The morality of criminalizing immorality

Evereybody that was put in danger.

Your neighbor was harmed by being put in danger by you. Putting people in harm’s way is not meaningfully different from harming them. You have to know that this angle is specious.

To put your examples in a wider context, the legalization of those behaviors would cause harm, in the aggragate, because the streets would not be safe to walk on or drive on. Those behavors infringe basic security and freedom of movement.

BEEEEEEP!

You have been fined 10 dollars for a violation of the verbal morality statute. Be well.

Okay, so we can’t go down the slippery slope of making the secondary cause illegal. In other words, let’s say I am sitting at the bar with my .22 BAC, and the bartender knows that I am going to drive home. Should it be illegal for him to serve me another drink?

Instead of firing the gun at my neighbor, I have it holstered on my hip standing in my yard. Should that be illegal? That is only one step away from the step that presents harm.

To use your example, lets say that we believe that the crime stems from these facts:

  1. Trying weed
  2. Smoking weed regularly
  3. Moving on to harder drugs
  4. Using harder drugs regularly
  5. Losing your job because of drug use
  6. Needing money to feed your addiction
  7. Steal Stratocaster’s HDTV.

Where on that chain do we step in with laws? Only on #7?

I would say no. The you can get drunk in other way, but only you can choose to drive.

Wearing a gun does not cause potential damage. Firing it in an unsafe manner does. Statistically sooner or later someone will get harmed if you fire it unsafely enough.s

In this case you make many, many assumptions. People don’t automatically make any of these moves. Only 7 causes harm.

Could you clarify this for me, please? Are you saying, with respect to alcohol, that users can get drunk to varying levels, from just a tiny bit intoxicated all the way to roaring drunk, but that MJ has only one level of intoxication that can be achieved?

I know that, and I don’t necessarily agree with 1-7. But the law makes assumptions all of the time, some correct and others, IMO, incorrect:

  1. Prohibiting drunk driving, for example, is done on the assumption that more people will die if society allows it.

  2. Prohibiting gay marriage is done on the assumption that society will be worse off because the traditional family structure will deteriorate if we allow it.

Now, you may argue that the facts obviously support #1, and do not support #2. Others believe that #2 is absolutely true as well.

I think that is the problem when you say that things should only be against the law when they “harm” another person directly. Courts deal with the problem of proximate cause in tort cases all of the time. How remote is too remote? How direct does the negligence need to be?

For everything that I might say is a direct, proximate cause of harm to another person, you could disagree and say it is remote and indirect. This standard that is being promoted here really solves nothing and only shifts the debate to what the meaning of “harm” is…

Yes. I think whether or not this is “direct” is splitting hairs. The act has a predictable impact on other people’s rights. There’s nothing remote or “slippery slopish” about this, not to me. Inciting a riot, hiring a hit-man, it’s all deliberate with a predictably bad outcome, and being “once removed” doesn’t make the connection tenuous.

No. A holstered gun does not have a direct and predictable negative outcome.

Only 7, in my book, is a criminal act.

Yes.

But that’s where the argument in favor of “harm” plays out. Facts can be brought into evidence to support #1 being harmful. Facts cannot be brought into evidence to support #2 being harmful. “Belief” isn’t fact, and opinions unsupported by facts should be discarded or disregarded.

Yeah, but that’s what we pay our Representatives and Senators to do: debate whether or not such harm is too remote to criminalize, and what the harm is in the first place. How is it that you think having that standard “solves nothing”???

It is based on the fact that ones driving is impaired and you will be more prone to injuring others if you drive. Inherently you are taking a risk you may harm others like firing a gun near your neighbor.

That is the assumption, but the assumption is not based on any real facts. people believing based on nothing puts it into the scope of morality not harm. Also it infringes on a groups human rights.

Their belief is not equal to facts.

Could you give some criminal examples? We are taking about criminal laws as per the OP.

I agree it is not perfect, but I think it is easier than arguing from the vague idea of morality.