his daughter to her rapist. The “traditional Christian” concept of marriage being between one man and one woman who are in love, has no basis in Christianity. That’s a modern, secular tradition. If you want to live in a Christian theocracy, then you shouldn’t be standing against polygamy. You should be standing against adultery, divorce, and equality for women.

 

 

 

A list of verses in the Bible explaining marriage, including: Genesis 2:24, Genesis 38:6-10, Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Numbers 31:1-18, Exodus 21:4 and others

Click picture to enlarge

 

2. Polygamy is a slippery slope.

Some people would argue that polygamy is a slippery slope towards legalizing incest and bestiality. However, incest is illegal because it causes birth defects, and bestiality is illegal because an animal can’t consent to sex. Neither of these applies to polygamy.

 

3. Polygamy oppresses women.

You should not use this argument if you’ve never met a polyamorous/polygamous family, because you don’t really know what you’re talking about. I’ll concede that there have been polygamous families where women were treated poorly, but that was the decision of the individual men involved. It was not the inevitable result of people living together. If we’re to assert that people shouldn’t have the freedom to marry who they want because things could go bad, then that same logic would require us to make all marriage illegal. There are mountains of statistics of women being mistreated in “traditional” one-man-one-woman marriages. If you’re concerned about protecting people from themselves, then you should be petitioning to end marriage completely.

 

4. Polygamy would complicate taxes.

It’s noble to be concerned with other people’s taxes, but that’s not a solid enough reason to take away people’s freedoms. If tax laws are oppressive, the solution isn’t to accept oppression.

There is no solid, logical, coherent reason why polygamy should be illegal. The only reason for wanting polygamy to be criminalized is because you don’t understand it and don’t want people to live differently than you. That’s just cut and dry oppression. It’s not yours or your government’s place to criminalize love or domestic partnerships.

The only thing criminalizing polygamy accomplishes is demeaning, frustrating and destroying people’s lives. Legalizing polygamy would reflect enlightened values of adaptability, love, and freedom. We’ll never live in utopia as long as we’re taking people’s freedoms away for subjective, fantasy-based reasons.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in American Laws

October 17, 2017

Why Stop with Just Making Drugs Illegal?

By wise sloth

 

Drugs are illegal because they damage your health, inhibit your ability to function in society and lower your potential in the long run while increasing the likelihood that you’ll commit crime. That pretty much sums it up, right? Well, if those are solid reasons to make drugs illegal, then why stop with just criminalizing drugs?

Let’s make it illegal to drop out of school. Uneducated people lack higher-level social skills, are less useful to society and are more likely to commit crime. A lack of education is every bit as dangerous as drug use. In fact, if we’re truly concerned with the individual’s welfare, we would make it mandatory to stay in school through the completion of a bachelor’s degree or at least a trade certificate.

While we’re at it, we should make it illegal to eat fast food and junk food. McDonald’s food will literally cripple and kill you faster than marijuana, and in the meantime, it’ll give you health problems that will rack up extremely expensive medical bills. That’s every bit as tragic as a worst case scenario heroin junky. Obviously, you should go to jail for eating fast food.

Next, we obviously need to make alcohol and cigarettes illegal. They’re drugs. Cigarette packs even say right on the front, “This is poison.” Legal poison hurts you in every way that illegal poisons do. It’s cut and dry hypocrisy to make one poison legal to consume and another illegal. By the precedent we’ve already set, you should go to jail for smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol.

We also need to make wage slavery illegal. Poor people have poor health, low potential and are more likely to commit crimes. If instead of letting CEOs become obscenely rich off the blood and sweat of slaves, we force CEOs to pay their workers a fair share of their company’s profits, then people won’t be so poor. Then they’ll be able to afford better food. They’ll be able to save and invest more, and they won’t have to resort to criminal activity for money. So it should be illegal to pay workers minimum wage.

Next, we should make religion illegal. Religion hinders logical thought, which puts a solid cap on people’s potential. It also forces barbarically archaic moral standards onto people that conflict with their natural instincts. As a result, it causes undue stress on individuals, which has proven to push people to dangerous ends. Religion flies planes into buildings and gets homosexuals lynched. Bibles are worse for your health than marijuana and should be correspondingly illegal.

Handguns and automatic weapons are the next big item. They kill people….and that’s all they do. Not everyone who has a gun is going to kill somebody, but not every crack head is going to steal to support their drug habit. Since there will be a few worst case scenarios, we should hunt down everyone who has a gun and send them to prison for years where they’ll almost certainly be beaten and raped. Plus, we should blacklist them when they get out so they’ll never get a good paying job again. That will certainly solve the gun problem without causing any other problems.

Let’s add television to the list as well. Television is by and large a waste of time. You get fat and stupid by watching too much TV. This is bad for your health and lowers your potential. Using the same precedent set by drug laws, television should be illegal, and people who watch television should be hunted and caged.

What else? Sports. Sex. Aging. Pets. Unkempt houses. Working too much. Asshole bosses. Driving. Hell, we may as well just lock everyone up. We’re all doing something that could hurt us if we take it too far. And since prison doesn’t have any adverse effects on health, happiness or potential, then once everyone is locked up in prison then everyone will be healthy, happy and able to fulfill their highest potential both for themselves as well as society.

…or maybe some other judicial reform is needed.

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Barack Obama
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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in American Laws

October 17, 2017

My Theory On Illegal Immigration

By wise sloth

"Schrodinger's Immigrant: Simultaneously stealing your job and too lazy to work"

 

Politicians and celebrities in America regularly bash illegal Mexican immigrants for being lazy criminals who leech off the system. There are about 10 million illegal immigrants in America right now, and you’re always going to have a few bad apples in any group that size, but generalizing illegal Mexicans in America as villains is detached from reality. The causes, consequences, and implications of illegal immigration are bigger than that. In order to see the real issue in the broader scope of things, you need to understand five things:

 

1. Illegal immigrants are people too.

Illegal aliens are just as human as natural-born American citizens. They come from the same tree of life that every other human being came from, which makes them more than just neighbors. They’re family, and from a cosmic perspective, they’re the among the rarest, most precious entities in the known universe. If there’s a God that created us, we’re all children from the same loving parent.

We’re all lost and stranded on the same planet. We’re all going through the same existential crisis, and when we die, we all return to dust. It would be illogical to have a conversation about illegal immigrants without acknowledging their inherent sublime majesty, and any solution to illegal immigration must take into account the dignity and respect due to every sentient being. To say that illegal immigrants are just outsiders who need to piss off misses the point of life.

 

2. They’re here to work and send money back to their families or they’re trying to build a new life in the land of opportunity.

In order to understand how to deal with illegal immigration, you need to understand why people risk traveling thousands of miles across deadly terrain in a strange land where they’re hunted by police. Most of the people who do that aren’t rapists and criminals. Some of them are women and children, but most of them are fathers who left their homes and their families to find work so they can provide for their loved ones. Some want to stay in America, but most want to return home after they’ve made some money.

Think about that, and then think about the words written on the Statue of Liberty:

 

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'”

 

The bedrock of American political ideology has always been love, hope, freedom, and industry. Those are the same values that have motivated so many Mexicans to answer the call of Lady Liberty.  That’s not to say that opening the borders unconditionally is the best solution, but that would be more American than building a wall from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean and lining it with armed guards.

 

3. They do the jobs Americans can’t.

It’s a well-established fact that Mexican immigrants aren’t taking high paying, in-demand jobs. In 2010 The United Farm Workers organization challenged Americans to come work the jobs that Mexicans have been taking, and not one American took up the challenge.

It’s an understatement to say Mexicans are taking the jobs Americans don’t want. Frankly, they’re taking the jobs Americans can’t do. Immigrants work 13+ hours per day in inclement weather doing backbreaking work with almost no breaks for almost no money. Even if an American could endure the inhumane working conditions that immigrants suffer every day, their wages would be so far below the poverty line they wouldn’t be able to afford a basic quality of living much less The American Dream.

 

4. America’s economy is based on slave labor.

To say that Mexicans are taking Americans’ jobs today is like saying black slaves were taking all the good cotton picking jobs that colonial-era white settlers were entitled to. The work Mexicans do is tantamount to slave labor. Since America’s agricultural and construction industries (to name a few) are so heavily dependent on immigrant labor, that means the American economy is built on slave labor.

Any American who believes all the illegal immigrants should be deported is a hypocrite every time they go shopping because the low prices they enjoy are the direct result of immigrant slave labor. If all of these workers were deported, prices would skyrocket giving anti-immigration advocates a whole new set of problems to scream about.

Since the economy depends so heavily on illegal immigrants who don’t want to spend the rest of their life in America, the simplest solution to the problem would be to make it easier to obtain temporary working visas. The reason that solution hasn’t been implemented is because then American businesses would have to pay their slaves a living wage and give them all the perks entitled to legal workers. That would raise the cost of goods as surely as deporting all the undocumented workers. Very few business owners would lobby the government to do that. It works out better for their bottom line to keep distracting the public with talk of building walls while continuing to enjoy the fruits of slavery.

 

5. Mexicans go to America looking for work in the first place because South America’s economy and political structure have been systematically destabilized by the U.S. government. 

So many South Americans head North to find work because their economies and governments have been systematically destabilized by the United States government to ensure that none of its neighbors could challenge it economically or militarily. This has also allowed the United States to outsource jobs to South American sweatshops while also guaranteeing a steady flow of workers will come North to work inside America without any legal protection. So screaming at Mexicans for taking Americans’ jobs is blaming the victim.

(Documentary) The War on Democracy

(Documentary) Harvest of Empire

(Wikipedia) Latin America- United States Relations

No amount of victim-blaming will solve the immigration problem. We need to fix the fundamental problem with the economy, which is that our entire economic system is based on oppression and unsustainability. America and Mexico both need to build affordable, self-sufficient cities that don’t require its citizens to work themselves to death for barely enough money to survive. If/when that ever happens, nobody will need to leave their families and travel thousands of perilous miles to work in inhumane conditions, and nobody will have to fight each other for the ability to build a happy life.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in American Laws, Racism and Xenophobia

October 17, 2017

My Theory On Gun Control

By wise sloth

Picture of an assault rifle painted like the American flag

 

The topic of gun control makes headline news in America every time there’s a mass shooting, which is almost yearly now. Even without those events, the topic of gun control rarely leaves the public discourse because Americans are killed and terrorized by guns every day. Even if Americans didn’t want to hear about guns, tens of millions of dollars are spent every year by both pro and anti-gun control groups to lobby politicians and create propaganda for the public. And guns are such a normal way of life in America that they’re celebrated and satirized in American movies and television daily.

With guns so ingrained in American culture, it’s impossible to have a productive public conversation about them. Both sides are right about some things, but they both overvalue some of their arguments. Since most mainstream news organizations are fighting tooth and nail for ratings, they tend to paint the issue black, white and divisive, but gun control is a kaleidoscopic grey area. It’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle.

Americans can speak with authority on guns because everyone knows somebody who owns one. But most Americans have never left America. There are 195 other countries in the world, and between them, every possible combination of gun control laws are in place somewhere. When discussing the possible consequences of implementing different laws, the question isn’t, “What would happen?” The question is, “What’s happening?”

Before I offer my theory on what combination I advocate, I want to share my personal experiences in the countries I’ve been to.

Mexico– Every Mexican has the constitutional right to own firearms, but there are very strict laws on what kind they can own, and they’re basically not allowed to carry them outside their home. The gun laws in Mexico don’t really apply though, because criminal organizations are stronger than the government, and guns are extremely easy to obtain. To be fair, there are a lot of places in Mexico where people don’t lock their doors at night, but other cities are nightmares to live in. Guns are the number one reason I would not live in Mexico.

Israel, Greece, Egypt, and Italy– When visiting each of these countries I didn’t know what their gun laws were. I was standing in a bazaar in Jerusalem when I heard random gunfire in the distance, and nobody around me batted an eye. I witnessed a large, angry protest smash a car in front of the Parliament building in Greece, which was surrounded by riot police carrying automatic weapons. In Egypt, there was a mounted machine gun in front of my hotel, and while living in Italy, I saw Carabinieri police with automatic weapons every day. In these four very different countries, I got very comfortable with seeing heavily armed guards on the street corners. After leaving Israel, I flew to New York, where I felt naked on the streets and longed to be surrounded by automatic weapons. Granted, if I were a black man in New York or a Palestinian in Israel, I would have had different experiences.

Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia- These countries have pretty middle of the road gun laws, and I felt reasonably safe. However, I was in a nightclub in Croatia, where one of my friends kicked over a bottle of beer and shattered it on the dance floor. An Australian we were hanging out with, who had been living there for a year said, “Be careful. That bouncer over there has seven lines cut into his forearm. That’s for each person he killed in the war. Life is cheap here, mate. Don’t piss people off.” So obviously, any debate about gun control laws must also address the larger issue of what causes people to be violent in general.

Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Holland– These countries have mostly strict gun laws, but out of all of them, Switzerland has the least. Of all the countries I’ve visited, I felt the safest in these countries, and I felt the safest in Switzerland. This is partly due to laws, but these countries also have the highest quality of living of all the countries I’ve visited. The locals just don’t have as much stress and desperation motivating them to kill each other.

Kuwait- Regardless of the laws in the Middle East, weapons are easy to get. Life is cheap and hard, and there are a lot of ideological extremists who divide the world into “us versus them.” This is a recipe for violence, and weapon manufacturers are fanning the flames. I wouldn’t live in the Middle East even if I could, and every year hundreds of thousands of refugees risk their lives leaving their country because it’s a better option than facing the guns and bombs at home.

Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam– These countries have fairly strict gun policies, and the local religions tend to promote peace and harmony. I felt safe in these countries when I was in affluent areas, but I didn’t venture into impoverished neighborhoods because the threat of being robbed is very real there. Even when a society has strict gun laws and a pacifist attitude, poverty will still create criminals who have less to lose and more to gain from picking up a gun than obeying the law or social norms.

The UK, New Zealand– These countries have fairly strict gun laws, but they have high levels of economic inequality. I felt safer in these countries than in America, and I was more afraid of being stabbed than shot.

America– I went to two different high schools in Texas. At one of them, students had gun racks full of shotguns and rifles in their trucks, which they parked on campus, and nobody ever worried about it. When I attended the other school I lived two blocks from the projects and would hear random gunfire from my bedroom window at night. I would never walk the streets after dark. When I lived in Hawaii, I was awoken one morning by a man shooting an AK-47 randomly outside my apartment as he went door to door looking for the man who raped his sister. I told that story to a friend of mine in Texas, and I asked, “Where do you even get an AK-47?” My friend replied, “Do you have $300. I’ll get you an AK-47 today.” I’m afraid to live in America.

If there’s one thing most of the world agrees on, it’s that insane people and violent criminals should not be allowed to own guns. There’s nothing wrong that. It’s been said that, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” But if you give a monkey a gun, a random person is going to get shot.

So my four solutions to gun violence are:

 

1: Don’t let crazy people and repeat-offenders own guns.

Another concept that’s not up for debate is that “opportunity creates the criminal.” The more people have guns, the more gun deaths will result from accidents and crimes of passion. Just because some people can own a gun responsibly doesn’t mean everyone can. If you want the general public to have easy access to guns, you need to ask yourself how many inevitable gun deaths you’re willing to accept for that freedom.

Any violent gun-owning criminal will tell you that the easier it is to legally buy a gun, the easier it is to illegally buy a gun. So it’s shortsighted to say, “Criminals don’t follow laws. So if the public can’t have guns, only criminals will have them.” In reality, the more guns the public has, the more guns criminals will have, and as I just mentioned, more otherwise peaceful people will become violent offenders.

To address this problem I would be fine with either of these solutions:

 

2: Only allow current members and veterans of law enforcement and the military to own guns.

The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” If the right to bear arms is related to militias, then it stands to reason people who own guns should be patriots who have some experience with organized fighting. I’m not saying this is the best solution to the gun control issue, but it’s better than allowing any crazy person to hoard guns.

 

3: Make gun safety a required class in public k-12 schools. 

It’s been said that, “American’s weren’t meant to be safe. They were meant to be free.” But the basis of the social contract is limiting people’s freedoms to hurt each other. You’re not free to drive a car without a license. You’re not free to practice medicine without a license. You’re not free to hold public office without meeting a few requirements. It’s easier to get a gun in America than it is to open a business, get divorced or buy a house.  There’s a limit to how many freedoms we should sacrifice for safety, but everyone’s life is already saturated with inhibiting laws. Screaming about gun control is screaming at a single tree in a vast forest that’s on fire. If you’re going to get mad that you don’t have easy access to assault weapons, you should be screaming about having to get a driver’s license or wear a seatbelt.

If you truly, madly, deeply believe that American citizens should be able to own guns in order to defend their rights from an oppressive government, you should already be overthrowing the American government. Americans aren’t free. The average American isn’t represented in government, and America isn’t the good guy. I’m not actually saying that we should all band together and violently overthrow the government. I’m just saying that if you use the “protection against tyranny” argument then you’re naive at best, a part of the problem at worst, and a hypocrite either way.

You already know you don’t stand a chance in Hell of defeating the U.S. military with weapons you bought from a pawn shop. As much of a beating as the U.S. military has taken fighting loosely organized, moderately armed rebels in the Middle East, America is still over there killing people every day. The American war machine will keep fighting until everyone you know is dead and the country is bankrupt. Armed insurrection in America is not an option.

You don’t need to overthrow the government to make America a better place anyway. Even if you did overthrow the government, it wouldn’t matter what kind of gun laws you put in place afterward. The main determining factor in whether or not people will commit crimes with any kind of weapon is ultimately poverty. If you’re screaming because you’re worried the government is going to take away your assault weapons, you’re distracting the public from the fundamental problem with society: the oppressive economic system. Regardless of what the current gun laws are, if you’re truly worried about your (or anyone else’s) ability to preserve your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, then you need to worry about poverty first and foremost.

So my final solution to the gun question is this:

 

4: Save the gun debate until after we’ve addressed the main threat to people’s lives that lead to most gun violence, to begin with: poverty.

Poverty causes stress and crime. Add guns and you have a recipe for perpetual violence that no amount of regulations can stop. If everyone were secure and content, like in Switzerland, you could give everyone a gun for free and you’d have less gun violence than a country with high income inequality and totalitarian gun laws.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Barack Obama
The 2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump
Voting
Corruption and Election Reform
American Laws
My Tweets About Politics

 

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in American Laws

February 13, 2010

The 28th Amendment

By wise sloth

Picture of an old piece of parchment that says, "Amendment XXVII"

 

The American government needs a new amendment to its constitution that states, no state or federal government shall pass or enforce any law that prohibits people from harming themselves or behaving in ways considered indecent unless the actions of the individual directly or indirectly hinder another person’s right to the pursuit of life, liberty, ownership or happiness. You might also make an exception that people can harm others if the person being harmed has given full consent because there are some exceptions like euthanasia and selling tobacco where people want to be hurt.

Here are 6 reasons why we need this amendment:

 

1. Without this rule, we have no way to systematically limit what kind of culturally relative laws will be passed that will oppress people. 

Look throughout history. People were locked in stocks for gossiping. Women have been killed for doing pretty much anything, including eating bananas. Today countless laws are enforced that don’t actually protect anyone. All they do is reinforce cultural norms to the detriment of the individual’s right to the pursuit of life, liberty, ownership, and happiness. Women still can’t take off as many clothes in public as men. Blasphemy is still a crime in many countries. Alcohol prohibition was a disaster, and marijuana prohibition is currently destroying countless lives. Censorship laws reinforce an oversimplified explanation of reality that debilitates people’s minds.  People who just happened to be naked at the wrong place at the wrong time are being jailed as sex offenders. Curfew laws are blatant oppression. If you look long enough you’ll find countless minor local laws that are just ridiculous and only serve to fill the police coffers.

None of these rules should be brushed off as exceptions and mistakes. They were inevitabilities in a system that has no fail-safe to limit the control of moral fanatics, and as long as no fail-safe exists you leave open an avenue for laws to be passed in your country that legalizes oppression.

 

2. The cost-benefit analysis of these kinds of laws doesn’t add up. 

It would be one thing if these laws actually protected society from itself, but as it stands they do more to tear society down and hold it back. What happens after a woman gets thrown in jail for smoking a joint on her front porch while not wearing her shirt? How is society protected? Since these are victimless crimes nobody has been protected. The only way society has been affected at all is this woman has been made to live in fear, been blacklisted with a criminal record and had her money stolen from her by the police to pay unjust fines. Now, what happens when this isn’t just one woman? What about when it’s 2 million people? That’s systematic oppression. That’s living in a terror state. There’s no cost-benefit analysis here because there’s no benefit. There’s just cost in the form of destroyed human lives.

 

3. Victimless crime laws waste resources. 

Every time someone is jailed for a victimless crime the labor they could have devoted to improving society is temporarily eliminated, and the labor used to apprehend and incarcerate these people is wasted when it could have been used to apprehend and incarcerate actual criminals.

Everyone who knows anything about criminology knows that locking up criminals is an ineffective way of reducing repeat offenders. Rehabilitation would be more productive, but at this point, rehabilitation isn’t even an option because our resources are stretched too thin by apprehending, prosecuting and locking up people for victimless crimes. If we ever hope to reduce real crime it’s vital that we stop wasting our resources enforcing subjective, victimless taboos.

 

4. Victimless crimes contradict the Constitution of the United States and the Universal Bill of Human Rights. 

These documents don’t place conditions and exceptions on the manner or extent to which people can choose to pursue life, liberty, ownership or happiness except to say that our actions may not infringe another person’s own pursuit of life, liberty, ownership or happiness. Victimless crime laws do.

 

5. One of the big arguments against the idea of legalizing victimless crimes is that society will break down; society won’t break down.

People do what’s in their best interest, and it’s not in anyone’s best interest to sleep with every whore in every brothel and shoot up heroin at work. The people who would do such things are in such dire positions in their lives that these actions appear to be in their best interest. If this is truly unhealthy behavior then the causes need to be addressed. These people need to be given what they’re missing in their lives and rehabilitated, not punished and have more of their life taken away from them. This will only push them further past the limit of desperation and increase the chances that they’ll actually harm other people.

Furthermore, most of the people who want to sleep with hookers and do heroin are already doing it. The only difference is that we’re wasting our resources and theirs by trying to stop them when we could just let them do what they’re going to do anyway and get on with solving real problems.

 

6. It’s not our place to play God. 

If we allow people to disobey the various mythologies humans have created to explain God then we would be denying the sovereignty those mythological deities have over mankind. While atheists would applaud this step, others fear it. However, even if one of these mythological deities were the real one then by passing judgment for Him we’re playing God. Therefore, it would be more blasphemous to enforce God’s will than to leave judgment to God.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

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November 9, 2009

My Theory On Age-Based Accountability Laws

By wise sloth

Definition of the word, "Discrimination," The prejudicial treatment or consideration of a person, racial group or minority based on category rather than individual merit, excluding or restricting members on the grounds of race, sex or age."

 

The way things work today, you reach certain ages where you’ve given certain rights you didn’t use to have, like driving, drinking, having sex, and voting. At some of these milestones, you’re held to a higher level of responsibility. At the age of 17, you can be tried as an adult in a court of law. At other milestones, you’re held to a lower level of responsibility. At age 18 you’re free to smoke all the cigarettes you want and watch all the porn you can because you’re all of a sudden mature enough to handle it.  And then there’s the age of consent, which is just confusing. If you’re 17 years old you can have sex with all the 17-year-olds in the country. If you’re 18-years-old, it’s one of the worst crimes you can commit.

This is a broken system that isn’t based on any solid logic. The reason it’s still being used is because it involves taboos that nobody wants to touch with a 10-foot pole. Plus, it seems to be generally accepted that the system works well enough. So why mess with it? The reason is because the system works well enough…except for those it doesn’t work for.

Here’s what I propose. Get rid of all age restrictions as they stand. Then make it to where you can start applying for rights around the age of 14 or 15…because honestly, we all know what’s going on by 14 or 15. At that point, you can apply for the right to drive, the right to sexual freedom, the right to vote, the right to use mind-altering substances, etc.

There’s three catches though. First, you have to prove you’re responsible enough to use these rights. To drive, you have to pass a driving class. To vote, you have to pass a government class. To have legally consensual sex under the age of 18, you have to pass a sexual awareness class. To use drugs, you have to pass a drug awareness class. etc. etc.

The second catch is you’re held to a higher level of accountability. You can be tried in adult court. You’re no longer protected by statutory “rape” laws. The penalties for drinking and driving go up. Health insurance goes up. Stuff like that.

The third catch is that you can have your rights taken away if you demonstrate that you’re not responsible enough to use them…responsibly…just like how you can get your driver’s license taken away.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

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October 30, 2009

5 Reasons To Legalize Gambling

By wise sloth

Graphic of a slot machine with the words, "LEGAL GAMBLING USA" displayedin front of it

 

It’s bullshit that gambling is illegal in most states. And I blame Nevada for that. I heard once that the reason online gambling in America was shut down was because the big casinos in Las Vegas were losing money and lobbied Congress. I don’t have any proof, and it’s not important enough to me to look up, but it sounds plausible. Anyway, here’s my reasons why it should be legal:

 

1: Freedom

This is a no-brainer. Don’t tell me we live in a free country is I’m not free to play or own a slot machine. Yeah, with freedom comes anarchy, and with anarchy comes destruction. That’s why they won’t get the lottery in Hawaii. People there are so desperate the government knows they’d all go broke buying lottery tickets if they could. That’s they’re fucking choice. Plus, if that’s your big hangup, ration the tickets. You could even enforce spending limits or time limits in casinos.

At any rate, if we make the choice to make gambling illegal for the Hawaiians or anybody else, then we’ve set a precedent to make other choices for them. Maybe if we didn’t have so many freedoms already taken away from us willingly, the Patriot Act would have never passed. As it stands, the Patriot Act wasn’t an anomaly. It was a step in the same direction we’ve been headed for years.

 

2: Economic stimulation

Gambling makes money, which stimulates the economy and creates jobs. A vote against gambling is a vote for a weaker economy and higher unemployment rates.

 

3: Tax revenue

I don’t want my tax money to go to busting illegal casinos. I don’t give a fuck if people play Texas Hold’em. We’ve got bigger problems in the world that all that tax money desperately needs to go towards fixing. Look around you. Our economy is a big pile of shit right now and gambling is illegal. Coincidence? I think not. If nothing else, just legalize gambling and give me back the money you would have spent fighting it.

 

4: Not being a hypocrite

Texas is so back-asswards. We have drive-through liquor barns, but you can’t buy liquor on Sundays. We have the lottery, dog racing, and offshore casinos, but gambling is illegal. I feel bad for children growing up today. Reality must be one big clusterfuck for them where nothing means anything and everything contradicts itself. Why don’t we just end the hypocrisy starting with legalizing gambling? It’s already legal. It’s just limited. We’ve already stuck our dick in. We may as well finish fucking now.

 

5: Progress or Crime? Take your pick.

When gambling legalized the money spent on it goes to legitimate businesses that can use that money to grow and actually provide a service to the world. Las Vegas casinos how major intellectual conferences every year. Casinos have contributed greatly to improving computer software hardware technology. In the states where gambling is illegal all that money goes to the mafia and petty criminals. Then it helps their crime rings grow. When they get big enough the branch out. Then you’re paying “protection” fees on your car in your driveway. Way to keep us safe by making gambling illegal.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Barack Obama
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October 30, 2009

5 Reasons Why Prostitution Should Be Legal

By wise sloth

Picture of protestors marching down a city street carrying a banner that says, "SEXWORKERS RIGHTS = HUMAN RIGHTS"

 

1. Security

Prostitutes need security more than a designer clothing store. So much so that illegal prostitutes get pimps who extort them. As horrible as that is, it’s better than not having a pimp. In Holland, the prostitutes get big, bad bouncers. One guy told me about a brothel he went to in Cologne, Germany where they had pit bulls. Now, who do you think has more dead hookers, New York or Cologne? But America doesn’t care whether or not a hooker dies because they’re immoral. Good ol’ Christian values at work there… that do more harm than good.

 

2. Sanitation

You’re more likely to get an STD from someone at a club than from a porn star or a Dutch prostitute. They get medical checkups so often it’d make a hypochondriac cream his pants. Seriously, abortion is legal and prostitution isn’t? The only reason abortion was ever passed in a country that won’t let you cuss on television is because too many women were getting backroom abortions and were dying from any number of medical problems.

That’s horrible seeing as how I suspect one of the main reasons prostitution is still illegal in America is because the American women don’t want the competition. Imagine this commercial for the brothel that may someday open up down the street from your house:

 

3. Women’s dignity

How bad would your life have to get to risk getting arrested for going to work every day, risking getting murdered, beaten, humiliated, and infected with a disease? These women aren’t immoral fluzies. They’re desperate. Their lives suck on levels you and I can’t even imagine. And be keeping prostitution legalize we’re supporting that. We spend millions of dollars a year oppressing prostitutes and destroying their lives. Their tears and blood on our hands. Fuck that. I don’t that responsibility laid at my feet. Somebody wants to make a little money, mutually consensually, making lonely people happy in a safe and sterile environment what do I care? I don’t want my tax dollars going to keeping those two people unhappy and unsafe. And quite frankly I’m disgusted at anybody who would.

 

4. Reduce rape

Why risk going to jail and destroying your conscience by raping someone when you can go buy a hooker with no hassle? A veto for prostitution is a vote for rape. Make a campaign button out of that.

 

5. Economic stimulation

Prostitutes make more money. Businesses make more money. The economy grows. With the economic problems we’ve got these days and the amount of people wanting a little relief now’s the perfect time to legalize prostitution. Here’s my campaign slogan: “PROSTITUTION: IT’LL DO YOU GOOD!”

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

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October 30, 2009

8 Reasons To Legalize Marijuana You’ve Already Heard

By wise sloth

Graphic of a green, black and white American flag, with a large outline of a marijuana leaf in the middle

1: Freedom

This conversation should really be over after that one word. How are you going to argue with freedom? But people do. Just don’t tell me we live in a free country when I’m not free to grow a plant and consume it in the privacy of my own home. Freedom doesn’t get much more basic than growing a plant. And if we don’t have that simple freedom and we take it for granted that simple freedoms like that are okay to take away then we set a precedent for any other rights to be taken away. All the government needs now is a good sounding reason. A vote against legalizing marijuana is a vote against your children’s freedoms.

 

2: Reduce organized crime

Look at what happened in Chicago during prohibition. Politicians made alcohol illegal despite the wishes of the majority of the people. If you think of dollars as votes and cash registers as ballot boxes you’ll see that people voted for alcohol with their dollars. Unfortunately, since alcohol was illegal the only people you could get it from were criminals. And being criminals they did other illegal things to keep their business running, like killing people. Do liquor store owners today kill each other? No. Do people selling weed today kill each other? Yes. Do innocent people get caught in the crossfire? Yes. Do the owners of “coffee shops” in Holland that sell weed kill each other? No. Legalizing marijuana will put criminals out of business. Then they’ll have to get jobs.

 

3: Drug laws hurt people more than protect them

This is the warped logic of the laws. Using marijuana will destroy your life. Therefore, it’s illegal, and if you get caught using it then in order to protect you from yourself you’ll be thrown in jail, which will cause you to lose your job. You’ll be slapped with a huge fine that you won’t be able to pay because you lost your job, and you’ll get a criminal record equal to shooting or raping someone that will guarantee you never get a good job again. And you’ll probably get your ass kicked, raped, and possibly killed while in jail. So basically, the government protects you from destroying your life by destroying it for you far worse than smoking marijuana could have. Oh, and by the way, everybody knows that there are millions of people who smoke weed every day and live productive, not destroyed lives…until they’re arrested. So the government isn’t actually saving you by destroying you. It’s just destroying you.

 

4: Reduce stress that leads to hard drug use

That would be a good argument if it were true. The reason people use drugs is because their lives suck. That’s the real gateway. Legalizing marijuana would make life suck less. Therefore it would actually reduce hard drug use. Plus, who do people get hard drugs from? The same criminals they buy their weed from. If people didn’t need to buy weed from criminals then they’d never meet said criminals to know where to buy the hard drugs from. If marijuana were legalized, we’d probably see a drop in hard drug use.

5: The precedent has already been set

Morally there’s no difference between drinking alcohol and smoking or eating marijuana. The effects are slightly different, but the morality isn’t. If we can have one we should be able to have the other. Anything less is hypocrisy.

 

6: Reduce overcrowding in prisons

All across America right now there are ex-con rapists, thieves, murderers, and brawlers going about their business in quiet little neighborhoods like yours raping, stealing, murdering, and fighting when they should still be in prison. You know why they’re not in prison? Because the prisons are overcrowded with potheads who are guilty of victimless crimes. That’s how sick in the head America is. We can actually say the contradictory nonsensical meaningless phrase “victimless crime” with a straight face and pretend like it means anything less than, “You don’t live in a free country.” Let me tell you about a crime that has real victims. It’s a crime that the government and the police force allow real criminals to get out of jail early to hurt more innocent people. Plus, if the penalties for real crimes are lowered across the board because the prisons are full of pot heads then there’s less incentive for real criminals to obey the law. Let’s rob this gas station. Fuck it. If we get caught we’ll only do two years. Good thing there are too many potheads in jail. Otherwise, we might have to serve a real term that would actually discourage us from robbing this gas station. Ha ha ha.

 

7: Increase funding for addiction treatment

Someone once said that the war on drugs took a minor medical problem and turned it into a major legal one. How much money has the war on drugs cost the American taxpayers? We know the government lost that war. Even the government admits it. So how about we just legalize everything, give people the freedom to screw up their own lives if they want, and take all the money we’re flushing down the toilet fighting victimless criminals and spend that money on medical treatment for these people with a medical problem. Is there anyway possible that could work worse than what we’re doing right now?

8: Reduce wasteful government spending

Still not convinced? Still think marijuana should be illegal? Fine. But you’re going to pay for it literally. The potholes on your street aren’t going to get fixed. Your children’s school isn’t going to get new textbooks. Your public library is going to be closed. And your taxes are going to go up to build that big new prison on the outskirts of town. So you don’t like the idea of hippies getting stoned at concerts. Fine. I don’t like kids on my lawn. But I don’t think we should spend billions of tax dollars on a war on kids on my lawn when that money could be used for education. Shit. Just end the war on drugs and give the money back to the people. We’re fucking poor. We need money more than we need the kid who lives across the street from me not smoking out on his roof after his parents go to bed. If I paid you $10,000 would you support legalizing weed? I think most people would. Well, if marijuana were legalized and taxed we’d probably all see more than $10,000 in some form or another from the increased tax revenue and decreased need for taxation.

I think we should let children run our government. They call it like it is. If a lobbyist came up to a kid and said, “Instead of medically treating people with medical substance abuse problems let’s take away their jobs, give them a criminal record, lock them up with real criminals for a long time, and let the real criminals go free. At the same time, we’ll spend trillions of dollars in a futile attempt to cut off the supply and demand of the goods the people are voting for with their dollars and having huge protests about every year. And as long as we allow the war that we created to go on people will needlessly get hurt and killed by competing drug cartels.” Only an adult could have an idea that stupid and commit trillions of dollars and millions of lives to perpetuating this cancerous, destructive plan. Any child could see how retarded that plan is and how seriously, really, in real life hurting real people. And since children are going to have to live in the world we create they might pass laws that will take care of themselves in the future. Whereas currently, we make laws that fuck over our children’s future because fuck it. Our kids are going to have to deal with most of the consequences, not us.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Barack Obama
The 2016 Presidential Election
Donald Trump
Voting
Corruption and Election Reform
American Laws
My Tweets About Politics

 

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in American Laws