Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: slaveluci
The whole idea of offering money to addicts as an incentive to do anything you want them to just feels sleazy.
Well, most of the stuff people do to feed their addiction is sleazy ...
... whether by their initiative (stealing, etc.), or by someone elses (prostitution, etc.).
I don't think of prostitution in general as sleazy. But you don't go to a "crack hoe" (not my term) because you want a regular prostitute. You go to her because you want someone who will do anything you want, for whatever money you happen to have in your pocket at the time.
quote:
Kind of like offering food/water to a starving/dying of thirst person.
Or child labour in third world countries.
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Because of their screaming needs, they're more than likely gonna take it and agree to whatever you ask.
Which is the problem of scale in capitalism.
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That doesn't make it right to do.
Ah, but here's the paradoxical bit:
If you aren't willing and/or able to give the money away, then it is the "lesser evil".
And in some cases, it may be "right" from a social perspective.
That is:
If you shut down a factory that uses child labour ...
... the children starve and die.
If you somehow actually stop "crack hoe" abuse ...
... the violent crime rises.
And so forth.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is more than a movie plot.
Also, there's an argument to be made against helping, as well, sadly enough, and it is similar to the accusations some people level at western non-holistic medicine. It goes roughly like this:
"Treating symtoms makes us feel better, but it doesn't solve our problem."
Stopping child labour, cheap prostitution, and so forth treats a symptom, and it feels good.
But it doesn't solve the problem.
To stop child labour, you have to look at why these kids are motivated to go work in a factory in the first place, or (in the cases where they are rounded up and hauled there) why people are desperate / hardened enough to haul kids off in trucks and put them in work camps. The reason is poverty, which has its own reasons, in turn. In order to do something about it, you need to either (a) lower western standards, by contributing value to compensate for poverty, without raising net value production in the world, or (b) raise the net value production in the world in a manner that favours such places (via outsourcing, offshoring, and other unpopular means), so the poverty fades.
To stop cheap prostitution, you have to figure out why there is a supply, and why there is a demand. Addressing the demand is necessary to avoid having the problem spill over into other arenas (sex crimes, manipulation, etc.), and because most people who enlist the services of a "reasonably" paid prostitute aren't actually the sleazebags you see on TV, but quite regular Joe's and Jane's; in Denmark, a doctor can "prescribe" a medicare refund for people whose quality of life is impaired because they don't get laid otherwise (e.g. burn victims, quadraplegics, etc.), and the prostitutes are happy about the arrangement, as it gives them customers who are reliable, disease-free and friendly. The bulk of middle-class prostitutes in Norway make about USD 400 per hour, make sure to use condoms, work out of their own homes, and don't have to pay income taxes (it isn't illegal to sell and/or buy sex here, but taxing it is pimping, even if you're the gov't, and that is illegal). I haven't got a clue about the high-class ones; I'm not in those social circles that would know (the ones where crack isn't an addiction, but something where your personal doctor supervises your intake with a bit of a frown; an icebreaker). As for the lower-class ones, they're the ones who are in trouble and get exploited and addicted, the ones who do this because they don't have any better options. But taking away their last option isn't making their life any better. So one needs to address the root cause. In Norway, these charge from USD 5-75 for a blowjob.
For whoever might be speculating about that by now, no, I haven't enlisted the services of prostitutes.
Back to the social issues...
There's one basic aspect of human nature that worked 800.000 years ago, but fucks things up now:
Whenever we're in deep shit, we breed like rabbits.
Not a value judgment or anything. Just an observation that's held true for close to a million years.
An observation which illustrates that we don't always take a constructive approach.
And further illustrates that the kids are the ones who get to pay for it.
If you save ten thousand starving kids in Africa for the next 20 years, then the return on your "investment" into humanity will be that, after those 20 years, you will have to pay for at least twenty thousand starving kids in Africa, or let them die. Instead, you need to educate ten of them, who can educate a hundred, and so forth, in order to get them to understand that they can't have more children than they can support, and provide a means for them to support themselves first of all.
If you just pay crack addicts everything they need, without demanding anything in return, the bulk of them will rack up an even greater tolerance, and thus need even higher doses, and you will be pumping more money into the drug cartels that kill your own kids. Instead, you need to make it legal for doctors to prescribe medical grade crack, for pharma companies to make the crack and the equipment to use it, and then supervise them with serum concentration assays to make sure the addicts don't sell it, along with providing them with housing, a basic job and a serious attempt at rehab. Add some drugs to reverse (or limit) the damaging effects on the body, and very slowly taper the dose. Let it remain illegal for people to sell it, but let the medical community have full access to it. That way, you remove the foundation for the drug cartels' economy: the addicts. No way is there enough money in selling to first-time users, or casual users outside Hollywood and financial centres. The pharma companies and gov'ts can compete on a different level, and people will prefer the "good stuff" that won't kill them (at least not as quickly).
This approach has been tried in Switzerland with heroin addicts, and has worked great.
Thing is, very few popular drugs impair mental or social functioning if used properly.
Cocaine is a special case, in that it irreversibly damages the VMAT pumps, and we don't have any drugs to prevent that part of the damage. Every other negative aspect of cocaine use can be controlled and kept to a level that is less of a problem than people with insomnia or PMS pose to themselves and their surroundings. I know it sounds quite unbelievable, but it's actually the case. The personal problems, apart from the VMAT pump damage, are due to impurities, improper use and lifestyle problems associated with maintaining an illegal and expensive habit.
The social problems predominantly the mutual symbiosis between the War on Drugs and the drug cartels.
In short, these are complicated issues. A lot more complicated than "pro-life" vs "pro-choice".
Anyway... just some food for thought.
Hope you didn't choke as badly on it as I did when I first started thinking this through some 14 years ago.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Pro-lifers. Put up or Shut up. - 
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.............luci 
. You brought up some very valid points and I don't disagree with them. Thanks, as always, for the sensible, civil discourse. I always learn something from your posts..........luci
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