Agree, and out for a long time as pointed before. That is why the point and the evidence reported before about how the death penalty does not affect the crime rate was made.
Why are you so vague? Do you think we can read your mind as you write these posts?
What about my post is at odds with history?
Hitler had a previous history of trying to attain power undemocratically. THAT is the sort of thing you can point to and say “see, look, that guy is likely to become a dictator because he has actually tried to take power by force”
I don’t know if you don’t understand wtf I am saying or I don’t understand wtf you are saying but a lot of stuff you say seem irrelevant to the conversation.
OK. I agree its not like a gallup poll. But as you pointed out, it probably has some value.
What do you call a dictator that has 90% approval ratings? Isn’t that just a democratically elected leader? If Hitler had 90%+ approval ratings in Germany, then as bad as he was, wasn’t he just the German leader?
The link does not say that Duterte was threatening judges that disagreed with him. He published a list of judges, politicians and police officials that he believed were corrupt. I don’t see where he is threatening to kill people that disagree with him.
I agree, it is too early to predict what will happen.
So then what other basis would you have to call him a dictator? Or are you saying that you agree that GIGO is wrong?
OK. As long as you acknowledge that there can also be unintended consequences of decriminalizing drugs as well.
And why can’t many of those harm reduction policies be used in conjunction with criminalization? What is it that we can do about drunk driving in a legal alcohol world that we cannot do in a prohibition world?
But Prohibition is part of the Swiss model, isn’t it:
“The national drug policy of Switzerland was developed in the early 1990s and comprises the four elements of prevention, therapy, harm reduction and *** prohibition ***”
AFAICT, your explanation of how decriminialization reduces criminal violence is not predicated on decriminalizing use so much as it depends on decriminalizing trafficking. If selling is still illegal, the drug dealers STILL don’t have access to the judicial system to settle disputes.
So how about we wait and see instead of immediately announcing that its going to fail and labeling Dutarte a dictator?
There is a method to the madness, as in reality your affirmations are the ones that are omitting information that undermines your premises. I make the point that many times your statements do omit what was pointed out before.
The point I made was that democracy does not prevent someone from becoming a dictator. And on the issue of Duterte not showing any abuse of his powers in the past, that is not the complete picture. The example of Duterte glossing over the many that died while he was major of Davao was mentioned already. He has also defended the killings and even made statements to say that he knows who the perpetrators were. To that we have to add what former guys that were involved with the death squads are telling about Duterte in court:
http://tucp.org.ph/2009/08/un-committee-urged-to-monitor-killings-by-davao-death-squads/
Agreed.
A dictator.
The dictatorship is in the dictating. If there’s one leader who rules arbitrarily by his or her whims, then the nation is a dictatorship. If the leader’s whims happen to correlate to the popular will, then it’s a popular dictatorship. It can’t be called a democracy when all power is vested in one person, who may or may not adopt popular policies.
Think of it this way: you can define a dictatorship by the features it lacks: rule of law, legitimate elections, and (aboveground) opposition parties, to name 3.
That was poor phrasing on my part, I was trying to draw a connection to your point about Obama wagging his finger at the Supreme Court.
Rephrase: Obama may criticize the Supreme Court, but he’s never demanded that they step down under pain of death.
Oh, I can predict, just not with much certainty.
Ignoring the law, particularly when it creates a chilling effect on opposition to you, if a big red flag. And that’s all there is at present, red flags. When and if Duterte goes further down the path, we can reassess.
I understand GIGO’s point to be broadly similar (eg, Duterte is acting like a dictator-in-waiting), but if I’m mistaken I request clarification.
Can be? Sure. But based on the examples we have, it’s very solidly a net gain.
Because prohibition creates a powerful stigma surrounding drug addiction. Instead of sick people who need treatment, addicts are considered immoral degenerates who take drugs out of stupidity and hedonism, and who ought to be locked up. Not surprisingly, this deters people from seeking treatment. They’re afraid of ending up in prison, afraid of having their addiction known to all, have to resort to impure street drugs, and so forth.
I mean, how can you have safe injection sites, when injecting the drugs is illegal?
Yes and no; I would call Switzerland “partially” decriminalized, but it’s still a hell of a success story. In Switzerland, you can get heroin (and methadone) at treatment centers, by prescription. That’s another way to fight the problems of drug cartels: outcompete them by giving away a purer product, for free. They’ve focused on the use side, and it’s working.
You can either make selling legal, give drugs away for free to addicts in treatment, or probably other ideas that haven’t been tried yet.
Because a) extrajudicial murder is wrong in and of itself (I’m a deontologist, not a utilitarian), and b) I put the odds of success quite low.
It is still called a dictator, glad we figured that out.
Still with the straw men, I don’t think we did say that he is a dictator, only that the field has been prepared for him to become one. And he has shown already to support violent methods to get what he wants.
Once again, it is clear that due process is not liked by dictators, wanna be dictators and autocrats.
Nope, you are correct. The point I was making with the high approbal rates shown by Duterte and Marcos before was that such support is what makes dictators come about, and to also maintain power.
Rather than red flags I see disrecpet to civil rights as like the sides on the fire triangle that one sees in school. That one were if one part of it is missing (oxigen, combustible material, heath source) then there is no fire. I do see popularity as one piece that dictators, but specially the wanna be ones that use democracy employ to gain power also.
I never said it did but its certainly not a PREDICTOR of dictatorship.
Not the complete picture? Which of those allegations do you think I have been withholding or denying. I am pretty sure that I admitted that Dutarte supports the extrajudicial killing of drug dealers VERY early in the thread, like in the OP. So what’s your point? Why is that likely to lead to dictatorship?
Do you think he is a dictator right now?
Do you have any proof or evidence that he will become one?
Aren’t you just calling him a dictator because you just don’t like his draconian policies on drugs?
OK so you are saying that a benevolent dictatorship is still a dictatorship.
Is THAT what you think GIGO was referring to? Some sort of popular benevolent dictator? Or was he trying to cast this guy in the same role as the military juntas of El Salvador and latin American countries?
But its not for criticizing him or disagreeing with him, right?
I mean there are several politicians that are criticizing him and he is throwing some dirt at them but he isn’t ordering them to resign under pain of death, is he?
Well, its perfectly reasonable to be critical of him. He is absolutely violating human rights and disregarding rule of law. But so far he seems to be respecting democracy and responding to political and popular pressure.
There seems to be plenty of opposition to Duterte. Much of it based on outrage at this human rights abuses and some of it based on the fact that many people in power in the Philippines are corrupt.
GIGO seems to be expressing significantly more certainty than you about Duterte’s eventual dictatorship.
I was using alcohol for a reason. The social effects of alcohol are easier to see and relate to. What could we do to mitigate drunk driving in a alcohol permissive society that we couldn’t do in a prohibitionist society?
Yeah, sure its a great story but its still illegal to traffick heroin, right?
Yeah those all sound like good ideas that someone somewhere should try. The Philipinnes would like to try killing the drug dealers and see how that works.
I’m more of a utilitarian with some basic moral underpinning that do not prevent me from considering killing drug cartels that have corrupted the fabric of society.
Once again, when did Marcos enjoy such high approval rates?
ISTM that most dictators are not popularly elected. They mostly take power by force.
Remember, you have been saying that your point
“is that the attempted coup by Hitler is something that might have indicated his despotic tendencies. There is no similar example of despotic tendencies by Dutarte. Human rights abuses, sure. Tyranny, not yet.”
The point here is that besides not being a very coherent statement (Really, Human right abuses are not what a despot or a tyrant does?) The reality is that Duterte has let all know about what will he do with due process and he has admitted to not caring in the past already. The latest and past reports shows that Duterte was not just a supporter of those despotic measures, but that he was also involved with them indeed.
The point is that Duterte already walked like a dictator, quacked like a dictator and looked like dictator. And he is doing now things that dictators and despots approve of. All I can say is that he is getting much warmer and the only thing left is to see if the other governmental powers can stand up to him.
Already shown by the number of voters in the Philippines that supported him in the past.
It is clear that you are forgot what we are talking about. This issue was already granted by you. From an early post:
The point indeed stands, dictatorship can follow popularity, or be popular after the dictator has been pointed at as being one by many others. And in the cases that dictatorship followed there were frequent hints and evidence of what the future dictators had in mind before they were elected.
As long as he can be voted out in the next election, he is not a dictator. Do you have any evidence that he would not leave office if he was voted out? Or are you just assuming he would forcibly retain power because he promised to kill drug dealers and he actually delivered on that promise?
Yeah, noone believes those numbers from the marcos 1981 election. Like I said, he could have won with 188% of the vote instead of 88% of the vote.
Yeah, those two statements are not contradictory. Something can be frequent even if something else is more frequent. Tell you what. For every dictator that was initially democratically elected into office, I will name one that took power by force and I bet you you will run out of dictators before I do, even though you will be able to name several dictators.
And without more, all you have is rank speculation.
Meh, no substance left in that reply. Stop with the straw men.
Popular but not benevolent.
The fact that he’s ordering anyone to resign under pain of death is a problem.
Offer treatment.
It’s more accurate to say that the state has a monopoly on trafficking heroin.
And I would like to criticize that choice, so I have been.
And that’s why I’m not a utilitarian: you can talk yourself into any moral wrong being acceptable.
But you have not been saying that Duterte is a dictator or that history proves that he is very likely o become one.
Democracy can sometimes lead to things that you don’t like but until this guy does something to prevent the regular operation of their democracy I don’t think you can call him a dictator.
Well, that’s not quite true.
First you have to at least satisfy he utilitarian aspect of things. And if that is where you stop then you are indeed just utilitarian. If you can tell yourself that we should be willing to give up some efficiency in the name of equity and fairness, then I would call that an enlightened utilitarian. The recognition that things that may seem to have immediate net positive impacts might in fact be negative over the long run. In my world view, all morality has an element of utilitarianism to it.
Damuri,
Even taking the issue of dictatorship off the table. Can you give one historical example where the use of extra judicial death squads turned out to be a good thing in retrospect? For the life of me I can’t. I suppose its possible that the Philippines in the year 2016 is a unique time and place in the history of civilization where it is a good idea, but that seems really doubtful. At the time, lynching seemed like a good way to handle the “rash of black men raping white women”, no it didn’t lead to a dictatorship but in retrospect it was not a good idea.
I too am curious about historical examples of death squads used judiciously.
I’d co-sign “likely”, maybe not “very likely”.
I can’t approve of using people as a means, nor doing wrong in the hope that it’ll somehow make things better. People are ends in themselves, and all actions must be morally right to be justifiable.