= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
gwern comments on December 2014 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (90)
Who ends the war...? It's humans all the way down - there you get into the Hamsterdam arc and the bit I discussed about politicians defecting against each other for fear of public condemnation. Systemic problems are systemic.
Consider marijuana legalization: some months ago after a referendum for legalization passed, I went looking for national level politicians who endorsed legalization. This is a proposition with tremendous support in some demographics, which is succeeding at the electoral ballot, and which comes at little direct cost to the implementing governments (legalization is easy compared to almost any other major issue - most of the work is setting up additional taxes and regulation!), so I figured I should find some prominent politicians endorsing it. Maybe not a President, but surely some Senators and state governors? The entries I found were distinctly underwhelming in prestige and some were questionably endorsements. Some leadership!
There's been some pulling back from the war on drugs, and I hope it will continue, though I'm expecting a fairly slow and incomplete process. (Alcohol is only sold in state stores in Pennsylvania-- every now and then, there's a effort to open up the market, but I assume the state stores are a fairly powerful lobby.)
As for the war on drugs, I keep wondering whether organized crime is bribing politicians to keep it going, but I don't really know.