Why the yakuza are not illegal
economist.com
economist.com
Scientology is another good example. I can see the argument for "freedom of religion" but depending on your views about the state it has a certain obligation to protect citizens from their own idiocy. The borders in the sand are hard to draw.
A very common case is that people who vehemently disagree with outlawing Scientology also strongly believe vaccination is a good idea. I think that's a fairly inconsistent stance but it is also completely reasonable (as in it protects the person and also others like their family in both cases).
Political parties are also a good example. I think the stance of "never outlaw, society has to handle that and let the idiots be idiots" is perfectly reasonable but parties get tax money for various things and I can see how people have a problem with their tax money funding neo-nazi organizations.
I used to be more radically pro freedom no questions asked but these days my stance is pro freedom by default but some deep thinking and gut check for individual cases. It bothers me a lot that I'm fairly inconsistent (since I am against maximum freedom in quite a few cases) but it's the most reasonable course of action for my value system.
- someone, somewhere
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-Aristotle
However, people hold contradictory views all the time. Religion is a fine example.
The question of whether it's possible to understand a proposition without believing it at least provisionally used to be hotly debated by philosophers.
The experimental evidence suggests that it's not possible
http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4/do_we_believe_everything_were_tol...
I arrived at libertarianism through study of the Constitution. I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but compared to the average American, I don't think a comparatively expert status is that hard to come by.
Regardless, reading through the constitution time and again has led me to believe that its founding principle, above all else, is that people ought to be free. The first principle of the constitution is to enshrine the primacy of individual liberty. Knowing that, as a matter of ideology (with all its associated ills), I prefer policies that seek to promote individual liberty vs. curtailing it, wherever possible.
Beyond that, if one is a Constitutionalist, then I believe it gets grayer. I consider myself a big L Libertarian when talking about policy matters at the federal level, but I consider myself more of a democrat when dealing with policy matters at state and local levels, which is (I believe) what the Constitution prescribes.
On the whole, this leads to a general dissatisfaction with everything, because even good policies tend to be applied at the wrong level. As such, I have many "conflicting views" in the broad strokes idea level -- which is to say that I'm against the idea of Obamacare as a matter of principle, but I'd be perfectly fine with 50 Romneycares, even acknowledging that 1 Obamacare would likely be far more cost effective, efficient, and practical than 50 Romneycares.
Having a first principle to rely upon definitely allows for more internal consistency, but it definitely doesn't solve for every x. There are really good arguments for and against abortion, for example, and while I definitely lean pro-choice personally, I couldn't make a case that proved why my belief is superior to somebody else's.
When you study the US Constitution (kind of assuming that's the one you're referring to) do you also study its amendments as thoroughly? Do you also study the available works from its writers - to better understand their intent and the language of the time?
Then on a slightly related thread then - the federal government is what holds up the bottom end of our United States. The bottom 5 states truly have large problems caused by a myriad of things from poor leadership to ineffective policies. The top 5 states, on the other hand, tend to hold up the country quite effectively (see: California's GDP would put it at #8 in the world) and it's the federal government that's balancing those forces out. Do you think that this fits in with the role of the constitution necessarily? Does it even have to for it to be obvious that it's a good idea that the founders didn't codify into the constitution because it was so foreign a concept to them at the time?
Sorry if this comes across as rambling - I'm just genuinely interested in this line of reason!
Absolutely. Having skipped over the second amendment for a long time because I thought it was boring, I have a fairly recent bit of study to recall from. For context, I always believed (basically) as the ACLU does that the second amendment was a collective right, and that regulations were good, necessary, and all that jazz. It wasn't until studying the previous drafts of it, alongside Madison's other lost amendments, going through the Federalist Papers, Madison & Hamilton's archived documents, et al, that I arrived at the contrary conclusion -- the second amendment is an individual right that even the existing regulations for it are probably counter-Constitutional.
> Do you think that this fits in with the role of the constitution necessarily?
Not per the original Constitution, but as of the Sixteenth amendment, it decidedly is. That said, I don't believe that it was intended for our nation by its founders, but that's why the Constitution is indeed a living, breathing document, and amendment is the cure for whatever ails it. Looping back around to the second amendment, if "the people" believe that the second amendment is more harmful than beneficial, then the remedy isn't to violate the Constitution by infringing the right through laws, but to amend the Constitution to modify or repeal the second amendment. It takes a lot to get there in terms of popular support, but if there's a high bar to eliminating rights of others, that's a feature, not a bug.
> Does it even have to for it to be obvious that it's a good idea that the founders didn't codify into the constitution because it was so foreign a concept to them at the time?
So, there are many policies that I think are "good ideas" that are unconstitutional. I can make an acrobatic argument in support of public defender, but in simply dealing with negatively asserted liberties (as the Constitution enumerates) vs. positively asserted liberties (which a public defender is, and which the Constitution doesn't espouse), it's not terribly well founded. Personally speaking, I am glad that public defenders exist, and I am glad that there's a state-funded barrier to due process punishments imposed by the state, and I think that it is overall a net good... but I don't think it's terribly Constitutional, barring amendment.
That was kind of a non-sequitur, but to answer the question of whether or not I think it's appropriate for the federal government to intervene, that answer is predicated largely more on 'HOW' they might intervene than whether it's a good idea or not. It very probably is a good idea, and there are likely ways in which the federal government is empowered by the sixteenth amendment that are constitutionally sound, but there are many other ways in which we bolster our least performant states that are not necessarily Constitutional, even barring the sixteenth, which does not completely override the limitations imposed by Article I, Section 8 without a dramatically liberal reading of "General Welfare".
In short, it's very complicated, and you can usually pick out the other students of law in public forum by the nuance of their arguments. I think that publicly funded health care is a good idea, but I don't like the way it's implemented, and object vehemently to the individual mandate, irrespective of everything else. Similarly, I understand the conservative objections to the civil rights act, which clearly did objective good, but also included a rather subtle power grab that has largely contributed to our abundant prison populations to which I object. Life is complicated. The Constitution is complicated. And even where we can divine objective truths from it, there still exists a myriad possibilities of subjective application, which could all be truthy.
I'm pretty certain vaccination isn't "the law." The only thing compelling anyone to have their children vaccinated are the rules (not laws) for public education (keep in mind: I'm in the US and public school systems differ from county to county in my own state.) You're not required to send your children to public school; they can allow vaccination exceptions on a case-by-case basis ... there's a good amount of freedom here.
That said, I want my children vaccinated. And in the rare medical cases where they can't be vaccinated, I want to know they're safe from people who might carry a life-threatening disease (i.e. others who aren't vaccinated.) It's a tough balance, but the socially responsible thing is to vaccinate, or avoid diverse social contact (such as ... public school.)
But you can have laws that guide behavior. Those 9 people who will fail? You can learn the lesson about that failure and make it illegal to fail in the same way. For instance, at one time, you were free to beat your children, because nobody really knew that it wasn't the most effective way to teach them. But if you have overwhelming evidence that it doesn't work, then you can make it illegal. You still have the freedom to choose how to raise your children, you just can't do it in obviously failure-prone ways.
So yeah, you can outlaw (parts of) scientology and legally compel vaccinations when those actions are shown to definitively run counter to the justification of those freedoms in the first place. You are not free to make clear and obvious mistakes. Take any safety law as an example.
The only thing you really need is proof.
Various safety laws protect innocent bystanders from mistakes other people make, e.g. losing control of a car due to excessive speed or alcohol intake, or spreading a virus.
The fact that tax money is spent on various social protection things, like health care, allows to legally limit one's apparently personal choices, like smoking, that increase the tax money spending due to those choices. Such is the nature of most, if not any, tax-funded welfare features.
Emergency healthcare is a public resource (you can only handle X patients per unit time) and it's a costly one. I would bet that most safety laws are forcing you to protect yourself by way of doing simple things that lower public medical costs. Even if you commit suicide, someone has to clean up your remains and deal with the potentially dangerous bio-materials.
Yes, you are free to do things that hurt only you, but good luck finding anything that does.
Sure, I can just smash up my stuff or start a risky business. But the reason for that is that there isn't proof that what I'm doing constitutes failure. (They could be very educational activities.)
Also, when you inevitably fail to uphold that contract, consider settling instead of fighting it in court to reduce costs to the justice system.
This is a logical fallacy - smokers cost much less in terms of healthcare than healthy people. Mostly they die relatively young. Elder and end-of-life care is drastically reduced, and that is the biggest healthcare cost in most people's lives. If you lived to be 80 as a non-smoker, you would probably cost factors more than a smoker who died at 60-70, even with only a few years of end-of-life care.
Which is one of the reasons so many people oppose government administered healthcare(At least in the US). Once the government is financially responsible for your healthcare, it has a legitimate stake in regulating the lifestyle decisions that you make.
For example, if the overwhelming evidence shows that consuming pork results in increased healthcare costs over time, the government has a compelling interest to prohibit the consumption of pork or since we know unequivocally that use of tobacco results in increased costs for healthcare, (as you mentioned)the government has already taken steps to limit its use but has not yet gone to far as to prohibit it (in large part) because the tax revenues collected on its sale are not inconsequential.
My younger brother (by 7 years) had a 5 hour screaming fit and siezures after getting a vaccination (don't remember which one, I was only 8 or 9). It's one of the clearest memories from that time period that I have. Me standing on the landing, Ian convulsing below just inside the front door, my dad and mom holding him down and trying to keep him from hurting himself.
I know now that it's something like a 1 in 14000 chance but I'm glad that we waited an extra year to start vaccinations and I'm glad we weren't forced to start on someone elses schedule and I'm glad that year of being nervous about measles or whooping cough is over too.
You are the problem, and you should feel bad. Unless there is an explicit medical reason why (your child is legitimately allergic to the contents of the vaccine) there is no good reason to not vaccinate your child immediately. You are in the same crowd as the anti-vaxxers, because you're afraid of some 1 in 14000 boogeyman. Do you not drive your car because you're very likely to be seriously injured in the process of doing it? Your idea of waiting until they were older is absolutely just as ridiculous.
Just to clarify, you should never hold someone having a seizure. You should clear out things they could hurt themselves with, but never hold them. I see clearly that smart decisions runs in your entire family. I seriously hope you didn't hurt your children's health by getting them vaccinated later in life.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can tell me that no, there's no chance seizures like that are going to run in the family. But knowing what I currently know, I can't fault pieman.
Edit: here it is: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n12/full/ng.3129.html Notice that is was published less than a year ago.
I don't see anyone advocating that pedestrians be outlawed and making operating a vehicle compulsory, is the critical difference here.
Where un-vaccinated people are dying at a rate greater than the reported illnesses (and deaths) caused by vaccines?
It's entirely possible to crush the Church of Scientology, the specific organization, without outlawing the Scientology faith. That's both legally possible and possible to imagine, even though a lot of people seem hard-pressed to understand the distinction I'm drawing here.
Which leads into another idea some people seem unable to grasp: Being a cult is a property of some specific organization, not a belief system.
From memory, there are four parts of the definition. First is aberrant theology. That is a property of the belief system. Second is emphasis on "you must be part of our group". That's a property of the organization. Third is that they are heavy on control of their members. Again, that's a property of the organization. And I don't remember what the fourth thing was, just that there were four of them.
Of course, it is useful to have a concept to describe organizations centered around some bullshit beliefs, that lure people in and then harm them, but it is very hard to make a definition (especially for the "bullshit beliefs" part), partially because a lot of features assigned to cults are in fact features of efficient organizations. You have to evaluate beliefs and intent on a case-by-case basis.
Here's an informal example:
http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html
It takes a lot more than bullshit beliefs. In fact it's not about beliefs at all, so much as exploitative, manipulative, controlling behaviours.
IMO HN really doesn't qualify. Nor does Less Wrong. YC may have culty tendencies, but it's still quite a way short.
Some businesses and startups are close to the edge, and a few are probably on the wrong side of it.
Scientology certainly qualifies. (I suspect people who haven't looked into it have little idea just how incredibly weird Scientology is as an org, never mind as a belief system.)
So do some churches.
The hard part isn't finding cults, it's working out how damaging the experience is. I know a couple of people who spent a lot of time volunteering for a cult in California. The leader was a genuinely dangerous psychopath and exploiter, but they don't seem to mind because they never met him personally, most of the people they met were nice, and it's where they met each other.
That may be unusual, but cults often collect curious, generous, and rather insecure people who are herded and abused by a few crazies. So it may not be that unusual to have a good experience, as long as you can avoid becoming a toy/servant/sex slave/cash cow for the leadership.
Creating all of the above is the true aim of every cult. The bullshit beliefs are just the window dressing.
That seems totally impossible. People donate for social prestige all the time (those silly bricks with people's names on them, placards in classrooms, etc. wouldn't exist otherwise)
(And before you say "but then the religion would just create a separate charity for people to donate to, which would recognize people with some sort of token, and then the church could acknowledge people who have that token": creating a shell company to avoid a restriction on commerce like that is pretty much the definition of money laundering!)
There's a really good reason to make vaccines mandatory/heavily incentivized however, which is because you need a certain critical portion of the population to get them before they really are effective at reducing the spread of a particular disease.
If, say, only 10% of the population is vaccinated against polio then there will always be plenty of people around that the disease can spread to. Those 10% won't get polio, but it doesn't really benefit society as a whole. On the other hand, if 95% of people are vaccinated then the disease will have a very hard time spreading and [ideally] can be completely eradicated. Even the un-vaccinated 5% benefit since their chances of exposure are much lower. Assuming you agree that vaccines are harmless (I realize some people don't, nor are they totally without negative side effects), it's in the best interest of society as a whole to vaccinate widely.
vaccionation is about public health. Certain diseases could reappear if you don't vaccinate, and you'd pass that onto other people.
It stops being a personal decision when it affects the health of others, and the state must intervene.
And who makes that decision? If you look at the track record of the American Government over the past few decades, you'll see it's not them (Yes, you mentioned you're not American. My forthcoming point still applies). What happens when you entertain an idea that the government considers harmful to yourself and others, despite the fact that you have proof you're right and the government is wrong?
Specifically, the FDA still prints and distributes and decrees that public schools teach the food pyramid. The food pyramid is 100% wrong, top to bottom. Saturated fat is good for you as has been proven by dozens of studies and the fact I'm still alive. But, prior to 5 years ago, if you entertained that notion and fed your family a high fat diet, you'd be considered as mentally deranged as the strange, home schooling prepper family who keep to themselves.
I see the stance on saturated fat as no different than the current stance on Vaccination. Whatever you think on the subject, one way or the other, you should be free to do so. Governments aren't nannies. They're more like an abusive nurse who tortures inmates in the mental ward.
There are many channels through which you could submit your proof in order to change government's stance on the topic. They don't work flawlessly (some would say they don't work well at all), but it beats everyone doing whatever they think is right and everyone else having to deal with collateral damage.
> I see the stance on saturated fat as no different than the current stance on Vaccination.
I disagree, if only because figuring out metabolism is hard, while the way diseases spread much less so.
> Whatever you think on the subject, one way or the other, you should be free to do so.
That's a recipe for disaster and you must know it. Otherwise, you might not be happy to hear that I think that a nuclear warhead would be a great gnome for my garden.
> Governments aren't nannies. They're more like an abusive nurse who tortures inmates in the mental ward.
You must be joking.
If anything, governments are like abusive officers in jail full of mentally ill criminals. Their torture is nothing compared to what the inmates would do to one another in their absence, whether through stupidity or ill will. The very reason you can go out and buy quality food and tools without risking your health, life and money in the process is that the governments regulated the shit out of commerce and manufacturing AND have a system to enforce those regulations.
Like it or not, a government is the best way to account for externalities and solve coordination problems at scale that we've figured out so far. It grows naturally in pretty much every society.
And no, you shouldn't be doing anything you like wrt. vaccines. They make sense only when applied at scale, hence mandatory vaccinations.
Well, if we're going by that, we should also concede that authoritarian societies are more common than free societies (per the Democracy Index). How should we interpret this?
And yet, the food pyramid continues to exist. Scientists disputed it at the time it was introduced only to be blackballed.
> it beats everyone doing whatever they think is right and everyone else having to deal with collateral damage.
Who is this "everyone else"? And are you suggesting we want people doing whatever they think is wrong?
> I disagree, if only because figuring out metabolism is hard, while the way diseases spread much less so.
For the love of god, go back to high school science class. You have it backwards, in so so many ways.
> governments are like abusive officers in jail full of mentally ill criminals
You're calling yourself and your family mentally ill criminals?
Change takes time. Do you have any theory (besides "FDA are idiots") about why exactly the food pyramid is still taught in school? I doubt it's a conspiracy of Big Food, because they can easily switch their "Fit" product lines from low-fat to low-carb and people buying it probably wouldn't even notice the change.
Personally, I'm betting inertia, which is an inseparable part of the way big groups of people work. But whatever the reason will turn out to be, it most definitely won't be proving that the FDA is torturing citizens.
> Who is this "everyone else"? And are you suggesting we want people doing whatever they think is wrong?
No, I am suggesting that we want people doing whatever is right, as opposed to whatever they think is right. Those two things don't always overlap in large societies.
> For the love of god, go back to high school science class. You have it backwards, in so so many ways.
Now do I? Please elaborate on those ways. I stand by my assertion. Disease spread patterns are simple, because they follow relatively simple rules that are easy to verify empirically. Dietetics on the other hand is very hard for the same reason psychology is very hard - both fields are based around understanding insanely complex mechanisms and it's almost almost impossible to set up clean double-blind experiments with large samples for them, pushing practitioners to pursue advanced statistical methods that they aren't really equipped to handle. Thus both fields are mostly filled with bogus and bullshit results, making it unwise to believe anything there until it has been thoroughly analyzed and replicated many, many times.
> You're calling yourself and your family mentally ill criminals?
You started with torture and mental wards. I'm only adjusting it slightly. The important point to note is that governments don't magically appear - they are born out of people's desire to set up some rules as they notice that "everyone doing whatever they think is right" only leads to death, destruction and pain.
But still; on large scale, people really are idiots. And yes, myself and my family are also idiots in many contexts, though understanding the difference between local and global optimization helps in becoming smarter in time.
I politely disagree. A person's decision to eat a high fat diet will really only affect that person (putting aside long term health care costs for better or worse). People who choose not to vaccinate are actively putting others in danger simply by living in the world unvaccinated. Everywhere they go they bring danger. This is not true of a person's diet.
How? If the rest of the crowd has reached herd immunity, then it doesn't matter if the small percentage of anti-vaxxers are vaccinated or not.
I'm not familiar with the practices of scientologists, but the line is usually pretty clear for me. Are scientologists hurting other people? Are they guilty of hate crimes? Do my taxes pay for their beliefs? If yes, then it should be outlawed, if not then they should get their freedom of religion. And any middle ground should be treated by education. We often forget that a lack of education is what makes stupid people stupid and outlawing things won't make them any less stupid. But then again, even stupid people should own their body and mind, as long as they aren't hurting me or my family through their actions of course.
And on neo-nazi organizations, they are usually in the business of organized crime, or are guilty of hate speech. Once their actions are hurting other people, yes, they should be outlawed.
On the other hand outlawing the Nazi symbols or the Nazi propaganda, as it happens in Europe, is pretty stupid and indeed inconsistent, without also outlawing communism and its symbols and propaganda. But you see, China happened, being now a valuable western partner, so we prefer to be hypocritical instead.
> Are scientologists hurting other people? > Do my taxes pay for their beliefs?
If you are interested in learning about that there are lots of resources. Going Clear is a recent one that is quite good.
I disagree with outlawing Scientology or any other religion and I think that vaccination is a good idea. I am opposed to using the threat of force to compel people to take vaccines but they're still a very good idea.
Philosophically, I believe that governments should have minimal involvement with people's day to day lives. Therein the details can be convoluted and seemingly contradictory but I'm talking about philosophy and not the minutia of policy.
Not that I think it's perfect but I prefer the US's system of dealing with objectionable speech to that of most of Germany. For example, if someone wants to deny that the holocaust occurred, in Germany it's a crime but in the US, it's merely an etiquette faux pas. There, the authorities will be involved but here, the person's statements will be challenged and contradicted.
Want to walk around wearing a swastika tee shirt? That's perfectly legal but don't be surprised if people refuse to interact with you. You may be asked to leave any establishments you enter and things of that nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilds_of_Ankh-Morpork#Thieves...
For example, trade unions were considered an illegal restraint on trade until the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. Also, certain forms of corporation have been made legal and illegal over the course of history.
If I understand what I'm reading correctly, the pre-1914 trade union ban was not a ban on association (workers could still form professional associations, working-men's clubs, etc.) but on "cartel-like" behaviour: collective bargaining, strike action, etc.
They're being driven slowly underground with changes in the law, and when that process is complete they'll probably be few in number but far more violent.
Echoing a generational change in the nation in general.
Damn it, it may be easy to forget but Japan was feudal until the 1800s (the last shogun stepped down in 1867). And their WW2 militarism was something of a last hurrah of that.
Since then it seems to have been directed more inwards, in how they run businesses etc. The execs care for the workers, and in return the workers dedicate themselves to the company (or some such).
As best i can tell, the core of most stories produced in Japan even today can be boiled down to the old samurai question of duty vs self-respect.
Meaning that you will find a endless row of characters that spend time agonizing over following orders (or expectations) from their superiors, even though they personally find it wrong or offensive in some way. Looking for some escape clause that allow them to appease both.
Edit: Never mind. Hell's Angels. Maybe if HA had been around since the 1600s, nothing ;)
Its odd, because they probably could make make quite a few Yen by getting the population all wound up about a "war on yakuza" and militarize their police and build private prisons and flood their justice system with cases.
Clearly, enormous amounts of money have been made by monetizing policing in the USA, so there must be some interesting cultural difference that prevents that toxic meme from infecting Japan. Whatever it is, we could use some of those antibodies here.
The large biker crews here start puppet gangs now to do all the criminal activity so "Angels of Hades MC" end up being declared a criminal org with all it's assets seized, then they just make a new puppet org "Satan's Wings MC" and repeat.
After the war, the Allies had a problem. The Nazi party was never a majority, but millions were members, some cohered to various degrees, some joining freely for various reasons, some of which were innocuous. But the party of National Socialism had advocated, then lead, the destruction of millions and called for a policy of war, and its continued existance was unacceptable.
To imprison and punish every living member would have been completely unfeasible for numerous reasons, both moral and logistical. So a different solution had to be worked out.
Those who had enough reason or evidence against them to bring charges were tried, but for everyone else (and remember, we're talking millions here), including members of the Wehrmacht, a sort of parole for the entire country was instituted. All of these men and women would live free, with no charges brought, under the condition that the Nazi party was never spoken of or promoted again. Ever. And this was enshrined in law.
Those laws still exist.
Now, whether or not you think they're still relevant, I cannot say. I'm an American expat in Germany, so I have my values on one side, and the stories surrounding me on the other. Here, in this country, it's a complicated and uncomfortable issue.
Freedom of speech is about keeping the line open to everyone so that we can eventually come to an enlightened relative consensus.
The kind of speech that should be protected is the kind that consists of words, viewpoints, arguments.
I understand where you're coming from, but you have to understand that it's still an arbitrary line. Remember that old "First they came for[...]", well, substitute in there "First they came for those shouting non-arguments."
So yes, this sounds like a slippery slope, but in that case Europeans have a Schelling fence on it. See [0] for a more detailed take on the whole topic. For our purposes though, the money quote:
"In the original example with the alien, I cheated by using the phrase "right-thinking people". In reality, figuring out who qualifies to join the Right-Thinking People Club is half the battle, and everyone's likely to have a different opinion on it. So far, the practical solution to the coordination problem, the "only defensible Schelling point", has been to just have everyone agree to defend everyone else without worrying whether they're right-thinking or not, and this is easier than trying to coordinate room for exceptions like Holocaust deniers. Give up on the Holocaust deniers, and no one else can be sure what other Schelling point you've committed to, if any...
...unless they can. In parts of Europe, they've banned Holocaust denial for years and everyone's been totally okay with it. There are also a host of other well-respected exceptions to free speech, like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. Presumably, these exemptions are protected by tradition, so that they have become new Schelling points there, or are else so obvious that everyone except Holocaust deniers is willing to allow a special Holocaust denial exception without worrying it will impact their own case."
[0] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...
Think of them like children - do you talk to them about something they've done, like take a socially taboo substance, or do you make it clear to them that they can't use it in your presence, opening the door to them seeking a place that they can take it without consequence or discussion?
You could write the same sentence about, say, physical abuse.
I'm not sure if we're in agreement here but yes, you could say the same about physical abuse. Perpetrators of violent acts are often found to have been recipients of violence or abuse themselves. We know this through counseling which is a form of dialogue. The more we can understand something, the better we'll become at preventing it from being exacted in the first place.
Understand and treat the cause, rather than ignore the cause and treat the symptoms.
Brainwashing or banning forms of expression would be treating the symptoms rather than addressing the underlying cause. Brainwashing/censorship might be quicker and, in the short-term, cheaper than changing the culture and living conditions of a group of people, but you'll forever be addressing symptoms at great cost long-term.
If you posit a preexisting bias as condescension then you can throw nearly all forms of dialogue between two disparate groups in there.
> That's what I mean by preaching
Allowing someone to have a voice, even if you quite vocally disagree with them and have preconceived ideas that there's something wrong with them, is more material and consequential than suppression. Call it what you will.
Channeling your earlier post...
> If you are not willing to admit that they might be right
This starts with dialogue, no matter what your feelings towards them are. The opposite is the death of debate.
Preaching is not debate.
So we should give up discussion when either side has conviction?
Which is a straw-man argument, as you're asserting something which might or might not happen in a hypothetical exchange based on my preconceived notions regarding a typically violent, intolerant group of people to be reality.
For fun, replace Nazi's with Jazz (we can make this mental leap...weeee). Maybe I'm not really into it and have preconceived ideas about why people like it. Perhaps I can convert them to Baroque, I think to myself. In the process of talking to someone about Jazz I gain a broader understanding of its intricacies, but still without having to like Jazz. They, of course, find Baroque bereft of any spirit and we part ways and so my sinister plan has failed.
Then someone comes along and asks, why even talk about Jazz with this guy? He doesn't like it and never will.
Well, nothing changed except one more person understands the others position a little better. Perhaps with time the dialogue can evolve into something more sophisticated. Meanwhile Jazz-lovers-friend shakes his head thinking, what a waste of time...
that's what germany tried between the world wars.
Mind you, there’s a difference between a ‘concentration camp’ and a site of mass murder.
Yes. Because making other people's beliefs illegal is the first step towards forcibly supplying your own.
It's easy to say that you think that speech that is almost universally repugnant should be illegal. The problem is that the benefit from doing so does not outweigh the risk that some day you may hold a socially repugnant belief of your own and find yourself legally silenced.
This is hate speech and is illegal in the US. In the US we draw a line between holding beliefs (or owning swastikas) and public hate speech or other illegal acts. This is similar to how it is not illegal to be a racist, but it is (often) illegal to discriminate.
"Some of the 177 arrested (including four women) languished in jail for weeks, others for months, before they could afford to post bail. All of them, even guys who hid out in the bathroom while bullets flew, face up to 99 years in jail."
Triads and Yakuza offer a package like SaaS. You pay them for all your various operational needs but they do not get involved in your business, so you are free to do whatever you want, so long as you keep paying them a monthly fee by using their laundering services, and you don't heat out the streets so much that it affects business. Everybody works with them because they have their own banks and financial networks built over decades with rules about not burning customers.
No lesser gang will run the risk of rising up against them and there really is no reason to since they are not involved in your decision making they are just cleaning your illegal profits at 30% fee and offer capital to expand your criminal operations. They also have extensive prisoner services and since every gang member ends up doing a few months for being caught with an illegal handgun you need them to pay off rivals not to kill you inside, to pay your family money while incarcerated, to offer you credit when you come out to restart a drug business ect.
Now you see where the myth of the Yakuza and Triads having millions of hitmen comes from, since all their customers are criminal street gangs it's trivial for them to organize mass violence by merely calling in all their favors through a proxy. Street gang X probably had members avoid jail with an expensive defense attorney the Yakuza provided, so being thugs they will jump at the chance to pay back the debt with violence since that's what they specialize in anyway.
Sadly it might be more to do with social acceptance.
Even when they are breaking the law?
"Japan, it seems, prefers organised crime to the disorganised alternative."
One premise is that the Yakuza is very hierarchical, not only a personal hierarchy in clan internally, but as an organization. Members of the most major Yakuza clans, for example Yamaguchi-Gumi, are a leader of another clan himself, one tree down from the parent clan itself. So, when they say there's a certain Yakuza clan, you are not talking about one clan manging people under them; you are probably talking about tens, perhaps hundreds of organizations under the clan, which can stem two or three levels down. (So when they talk about 23000 clan members, that's including everyone in the tree -- there are only a little more than 80 members in "Yamaguchi-Gumi" itself.)
Essentially, as a "public stance," many higher organization "prohibits" lower organizations down the tree from engaging in illegal activities. For example, Yamaguchi-Gumi's known to have very strict "no-drug" policy, and they even tell their under if they engage business of drug dealing, they will shun offenders.
But here's a problem. Basically, it is expected that lower clans pay a membership due regularly to higher clan, and it can get very costly as a person goes higher up on the tree, except the leader of the very top clan himself, perhaps. (As a side note, a lot of news speculates this is probably why split of the Yamaguchi-Gumi took place in the first place.) That's you are talking about payment of 100000yen-ish (basically $10000-ish) every month.
Being a leader of a clan under the main clan themselves, they will naturally order their henchmen below to pay him a membership dues. As you go down the tree, someone will have to get their hand dirty to make that kind of money; they could be legally to down right illegal business like prostitution (there's very legal gray areas of this in Japan), loan sharks, and some do, turn to crimes mainly, like fraud, and exploitations in order to make that kind of money.
Essentially, while it is an argument that laws and regulations are attempting to make it harder and harder to get away with, basically the top clan's saying "hey, I am telling everyone to not engage in illegal activities, we even fire when they violate it, so we are not responsible for their actions."
The people at the top can then say they knew nothing of it, and they're shocked, shocked, that their employees would do such a thing.
That's a bit far fetched. Execs do decide to violate the law, check some of the court cases on HN.
Many of clan members would voluntarily accept imprisonment by limiting blame to themselves instead of to their upper or their immediate upper would pressure for them to do so, which I don't necessarily think the case for corporations. (I wouldn't say this doesn't exist, though.)
Sounds like a modern corporation to me.
Imagine a society free of aggressive and predatory crime. It's possible with the technology we have today. What are we waiting for?
The concern is generally what else you give up in order to remove the crime.
Before we give the government the tools to monitor and control the populace, we need to make sure the populace has the tools to monitor and control the government. (I originally wrote "any organization", but any organization with such compulsory power becomes the de facto government...)
A recent sci-fi with a positive view of hyper-tech civilization is "The Culture" (Iain Banks). However, the interesting stories there all occur on the borders, with the interaction of the Culture with non-Culture civilizations. "Player of Games" is a good starting point.
And this is what tech can solve. We could be "ruled" by adaptive algorithms we collectively vote on. If a better algo is discovered it can be voted up and eventually replace another.
Many refer to society as a machine, what would happen if we really treated it like one?
Do we really need or want central planning like we have now? With tech we could solve many of our problems, instead we sit here calling them "pain points".
The problem is, they're already there, and local community initiatives are not. The hard thing is the road from here to there. You can't just suddenly remove them and hope things will go all right.
As for collective planning, it's getting harder to sell these days; it's expected of every country to be some kind of democracy.