re: Life w/o parole for 2.4 lbs. of weed + 104 years for 30g of cocaine: welcome to Alabama

quote:

---

“Why is the pimp or the medical quack any more ‘heroic,’ and therefore in a sense more moral, than other, more respectable producers: the grocers, clothiers, steel manufacturers, etc.? The explanation is precisely wrapped up in the extreme lack of respectability of [such] scapegoats. For the grocer, the steel producer, and the others are generally allowed to go about their business unmolested, and indeed earn respect and prestige from the fellow members of the community. Not so these scapegoats; for not only are their economic services unrecognized, but they face the universal bile, scorn, and wrath of virtually every member of society, plus the additional restrictions and prohibitions that governments have almost universally placed upon their activities. Scorned and condemned unmercifully by society and state alike, social outcasts and state-proclaimed outlaws, [these] collection of scapegoats go about their business nevertheless; heroically proceeding to confer their economic services in the teeth of universal scorn and outlawry. They are heroes indeed, made so by their unjust treatment at the hands of society and of the state apparatus. “Heroes yes, but not necessarily saints. When [a person] confers the moral stature of hero on the scab, the usurer, the pimp, and so on, he does not mean to imply that these activities are intrinsically more moral than any other. In a free market, and in a society that treats the usurer, slumlord, and sweat shop employer in precisely the same just way as it treats other occupations, they would no longer be heroes, and they would certainly be no more moral than anyone else. Their heroic status..is solely a function of the unjust restrictions that other men have been placing upon them. It is the happy paradox… that if… the men and women [who engage in such black market activity] are no longer treated to scorn and legal coercion, then and only then will they no longer be heroes. If you don’t like the idea of a usurer or a slumlord being a hero, then the only way to deprive him of this stature is to remove the shackles that misguided people have placed upon him.”

---

quote:

---

Any better examples of felonies people are doing everyday?

---

quote:

---

I'm down. No public money for rehab or related health costs though. Agreed.

---

quote:

---

Yea, addicts never do anything to the innocent.

---

quote:

---

That's meaningless.

---

quote:

---

To be fair you could make the same arguments for alcoholics.

---

quote:

---

cops are just out to violently interact with the public.

---

quote:

---

But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.

---