Regulation of Drugs


howardahood

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Government is an oppressor, a destroyer of rights in a way that no individual ever could.

Is now and has been but must not necessarily be so. Without government holding the monopoly on the initiation of force, I fear we would descend into vigilantism. In your example of sending someone to arrest the drug dealer who is accused of giving drugs to a child, if the dealer resists because he does not trust the person making the arrest, the arrester could initiate force, possibly deadly force.

Now the allies of the dealer will likely consider this unjustified - the original claim of him giving drugs to a minor may even have been false - and may feel their only viable choice is to retaliate, leading to a war.

Further, government is impotent to check crime and abuse, so it fails at its sole claim to legitimacy.

Impotent? What is your basis for this conclusion?

Also, the ability to stop crime and corruption, is that really the government's sole claim to legitimacy? I think the claim to legitimacy is that it has been duly elected or formed or ratified by a majority of those that evidenced interest or deigned to participate, that it respects the basic rights of individuals and that it will not initiate force except with due process and when required to prevent the initiation of force (off the top of my head).

check: to stop or arrest the motion of suddenly or forcibly

Edited by George Donnelly
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I'm baffled again. How is the U.S. or Canada or Britain for instance defying the consent of the governed? Majority rule, frequent and fair elections, due process and whatnot.

Majority rule? You must be kidding. It's totally invalid, obviously. I for one didn't consent to most of the things they force on me.

What's your angle? Your question makes no sense.

Shayne

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Is now and has been but must not necessarily be so. Without government holding the monopoly on the initiation of force, I fear we would defend into vigilantism.

That's a pragmatic and therefore invalid argument. Invalid arguments are the only ones that work to prop up statism, so that's all you have. You can either eschew statism or reason. It's your choice.

Ayn Rand's "monopoly on force in a given geographic region" is a completely invalid definition of government and is in fact a worse notion than altruism.

Shayne

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Laure, can you point to a police strike/mass lawlessness incident? Thanks.

W.

Montreal 1969

Wikipedia mentions some others

Those incidents are completely irrelevant to the point at hand. People would likely starve if welfare were spontaneously ended, that doesn't mean that mass starvation is the logical result of capitalism.

Shayne

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Is now and has been but must not necessarily be so. Without government holding the monopoly on the initiation of force, I fear we would defend into vigilantism.

That's a pragmatic ... argument.

True I suppose. It is not my final word on the subject.

Ayn Rand's "monopoly on force in a given geographic region" is a completely invalid definition of government and is in fact a worse notion than altruism.

This is just a lot of hot air unless you back it up with your reasoning.

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Is now and has been but must not necessarily be so. Without government holding the monopoly on the initiation of force, I fear we would defend into vigilantism.

That's a pragmatic ... argument.

True I suppose. It is not my final word on the subject.

It may not be your final word, but it was Rand's. And without an argument to justify your use of force, you are morally and logically required to stop advocating the use of force in this context.

Ayn Rand's "monopoly on force in a given geographic region" is a completely invalid definition of government and is in fact a worse notion than altruism.

This is just a lot of hot air unless you back it up with your reasoning.

Asserting a conclusion I reached is just that: a conclusion. It isn't "hot air" just because you regard it as dubious, your assertion is tantamount to subjectivism: the ignorant state of your consciousness does not set the standard for everyone else's utterances. The real issue here is: Do I care to elaborate, interact with you, explain--or not? With your irrational attitude, the answer is more likely to be: Not.

Shayne

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Wolf,

We think so much alike on some issues it is not funny.

On a personal level, I have always treated the government as an oppressor of my rights, but a big on. So I have lived my personal freedom under the radar. On a very profound level, I feel that I am a nation of one. In my marriage (or future marriage in my present situation), I am a nation of two with some kids thrown in.

The might of even the Brazilian military, much less the USA military, would squash me like a bug if I called it out for a fight. So I do not engage in that folly for as much as I disapprove of matters.

I would not mind living under a just government, one devised according to rigidly rational premises and with the full complement of checks and balances, even if this meant taxation and other obligations (in the hypothesis a rational justification for them could be found). Otherwise, I prefer the inefficiency of the modern state, for as bloated as it is.

The only thing I believe could give rational grounds for a rational government is if it were based on human nature. (I still have to get to your theory about rights not being based on human nature and I do find the thought intriguing.) If human nature (qua premise) eventually becomes accepted and defined as being both individual and social on a fundamental level, right there is your justification for government. It would be an expression of human value. Like Samuel's people in the Bible (Samuel 8):

6. Samuel was displeased when they asked for a king to judge them. He prayed to the LORD, however,

7. who said in answer: "Grant the people's every request. It is not you they reject, they are rejecting me as their king.

8. As they have treated me constantly from the day I brought them up from Egypt to this day, deserting me and worshiping strange gods, so do they treat you too.

Change "God" for "Reason" or "Rational Individualism" in this passage and the parallels are very interesting. People have government because they want government. The wisdom of the ancients identified it, wrote it up and condemned it. But did not shirk from looking at it.

This isn't a slippery slope, though. It's skydiving.

I better remember the parachute before jumping...

:)

Michael

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Laure, can you point to a police strike/mass lawlessness incident? Thanks.

W.

Montreal 1969

Wikipedia mentions some others

So government licensed union taxi drivers attack a competitor that had a government monopoly at the government airport. Then three days later a government funded 'Young Canadians' club is accused of looting and rioting: "Montreal City Hall accuses the federally funded volunteer group of harbouring terrorists and taking part in violent street riots." A comedy of government, just like the government monopoly police and fire unions going on strike, which created the fracas. I'm sure that you and George are right about vigilantism somehow, I just don't know how.

Maybe my experience in Costa Rica twisted my brain beyond repair. I certify that private actors kept law and order on da beach, not official cops, who could be bought for $20 to do or refrain from doing whatever you wanted. In the States, I'll agree it's slightly different. They're more expensive to corrupt and they do proportionately less. Took six LA cops to beat Rodney King unconscious. Then they abandoned Los Angeles when the riots started. In New Orleans, the cops did most of the looting and only a quarter showed up for duty and patrolled nothing when Katrina struck.

I appreciate that there are good cops somewhere, emphasizing the somewhere. It ain't Russia or China or anywhere in Africa. The 'war on drugs' has been waged fifty years by legions of U.S. federal and local cops, spending hundreds of billions and jailing millions. What exactly has this achieved, aside from hot air amounting to Nancy Reagan pleading that kids should Just Say No?

Legitimate government is an abstraction, or like I said earlier an article of faith, preached by government in government schools and on government licensed television stations. In reality you're on your own.

The evidence isn't hard to gather, and it requires no special twist of language, no cognitive somersault. Just pick up the telephone and summon a policeman to attend a crime in progress (robbery, rape, murder, kidnapping). Good luck getting help in time. Nor is it clever to claim that the state's protection exists in a more diffuse, but efficacious realm beyond the average response time of emergency services. In any public street, the law is observed by its citizenry without police. Los Angeles has 7,000 cops and 7 million citizens. The LAPD are garbage collectors in fancy uniforms, picking up the dead and praying that the rest of us will argue quietly. Our dwellings are rendered safe from fire by homeowners and tenants, employing nothing more coercive than an individual desire to survive. All instrumentalities of community protection and public welfare existed first as private, voluntary organizations (constabularies, fire brigades, libraries, schools, hospitals) before dilettantes and ward-healers proposed that a bureaucracy should monopolize and run them badly. Defacto Anarchy

Sorry we disagree. All the evidence damns government, not private actors.

W.

Edited by Wolf DeVoon
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In your example of sending someone to arrest the drug dealer who is accused of giving drugs to a child, if the dealer resists because he does not trust the person making the arrest, the arrester could initiate force, possibly deadly force. Now the allies of the dealer will likely consider this unjustified - the original claim of him giving drugs to a minor may even have been false - and may feel their only viable choice is to retaliate, leading to a war.

The brief account I gave of a judicial finding lacked context. There's a lot more to it. The Good Walk Alone sketched an array of dominant private groups (including something as mundane as a Merchants Association) that in concert suppress crime, general lawlessness, and vigilantism per se. I don't want to clog up the forum explaining it here. There's too much of me here as it is.

<_<

Edited by Wolf DeVoon
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My vigilantism example does not constitute a pragmatic argument but a moral one. What sjw claimed is not true.

Peaceful coexistence is difficult if not impossible when one knows that at any time another can unleash Wolf's police on him for no reason at all. Peaceful coexistence and objective law are conditions required for man's survival qua man. AR explained this much better than I can in her essay "The Nature of Government" in "The Virtue of Selfishness".

sjw: If you care only to share conclusions and not reasoning then there is little point in posting at all. This is a place for discussion - that is its purpose. So if you don't display your reasoning, what is there to discuss? Nothing. If there is nothing to discuss, why are you participating? No reason.

Would you like to talk about irrational attitudes? Which is irrational: (1) the attitude that says here's what I think and why, or (2) here's what I think, without the why, and you are irrational, ignorant and "&*^*%* you!" if you disagree?

Wolf, since you mentioned Costa Rica, look at Colombia where we have essentially a civil war run by murderers, rapists, child-impressers and self-proclaimed Marxists. Before 2003 the government was lax and allowed the guerrillas to take small towns and get close enough to big ones to knock out critical infrastructure such as electricity lines and gas pipelines.

In 2003 a new government came in and got the police and military off their butts and to work. The guerrillas are now securely on the run. The government may even achieve complete victory soon.

This is an example of the government doing its job and protecting citizens from the initiation of force.

How would your ideal society it deal with a threat like this?

vigilantism: the actions of any person who takes the law into his or her own hands, as by avenging a crime, in trying to enforce the laws.

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Howard,

I ask you to reconsider.

I am deleting the foul language aimed at you in the posts and any further verbal aggression directed at you will be deleted should you decide to stay. If not, it was a pleasure knowing you and I apologize for the poor manners you were shown. I am getting sick of the nasty excesses, so I will be attending to this issue shortly regardless of anything else.

What you experienced was not typical of how discussions are conducted on OL.

Michael

Verbal aggression? He condones real-life physical aggression and you censor me for verbal aggression? Disgusting.

Shayne

Hopefully this will get through...

Shayne simply refuses to acknowledge that the idea of 'choice' becomes very murky when we deal with addictions/mental illness. He lashes out at someone who doesn't approve of crack dealers. He needs to try to understand why some might legitimately see the sale of highly addictive and dangerous drugs as predatory and worthy of legal prevention efforts.

Bob

Bob needs to recognize that the choice issue was decided when the person chose to take the drug. Blank out? I don't think people should do crack (or any drug that harms them.) I respect their right to do as they please. I would help someone I thought I could help try to get off drugs. I don't think my money is wisely spent trying to stop people from getting drugs. Prohibition in the U.S. failed for a good reason.

"Bob needs to recognize that the choice issue was decided when the person chose to take the drug. "

You simply cannot equivocate the choice to take the drug the first time with the 'choice' one faces with addiction.

And to address 'sneaking' the mental illness in there... Whether the impairment comes from an illness or addiction is not relevant. What's important is that the choice process is severely impaired.

Not to mention the predatory expoitive behaviour of dealers is totally 'thugish'.

Bob

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Hopefully this will get through...

Bob,

Please keep disagreements to this level. I HATE moderating people. I get no pleasure from it and it embarrasses me on a real basic level.

I am going to give it a little more time, but if you want to participate here, you know the civility price I charge. I personally hope you are willing to pay that price because you have a good mind.

Michael

The problem is that others here. like Shayne at the moment, are open hostile and refuse to give an inch from a nonsensical black and white position.

Shayne's "the choice has been made intitally argument" would mean that you should never get divorced even if your spouse turns out to be a raving lunatic who destroys your life. Hey, you made the choice to marry him/her - tough, it's your fault. I can't contribute without strong opposition to such utter nonsense. I will keep it civil, but I respectfully ask you to try to see, and react at least by posting something - not necessarily moderation - in response to this type of hostility. And I don't mean the argument itself, but the insulting reaction to dissenting opinions that he, for example, regularly delivers.

Bob

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My vigilantism example does not constitute a pragmatic argument but a moral one. What sjw claimed is not true.

It is not a moral argument to presume that if a member of a monolithic authority doesn't enforce moral law then it's "vigilantism". Is it vigilantism when we don't have a one-world government? We have all these hundreds of governments running amok enforcing their arbitrary laws--isn't that anarchy? What makes it OK for you when a horde of people band together to enforce arbitrary and immoral laws, but it's somehow wrong when individualists band together to enforce moral laws? The answer is: You worship geographical boundries handed down to us by meglomaniacal men. We've all been trained to since the time we were 5, their tool of indoctrination was crayons and a map. It's the biggest scam on earth.

Peaceful coexistence is difficult if not impossible when one knows that at any time another can unleash Wolf's police on him for no reason at all. Peaceful coexistence and objective law are conditions required for man's survival qua man. AR explained this much better than I can in her essay "The Nature of Government" in "The Virtue of Selfishness".

Tell that to the 80-year-old lady who was killed when police beat down her door wrongly thinking she was doing drugs and she tried to defend herself. Or to the motorist who refuses to sign a piece of paper and so gets tazered and thrown in jail.

sjw: If you care only to share conclusions and not reasoning then there is little point in posting at all. This is a place for discussion - that is its purpose. So if you don't display your reasoning, what is there to discuss? Nothing. If there is nothing to discuss, why are you participating? No reason.

Would you like to talk about irrational attitudes? Which is irrational: (1) the attitude that says here's what I think and why, or (2) here's what I think, without the why, and you are irrational, ignorant and "&*^*%* you!" if you disagree?

You are irrational. I gave you my reasons and you pretend I didn't. Why can't you be thoroughly rational? I'm tired of people like you, who seem principled up to a point, but just can't cross the line to embrace total rationality.

Shayne

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The problem is that others here. like Shayne at the moment, are open hostile and refuse to give an inch from a nonsensical black and white position.

Why should I or anyone else budge an inch just to accomodate your confusion?

Shayne's "the choice has been made intitally argument" would mean that you should never get divorced even if your spouse turns out to be a raving lunatic who destroys your life. Hey, you made the choice to marry him/her - tough, it's your fault. I can't contribute without strong opposition to such utter nonsense. I will keep it civil, but I respectfully ask you to try to see, and react at least by posting something - not necessarily moderation - in response to this type of hostility. And I don't mean the argument itself, but the insulting reaction to dissenting opinions that he, for example, regularly delivers.

What a weird line of thinking.

Shayne

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You simply cannot equivocate the choice to take the drug the first time with the 'choice' one faces with addiction.

It is not equivocation. It is public information now that nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, heroin and other substances form an addiction. So by taking a hit of crack you are making a choice to consume an addictive substance. When you take hits 2, 3, n, it is only clearer and clearer the choice the new addict is making.

You simply can not choose crack but not choose the addiction that comes with it. That is an evasion of reality. That's like saying you want to consume a bottle of Tylenol but you don't want to die.

You can not pretend that the substance is not addictive. You can't separate the substance from the addiction it predisposes one to.

And to address 'sneaking' the mental illness in there... Whether the impairment comes from an illness or addiction is not relevant. What's important is that the choice process is severely impaired.

What is important is, when no force or fraud has been used, becoming addicted is a choice, whereas mental illness is usually involuntary.

Not to mention the predatory expoitive behaviour of dealers is totally 'thugish'.

I could say the same thing about vendors of nicotine and alcohol delivery devices but I bet you wouldn't advocate banning those substances.

Shayne's "the choice has been made intitally argument" would mean that you should never get divorced even if your spouse turns out to be a raving lunatic who destroys your life. Hey, you made the choice to marry him/her - tough, it's your fault.

Sure, it's your problem but it does not mean you can not get divorced.

The equivalent of your analogy would be an argument that goes like this: Since you took one hit of crack, you must continue taking hits indefinitely.

That's not what anyone here is arguing.

And I don't mean the argument itself, but the insulting reaction to dissenting opinions that he, for example, regularly delivers.

The most productive thing you can do to make yourself feel better about insulting people is to demolish their arguments. See if you can do it.

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The equivalent of your analogy would be an argument that goes like this: Since you took one hit of crack, you must continue taking hits indefinitely.

That's not what anyone here is arguing.

Right. And isn't his argument so obviously bogus that it must be coming from dishonesty? How does someone honestly make an argument of the kind Bob_Mac just did?

Shayne

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Is it vigilantism when we don't have a one-world government? We have all these hundreds of governments running amok enforcing their arbitrary laws--isn't that anarchy?

Of course not. And it's not because each government holds, or should hold, a monopoly on the use of force in a given geographic region.

Note that I am in no way defending or advocating arbitrary government.

What makes it OK for you when a horde of people band together to enforce arbitrary and immoral laws,

Nothing.

but it's somehow wrong when individualists band together to enforce moral laws?

No...

The answer is: You worship geographical boundries handed down to us by meglomaniacal men.

No, I do not.

Peaceful coexistence is difficult if not impossible when one knows that at any time another can unleash Wolf's police on him for no reason at all. Peaceful coexistence and objective law are conditions required for man's survival qua man. AR explained this much better than I can in her essay "The Nature of Government" in "The Virtue of Selfishness".

Tell that to the 80-year-old lady who was killed when police beat down her door wrongly thinking she was doing drugs and she tried to defend herself. Or to the motorist who refuses to sign a piece of paper and so gets tazered and thrown in jail.

You are using the obviously wrong to condemn something unrelated. You are saying that because the police abuse their authority in the USA of 2008, that in AR's conception of government, they must also be able to do so. Well that is wrong.

That's like saying unfettered markets are the cause of the current financial crises. When people say this they are condemning capitalism for the sins of statism. You are condemning AR's objective government for the sins of statist government.

You are irrational. I gave you my reasons and you pretend I didn't. Why can't you be thoroughly rational? I'm tired of people like you, who seem principled up to a point, but just can't cross the line to embrace total rationality.

You just said that I have an "irrational attitude" but you did not say why exactly, other than presumably because I believe we need government, or because i believe we need one government per geographic area and with a monopoly on the use of force.

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The equivalent of your analogy would be an argument that goes like this: Since you took one hit of crack, you must continue taking hits indefinitely.

That's not what anyone here is arguing.

Right. And isn't his argument so obviously bogus that it must be coming from dishonesty?

Yes.

How does someone honestly make an argument of the kind Bob_Mac just did?

As long as it's just a verbal argument I would chalk it up to either simple confusion or a backwards thinking process. By "backwards thinking process" I mean when you select a desired outcome and attempt to come up with reasoning that will get you to that outcome.

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... each government [should] hold, a monopoly on the use of force in a given geographic region.

...

The answer is: You worship geographical boundries handed down to us by meglomaniacal men.

No, I do not.

O.o

That's like saying unfettered markets are the cause of the current financial crises. When people say this they are condemning capitalism for the sins of statism. You are condemning AR's objective government for the sins of statist government.

Refuting AR's conception is easy. All you have to do is point out that there is no consent given in her system. No amount of arguing on your part is going to change that. The nature of AR's government is precisely the nature of the government we have now: dictatorial, authoritarian, immoral.

Shayne

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How does someone honestly make an argument of the kind Bob_Mac just did?

As long as it's just a verbal argument I would chalk it up to either simple confusion or a backwards thinking process. By "backwards thinking process" I mean when you select a desired outcome and attempt to come up with reasoning that will get you to that outcome.

Isn't it dishonest to employ such a process?

Shayne

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Refuting AR's conception is easy. All you have to do is point out that there is no consent given in her system.
The source of the government's authority is "the consent of the governed." This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose. -- "The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness, 110.

There is your consent.

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The source of the government's authority is "the consent of the governed." This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose. -- "The Nature of Government," The Virtue of Selfishness, 110.

There is your consent.

There is her using the word "consent", without recognizing that it is individual consent that matters, not the fictitious "consent of citizens". This is a real low-point in Ayn Rand's thinking.

Shayne

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The problem is that others here. like Shayne at the moment, are open hostile and refuse to give an inch from a nonsensical black and white position.

Why should I or anyone else budge an inch just to accomodate your confusion?

Shayne's "the choice has been made intitally argument" would mean that you should never get divorced even if your spouse turns out to be a raving lunatic who destroys your life. Hey, you made the choice to marry him/her - tough, it's your fault. I can't contribute without strong opposition to such utter nonsense. I will keep it civil, but I respectfully ask you to try to see, and react at least by posting something - not necessarily moderation - in response to this type of hostility. And I don't mean the argument itself, but the insulting reaction to dissenting opinions that he, for example, regularly delivers.

What a weird line of thinking.

Shayne

No,

The analogy is perfectly valid. In both cases you're making a decision:

A) With incomplete information

B) More complicated/difficult situation after the fact.

What I am NOT saying is that you MUST stay with the person - or you must continue to smoke crack - but that both decisions are more complicated after the fact. The drug situation involes addiction, and the marriage involves kids, money, whatever.

Sure, people have an idea about the dangers of drugs, but young people in particular think that they're immortal. They speed in cars, take drugs, and engage in all sorts of risky behabiour, not really understanding the risk until it's too late. That's my point.

Choice before != Choice after.

"Isn't it dishonest to employ such a process?

Shayne"

MSK - See what I mean. Civility is gone...

Bob

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The problem is that others here. like Shayne at the moment, are open hostile and refuse to give an inch from a nonsensical black and white position.

Why should I or anyone else budge an inch just to accomodate your confusion?

Shayne's "the choice has been made intitally argument" would mean that you should never get divorced even if your spouse turns out to be a raving lunatic who destroys your life. Hey, you made the choice to marry him/her - tough, it's your fault. I can't contribute without strong opposition to such utter nonsense. I will keep it civil, but I respectfully ask you to try to see, and react at least by posting something - not necessarily moderation - in response to this type of hostility. And I don't mean the argument itself, but the insulting reaction to dissenting opinions that he, for example, regularly delivers.

What a weird line of thinking.

Shayne

I wanted to edit my last post but can't so let me try again...

No,

The analogy is perfectly valid. In both cases you're making a decision:

A) With incomplete information

B) More complicated/difficult situation after the fact.

What I am NOT saying is that you MUST stay with the person - or you must continue to smoke crack - but that both decisions are more complicated after the fact.

[CLARIFICATION]

Your simplistic argument pins all responsibility for the outcome on the person's initial decision. It's not so simple. So OK, I'll take back what I said about your argument requiring you stay with the person, that's not right. What your argument does say is that the person must accept resposibility (fault) for the spouse ruining one's life. I don't see it that way at all. You don't have full information initially and subsequent 'choices' are not the same as the intial choice. Rational choice is now impaired. [/CLARIFICATION]

The drug situation involes addiction, and the marriage involves kids, money, whatever.

Sure, people have an idea about the dangers of drugs, but young people in particular think that they're immortal. They speed in cars, take drugs, and engage in all sorts of risky behabiour, not really understanding the risk until it's too late. That's my point.

Choice before != Choice after.

So do you deny this?

"Isn't it dishonest to employ such a process?

Shayne"

MSK - See what I mean. Civility is gone...

Bob

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