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It's now been six months since Colorado enacted its historic marijuana legalization policy, and two big things have already happened:
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Colorado's cash crop is turning out to be even more profitable than the state could have hoped.
Tax revenue from marijuana sales is expected to top $130M over the next fiscal year.
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Denver crime rates have suddenly fallen.
The Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% year-to-year since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January.
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Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things have Happened in Colorado
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A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized rosewater.
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Friday July 04 2014, @11:32AM
So, people choose to organise in a society because they are... selfish idiots? My head explodes...
If all the other 6.999.999.999 people on Earth are such selfish idiots and only you aren't, maybe there's something wrong with you.
If you have a viable alternative to an organised state (not government) administered by a body of democratically elected officials (THIS is the government), I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday July 04 2014, @01:30PM
FIFY. What is an "expensive" society or civilization? My view is that it is one that costs a lot to live in either directly through a greater take of someone's productive output or via impositions such as taking away freedom of speech and thought. It's obviously a very subjective criteria, but here I think a good threshold is whether a participant gets to keep most of their obtained wealth while simultaneously having a great deal of freedom to act. A Somalian society probably doesn't have that much in the way of freedom, for example.
You conflate an organized, democratic society with an "expensive" one. For example, the US has huge expenses that don't contribute to civilization such as outsized military spending, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid (which are incidentally also the big three items in the US budget). Similarly, all three items impinge on US citizens' freedom in a variety of ways (such as more intrusive databases, forced tax collecting and spending, and the partly rogue military-industrial complex).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hoochiecoochieman on Friday July 04 2014, @01:43PM
I agree that the US military expense is crazy, but Social Security and health care are exactly what a state should be spending tax money in.
The reason your Social Security expenses are so high is because your society doesn't have enough redistribution that enables all working people to live decently. The reason for your crazy health expenses is that you don't have a public health care system, like all other developed countries do.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday July 04 2014, @02:50PM
Who's going to pay for it? Both programs have the very considerable problem of promising more than they can deliver with current taxation. Medicare/Medicaid is particularly bad. For example, a Medicare recipient [forbes.com] takes out about $3 dollars for ever dollar they put in. Medicaid has the problem that it's operating below costs for a fair portion of current health care providers. They also dumped several million more people on the program this year.
Social Security is better off, but it'll still take as I understand it something like a 25% cut in benefits relative to current revenue to keep the program stable.
You can speak of what a state "should" be spending its money on, but there's the matter of whether that state can afford it. Too high costs lead to consequences and compromises elsewhere.
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Friday July 04 2014, @03:10PM
Your absurd health care system keeps the costs sky-high. You are the biggest health spender in the world, and you spend twice as much on health care as the next country. Yet, your health care ranks third-world level. So, the Medicare problem is way more complicated than you put it.
About Social Security, you mention cuts to afford it, but maybe the problem is somewhere else. With the crazy levels of inequality and unfair taxation in your country, cuts are not the first thing that comes to mind.
But this is my opinion. It's not my country, it's yours. If you don't give a shit about the poor, the sick and the old, have it your way and be happy. But please, stop trying to export your model, we don't want it.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday July 04 2014, @05:08PM
Here's an example of the expensive civilization.
Social Security doesn't help the situation. And the crazy levels of inequality just aren't that crazy or worth that much effort to reduce. Further, unsustainable spending increases inequality, because it is the people who can buy politicians or move their assets easily out of a country into another, who can best take advantage of high levels of short term spending.
(Score: 2) by hoochiecoochieman on Friday July 04 2014, @06:16PM
Since when your expensive, ineffective and inhuman (lack of) healthcare system is civilised?
Just because you say so.
I see you're on the 1% side. Either you're one of them or you're blind.
So you agree with me, it's better to spend money on the poor than injecting liquidity on the rich. The poor will inject the money right back in the economy, the rich will transfer it to the Caymans and sit on it.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Friday July 04 2014, @07:38PM
The obvious rebuttal is that you're employing the No True Scotsman fallacy. None of the US health care changes of the past half century were justified on the basis that they were barbaric. That's just a consequence.
It's a retroactive tax and people retiring after about 2020 will get out less than they put in.
Just because you say so.
And it's easy for the rich to subvert such sentiments. A fraction of money allocated to "the poor" will end up in the hands of various rent seekers. That's just how it works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2014, @08:55PM
By considering all the various programs currently undertaken by states as integral parts of the only viable form of statehood, and opposing that form to raw anarchy, you exclude the middle, the myriad forms of scaled back government that leave more to individuals and non-governmental organizations to accomplish and consequently incur less debt (taxes aren't really as big as borrowing in modern states anyway). Defense could be left to militias, welfare to charity, and retirement to families, whose young once carec for their elders and expected to be cared for by their children in turn. The marble steps of glittering capitols and the power of the sword and dole to compel citizens are not necessary components of a state. Ask the Athenians, who had no standing army, no public welfare except jury pay, and plenty of Democracy.