I believe that the weakness in your argument is illustrated by the example you just gave. Ludwig von Mises, in Human Action, examined such social situations as the one you describe in the context of a broad view of economics. Rather than deal merely with “action” (which allows for the rape scenario with no consequence to the couch potato), he deals with “praxis”. He defines praxis as any action or inaction that is both voluntary and volitional. So, smoking or not smoking generally are both praxes, but breathing or not breathing are not (since they are involuntary). But even smoking or not smoking are not praxes if you are doing them because you are coerced. If someone is holding a gun to your head, telling you to smoke (or not to smoke), then your action is not voluntary. If someone slaps the cigarette out of your mouth and it burns the hair of someone next to you, that was not a willful act on your part (i.e., not volitional), and therefore not a praxis on your part. But it was a praxis on the part of the slapper. In your scenario, the couch potato is freely and willfully doing nothing — a praxis. Praxes have social and economic consequences.
Orzabel,
- Pragatism IS an ideology, you fucking numbskull, and pragatism is certainly a non-tautological justification for supporting a law.
2, I didn’t say every post in the thread was an ideological argument so it’s disingenuous to quote from unrelated posts (like answering a question about why I lived in Liberia) and then yell “aha” like I had ever claimed those posts as ideological. - You missed some. Like this one:
That’s ideological, it’s rational and you haven’t responded to it.
I have provided all throughout this thread non-tautological arguments as to why I support this ordinance. You quoted some of them. You failed to quote others. Your fallacious allegations have become tiresome and repetitive. You have been refted. Your own “ideological” position that society should legalize being an accessory to rape and murder is repugnant and stupid. If you have anything new to say, I’ll respond. If you repeat the same untruths I will ignore you.
Dio, it reads to me as if you’re willing to punish the innocent as a means of achieving a social goal. I do not consider that to be appropriate.
True, you have advanced an argument that the non-drinkers are not innocnet, but I believe that argument is exremely weak and ad hoc–that is, you wouldn’t dream of advancing such an argument if it weren’t to justify the strategy by which you want to achieve the social goal.
As I understand your argument about the non-drinker’s guilt, it’s that they’re sitting by and doing nothing while other teens, binge-drinking teens, inflict grievous injury upon themselves. Is that a correct statement of your position?
If so, I can marginally agree with you that those teens are not innocent. However, the law you’re supporting both over-reaches and underreaches.
It over-reaches by also punishing teens who attend parties at which binge drinking is not happening. Surely by doing so, the law is punishing innocent people, and is therefore an unacceptable law.
It underreaches by not punishing adults who attend social functions at which binge drinking is happening. Shouldn’t the law hold you accountable if, for example, you’re at a bar at which binge drinking is happening and you do nothing to stop it? Shouldn’t the police therefore arrest you for Drunk&Disorderly conduct, just like they arrest the person who’s actually behaving in a D&D manner?
It appears to me that once again you’re letting your natural protective fatherly urges blind you to principles of justice and fairness, and that’s sad.
Daniel
Yes.
I’ve said that the law should be tweaked. I’m not prepared to offer any exact language so please don’t ask but I will say that my inetent would be to hold minors responsible for being present at the kind of high school drinking parties and keggers that we’re all familiar with. I know the language would be difficult but I’m not looking to include situations where only one person is drinking, or when any person is over 18 or any of the other benign scenarios which have been presented. I also think the police should be given discretion about what constututes a “dangerous” situation.
No, because adults have reached an age of accountability. An adult has a right to self-injurious behavior and society should not be obliged- or even allowed- to interfere with behavior which is freely chosen and is not injurious to anyone else. BUT that is a right which only accrues with adulthood. If an adult wants to drink bleach and smoke Camel Unfiltereds, that’s his right. If an eight year old wants to drink bleach, we stop him.
“But an eight year old is not a 17 year old,” you say. That’s true but we still agree that we should stop an eight year old from drinking bleach so we agree that there is an age below which, a person does not have a right, or more precisely, society does not have a right to permit self-injurious behavior. The only question is what that age should be. I favor 18 as a blanket age of accountability but even if you think it should be lower, I think you’d still acknowledge that there needs to be a terminus a quo for when individuals are considered to be mature enough to make their own decisions.
Let me know how this works out for you.
I know this was on the first page but I came to the party late. It took me a while to stop giggling.
Okay, that makes sense. I think it’d behoove you to be clear that you condemn the law as written; reading this thread, I come away with the impression that you think the law as written is defensible, and I don’t think it is.
Okay, again, this makes sense. But if an eight-year-old observes another eight-year-old tring to drink bleach and doesn’t stop her, we don’t hold the observing 8yo accountable.
Thing is, it looks to me as if you ARE trying to hold these teens accountable–not for their own self-injurious actions, because apparently they’re not able to choose whether to injure themselves, but for observing the self-injurious actions of others, because apparently they ARE able to choose whether to stand aside and observe.
Nevertheless, if the law is rewritten such that it only punishes anyone who is aware of teens engaging in such drug-taking behaviors that carry a significant and immediate risk of bodily injury, and who doesn’t do something to stop it or at least report it, then I could get behind the law. That law would be totally different from the law in question, but at least it would target the reprehensible behavior specifically and totally, rather than casting a wide and inaccurate net that catches some innocents while ignoring other guilty folks.
Daniel
Sounds like you’re advocating a Scared Straight - or in this case Scared Sober - program. Thing is, with Scared Straight the kids were never actually arrested.
You know, my factiod that here in CA the fine for “underaged drinking” is 250, and that for a Carpool lane violation is 278$- shows me how aburd DtD ideas are. Based upon his thought- it we are too long down the Freeway, and there is a scofflaw in the carpool lane- then the police should block off the freeway and arrest all of us- since we “didin’t leave the Freeway” or “didn’t try and stop or report the lawbreaker”.
Man- this will be great for the kind of Cops who worked for Mayor Daley. There is a peaceful demonstration- one guy throws a rock and hits a cop- everyone gets arrested for assault on a police officer.
You go to the Ballgame, and a small crowd of holligans gets out and tears down the Goalposts- everyone in the stadium gets arrested too.
You park next to a handicapped space, and the guy next to you is a scofflaw. Unless you call the police- you both get tickets for parking there.
And so forth… :rolleyes:
The amount of a fine is not a valid argument. That is not the only measure of the effects of a punishment. In NJ the normal fine for driving without insurance is a $1000 fine. Most fines I have seen for simple assault or criminal mischief were in the $100-$200 range. However, for the later you have a criminal conviction on your record, the former is just a motor vehicle violation. In the long-run the $1000 fine may be a smaller punishment.
You’re forgetting one kind of kid here, Diogenes. I was the guy who showed up figuring that if the party was thrown by an 18-year-old, there wouldn’t be any alcohol (yeah, I was a Boy Scout – why do you ask?). I had given a friend a ride there, and when I discovered that she was drinking, I kind of rolled my eyes, turned down the offered beer, and made the most of the party.
I honestly considered walking away from the whole deal (and taking the hit to my meager social status) as soon as I saw the alcohol, but I had given my friend a ride, and she was there because there was a certain boy there, etc. etc. - of course, he was drinking too, so when she said “I’m going home with him” I said, “No, he’s been drinking and so have you – neither of you is driving. I’ll give you both a ride when you’re ready.”
Other than crushing her little romantic evening, I had a lot of fun, and around 11, when it was clear the party wouldn’t be breaking up anytime soon, I called my folks and said, “Hey, look: there’s some people drinking here, so I’m going to be giving them rides home. I’ll probably be in after midnight. I’m not going to name any names; I just need to make sure my friends get home safely.”
A long pause on the other end of the phone, and dad says, “Alright, son. Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll talk about this tomorrow morning. Wake me up when you get home so I know you made it in.”
So not only do I disagree with punishing the innocent, as you propose; I think you’re going to find more kids out there who are silently doing the right thing, and your proposal is going to needlessly get them in trouble.
Diogenes: you are correct that pure pragmatism is an ideology of sorts. If you’re claiming that you’re a pure pragmatist, you’re saying that any law that produces desirable real-world results is A-OK with you. If you don’t see what’s wrong with this, let me know and I’ll gladly illustrate, but I would hope your own powers of logical deduction are up to the task. If this is in fact not your belief, then you are proposing that we must delineate where non-pragmatist ideology must end, for the pragmatic good of those involved. I have attempted to illustrate why you cannot logically do this. You chose to respond to that in the same manner in which you’ve responded to all my other arguments, namely by saying that “it’s stupid”, and giving me more pragmatical arguments that refute the notion pragmatism is unworkable. That is akin to a fundamentalist reading scripture from the Bible as proof of Biblical correctness.
Lib, on the other hand, has responded to my actual point with a valid argument. One which, unfortunately, I do not have time to answer now, as I must be at work in 15 minutes. I will respond to it tonight.
In the meantime, Dio, feel free to do as you “threatened”, and dismiss my arguments offhand and ignore me. It’s a very effective alternative to actually trying to answer what I said.
Roland: you are tilting at windmills.
Pragmatism, or any stripe, is an ideology.
That’s better.
Like I said- underaged drinking in THIS state isn’t covered under the Penal Code. It’s covered under the “Business & Professional Code”. The police do not "arrest’ the drinker, they issue a ticket. Whether or not that’s a ‘crime’ depends heavily of the definition of “crime”- note that for Motor Vehicle Violations, you still have that record, which affects you for several years.
But Ok, then- let’s say there was a drunk driver going down the freeway. The police roadblock it off, and everyone that he passed that can’t prove that they dialed 911 is also arrested. :dubious: :rolleyes: Don’t tell me that Drunk driving isn’t a crime FAR worse than “underaged drinking”.
:dubious:
But good old DtC happily equates “murder” with “underaged drinking”. :rolleyes:
I am firmly convinced that DtC has an individual domicile establishment located some distance in a downward direction relative to a long chasm spanning device used for the transportation of goods and individuals, either as pedestrians or in mechanized transportation devices, and I would not be surprised if he didn’t turn out to be a textile based phlanges covering utilized for purposes of self-gratification, instead of it’s original purpose of podiacal protection.
If you think I’m a troll or a sock report me.
A sock for WHO, btw?
No, I don’t think Diogenes is trolling, just misguided and a bit stubborn. Who do you think is his sock? You imply that he is a sock, but socks don’t post for four years, racking up 10,000 posts just to suddenly come out against teen binge drinking… What exactly do you mean?
Actually, socks have lasted longer than a month here. There was one poster, who’s name escapes me, who posted a lot of crap that ultimately turned out to be mostly hodgepodge collections of writings that he’d plagerized off the net. His style and mindset closely matched that of DtC’s and IIRC, DtC even praised said poster. Then someone exposed said poster as a plagurist in a Pit thread, and said poster was never seen again.
In one of the numerous Pit threads that this poster garnered before they fled, I wagered that said poster had a sock here, and obliquely hinted that it might be DtC. I dropped that thought from my mind until DtC’s performance in the juvenile sex thread.
Yet, somehow I get the feeling that you know it is against the rules to publically accuse another poster of trolling/socketry, yet you do it anyway, presumably to inflame that poster. I think there’s a word for that…
And you’re completely wrong, I’m not trying to provoke or inflame him. I have merely stated my opinion. Were I interested in inflaming him, I’d throw out very specific and detailed personal insults.